Not all destinations are as charming & engaging as New Orleans, but we do our best.

Our tour of the southern states of the US is reaching its halfway point. We are 14 stops into our 24-stop trip and still learning about the nomadic RV lifestyle. Here are a couple of unintentional observations:   

1. Families with children in campers on vacation have disappeared from the landscape. Sure, we do bump into the occasional family with children probably being home-schooled and living in a camper, but for the most part we have seen very few kids. 
2. Some RV campsites are more touristy, and some campsites are more of a working-class neighborhood. When you hear diesel truck engines starting at 6:00 am in the morning, and slowly driving off for the day, you know you’re in a working-class RV campsite. And it all makes sense now because we are in a southern climate where living year-round in a camper is feasible.  
3. When we visit cities, towns or regions, the activities and excursions usually fall into two basic types. There is, what I would call, pastural, with lots of park land and / or beaches, with a more laidback atmosphere. Then there are the metropolitan type places, with museums and galleries and a distinctly upbeat vibe.   
4. The weather “can either win the horse or lose the saddle”.  True, the cold and snow of a typical New England winter is all but a distant memory for us, so I’m sure there’s not much sympathy from people tolerating winter weather. The weather can really be a factor in determining how robustly we can explore a place.  Anybody who has taken a week’s vacation in a tropical paradise only to have it rain for 4 out of the 7 days, knows that the weather can wreak havoc on a trip.  Some stops are better suited to accommodate poor weather, but ultimately mother nature can be a delightful friend, or bitter enemy. 

Although these observations appear unrelated, we have found them to have an impact on our experiences at a destination. This is especially true when these observations or attributes are found to be prevalent in certain combinations.  Here are a couple of examples:  a) Poor weather can be better accommodated at a metropolitan type of stop. b) Touristy campsites will have more families with children. c) Working class campsites in metropolitan areas are very quiet during the day.  And then there’s the doomsday scenario: poor weather, at a touristy campsite, in a pastural area.  Auggggh, the worst!  All of a sudden, the unrelated observations detailed above have a profound impact on our ability to explore our destination.

That best explains our 7-day stop in Gulf Shores, Alabama, which is where we went after leaving the unseasonably cold state capital of Montgomery.  Our stop in Gulf Shores was a bit of a dud. We were at a lovely RV park, very touristy in nature with a pool, and a club house, only 2 blocks from some of the nicest beaches on the Gulf out on the barrier island.  And the weather absolutely sucked. It was either windy, raining, or cloudy for all but 1 day of our visit. The wind blew the beach sand everywhere, the rain and drizzle meant that just stepping outside inevitably had us tracking sand wherever we went, and walking along the beautiful long and fine white sand beach in the cloudy damp weather was not enjoyable. How bad could it be you ask? So bad that we have a combined total of ZERO pictures from this stop. I was tempted to not even mention this stop in the blog, pretending it never happened. As the saying go, “pics or it didn’t happen.” Enough said.

Then just one week later we found ourselves in New Orleans, LA. Here we had five mostly sunny days, parked in a working-class RV campsite, in a metropolitan area. Just a great combination of attributes for a magnificent time touring and exploring New Orleans. The campsite was situated on the bayou, 11-miles south of the French Quarter.  We found that using UBER for day trips into New Orleans was the simplest, and most cost-effective mode of transportation (parking the truck in the city is expensive).  Needless to say, it was a busy week full of adventure and sightseeing. Let me see where to begin.

So much to tell, so let’s get the basics out of the way. We did the usual touristy activities, including having Beignets & Cafe Au Laite at Café Du Monde, complete with a 5-piece brass band.  We walked the French Quarter, visiting shops, eating food, and watching sidewalk musicians and entertainers work the crowd. We visited Lafayette Park, and perused paintings and handcrafts displayed therein. We tried and ate gator and roasted oysters (yum).  We walked along the French Quarter Riverwalk, visiting the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial with art by Yaacov Agam.  And….

• What would a trip to New Orleans be without a food tour in the French Quarter? Incomplete, that’s what. We signed up for a 2 ½ hour walking food tour with Kristi of Destination Kitchen. We started with a treat of Kings Cake from Roux Royal, then moved onto Shimp Po’boy at Dickie Brennans Tableau, and ended with fresh Pralines from the New Orleans School of Cooking. But our favorite stop in the middle was at the New Orleans Creole Cookery, where we sampled, for the first time, Jambalaya, and roasted oysters with parmesan cheese. New Orleans truly is the melting pot of so many cooking cultures, and the food was amazing. I could go on, but writing this is making me hungry.

Beignets at Café Du Monde

Shimp Po’boy

Fried Gator and Broiled Oysters

• We spent a sunny day visiting and exploring New Orleans City Park, which was modeled after Central Park in NY City. There is much to see within the confines of the 1,300-acre park, including a Botanical Garden, the New Orleans Art Museum, a Storyland Park, and a Stadium. We brought a picnic lunch and walked much of the park, including the outdoor sculpture garden associated with the Art Museum. The highlight for me was the historic New Orleans Train Garden. This gem of an attraction is tucked away in a lush corner of the Botanical Garden. Here, model trains ¹/₂₂ of the actual size zip around 1,300 feet of track carrying streetcars and trains like those that traveled the city in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Live bonsai plants are used in the landscapes.  It was so much fun to watch the trains go around the multitude of tracks. Much of the rest of the Botanical Garden was seasonally dormant, but the walk through the Japanese garden was calming with the towering bamboo trees, tranquil waterfalls, and Japanese inspired sculptures. 

• We drove to visit the town of Madisonville, LA, which required us to drive across Lake Pontchartrain, which lies to the north of New Orleans. Driving from shore to shore across this 24-mile-long bridge is freaky, because when you’re 5-miles away from the departing shoreline, one cannot see land anywhere. An endless bridge that seems to lead into the middle of water.  

• Our campsite south of the city was convenient for driving further south into Jefferson Parish and the bayou.  At