Chill Down

Wednesday, we are now well settled at Chicot State Park in Louisiana and it is very pleasant, it is 6500 acres of forest surrounding a huge lake.
The lake level is low at the moment, so lots of old cypress tree stumps are exposed. I took a walk down there this morning, dozens of large herons of all sorts, I heard an alligator belch somewhere, lots of mosquitos (but the good old 'Go Juice' took care of them).
I have a photo here of a large white heron, with an enormous, but dead, Cypress tree in the background, if you look very carefully there is a very large turtle sunning itself on a little saandbank. I have put in a close up of them.

It is very beautiful and very quiet and peaceful. One downside at the moment is that Sally is not feeling too well, so it is a good job we are taking a fairly long rest here.

Chicot State Park

Monday - We have moved 50 miles north to Ville Platte and the Chicot State Park. It is a large (270 sites) RV park on a lake, however the lake levels are very low at this time. We have a nice site in the middle of the forest and we can see one other site about 30 yards away. This site feels very secure, with State Park Rangers on the entrance to the park about a mile down the road, a camp host parked at the entrance to the RV site, locked gates at night (you get a combination number) and rangers patrolling. This site is costing us $20 p.n. (£14). So we have booked to stay a week as we think it is time for a holiday and this looks like a nice place for us to relax, do very little and recharge the batteries. (metaphorically)
This will give our mail a chance to catch up with us, which includes a part for the trailer and an extra cupboard (cabinet) door for our bedroom area. As our phone has blue tooth I have also bought some blue tooth stuff for the laptop, so that we can download pictures directly, and also be able to use the voice controls for our GPS. We will see if this all works or not.

Moving On - Lafayette

Sunday - Well we have had a good look at Baton Rouge and are ready to move on. We are going to travel about 50 miles along I10 to Lafayette. This is moving us closer to the centre of Cajun music. Unfortunately most campgrounds are more expensive here - from $35-45 (£24-30) per night, except for the local City Park which has a RV park in it. It is called Acadian City Park. However having arrived there, we are not happy with the area, which looks run down, or the state of the campground, which is run down and not clean (bottles, and trash lying around the campsites). Worst of all the security looks non existent with no locked gate at night or security staff, for the first time leaving us feeling quite unsafe. Admittedly it is only $13 p.n., but you expect to feel safe in a park at any price
We ventured out to a Golden Corral for an All You Can Eat buffet meal and decided that we would move up country to Chicot State Park, although 50 miles north it is actually closer to Mamou, which is claimed to be the birthplace and centre of Cajun music (we have yet to explore this theory, but we are on the case).
We will return to Lafayette for the Black Pot Festival this weekend and also to visit an accordian shop where they make accordians (or at least modify them to be used for Cajun Music) and you can tour their factory to find out more.

Farr Park Campground

The Farr Park Equestrian Center and RV Campgound is a County Park, operated by the Baton Rouge East Parish. It is situated very conveniently for Downtown Baton Rouge. It is very quiet, you cannot make reservations. The facilities are basic, but servicable. Water pressure at this time was very low. No campfires allowed. NOTE: LSU home games are blackout days, as it is only a mile from the gound and all sites are pre reserved.
$20 per night.

Westwego

Because of the trouble on Wednesday, on Thursday we made a big push to get to New Orleans, over 250 miles! we pulled into The Bayou Segnette State Park by about 4.00, it is situated just by the little township of Westwego, which is to the Southwest of New Orleans, on the East Bank of the Mississippi. It has well spaced sites, good basic facilities and is quiet during the week, but book for a weekend. Also has free laundry. Boat ramp nearby, also water park in the state park with wave machine. $20 per night. Westwego is squeezed onto a strip of land about one mile wide between the Mississippi to the north and Bayous (swampland) to the south.

It is not a well to do sort of a place. However it does have a small fishing fleet and a fish market. Friday was a rest day, but in the afternoon we took a short trip to see the fish market. Fortunately, our friends, Jimmy and Kathy, who are travelling with us, are experts on all things to do with fish. Jimmy actually worked on a shrimp boat and both he and Kathy did a lot of big game fishing when they were younger - I mean serious competition stuff, they had their own team, big boat everything. (their policy was strictly catch and return).

So we wandered round the little circle of huts which made up the Fish market, stopping to cast an expert eye over the fish for sale. This was mostly shrimp and crab. The shrimp are huge (about 3-4 inches long), the crabs are blue and small (3-4 inches long). Jimmy and Kathy were excited by the prices, as we were able to buy shrimp for $2.75 per pound, which is about 1/3 the price they are in Florida.

While we were in the fish market, we stopped at a little cafe and had what they called 'Shrimp plate' which was just fresh deep fried small shrimp in seasoning and French Fries. Simple but delicious. The cafe was full of all sorts of fishy type foods and seasonings, I have never seen so many different types of seasoning. After our meal we returned to the fresh shrimp stall and Jimmy collected a bag of fresh shrimp to take home.
When we returned to the trailer Jimmy showed me how to prepare the shrimp, by removing the heads and freezing them in water, in freezer bags, ready to take back home to Florida. Then how to de-vein them, to make sure they have no grit in them. We plan to buy more shrimp tomorrow and then we will be instructed on how to cook shrimp on a BBQ. There did not seem to be so many mosquito's tonight.

Trouble on the road!

Today is Wednesday and we did not make the progress we wanted to today. In fact I am writing this from BlackWater River State Park, only about 70 miles from Falling Waters.
We got away fairly early, but had to stop at Walmart for supplies, that took an hour.
Just as we were about to stop at a rest area for lunch we had a blow out on one of the trailer tyres. Fortunately I was able to stop without any damage to the trailer, however the tyre was a write off. We limped into the rest area and changed the tyre, but after lunch felt we had to buy a new tyre to replace the blow ou. We drove to the next Wal-mart, which was only 3 miles down the road. They took more than three hours to change two tyres (one of the others was badly worn as well), so we did not leave there until 5.45. Too late to go much further we stopped at the newly refurbished Black Water River State Park. Cath had cooked chicken and rice and we relaxed round the camp fire. We are getting to bed early, hopefully we can get a good start and make it to New Orleans tomorrow.
BlackWater River State Park has been recently refurbished with large, wide sites and full facilities. Near to River play area: tubing etc. Quite busy, book for weekends. $20p.n.

Our link with Florida Continues

Jim and Cathy had invited us to call in for a couple of days on our way to New Orleans. They have a house in a forest by the Santa Fe River. It is a beautifully decorated double wide home set in a couple of acres of woodland. They have several porches you can sit out on. It is a really peaceful place. Just when we thought that we would be leaving our friends in Florida behind, Jim and Cathy (who we were staying with) announced that they would like to come with us to New Orleans!
This was great, they are going to travel with us for about a week before going back to Florida for a HOG Bikers Meeting (Harley Owners Group) next Wednesday, so we had a quick turnaround at Jim and Cath's on Monday to do the washing and left in convoy for New Orleans on Tuesday. We made great progress on Tuesday and stopped overnight at Falling Waters State Park near Marianne in Florida. Here is a quick pic of our campsite while we are gettig ready to eat.We sat round the campfire as the sun went down. When we lokked up the setting sun made the tress glow red, as though they were on fire.


Falling Waters State Park is a small park with fairly naoorw roadways, sites cna be small. It is not busy, but book for weekends. 2/3 facilities on site. $20 p.n.

Soggy Bottom Weekend

We travelled down to Soggy Bottom, other wise known as The Sertoma Youth Ranch, on Wednesday. This followed a bit of a scare with the van.
On the Tuesday I went to start it and found it would do nothing! So we checked the battery, took the battery out, took it to Walmart to see if it was no longer servicable,but it was OK. Tried to jump start it, finally left it charging overnight. Next morning, no joy, changed the battery. Finally Jim tried to start it, wiggled the Auto shift stick and away it went, we were relieved!
Because of various difficulties we have done a lot of eating out, on Wednesday we ate at Remmingtons' Wesley Chapel, as this is the favourite eating place of Brenda's (who's birthday it was), however Brenda was not with us, still we had a great meal. Thursday a number of other people showed up-, some people we had not seen for more than a year. So we had a great time sharing gossip and jamming together under Connie's awning. Friday,we out to Remington's again, this time we took Brenda (because it was her birthday and it was her favourite place to eat). Saturday we relaxed and talked with more friends. In the afternoon there was the Soggy Bottom Auction, which was fun.
Last night we had a big jam session at Connie's When Sally retired to bed I had a bit of a wander around the campground and played with a couple of other people. It was another great night at Soggy Bottom.
This morning we will meet together inthe pavillion to share a Gospel Hour before breaking camp to leave Soggy Bottom behind.
We are moving on with Jim and Cathy Mobley to their house near Fort White in the north of Florida, hopefully to have a bit of a relax before moving west to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. This will give us the chance to provide a first hand report about this summers oil spill in the Gulf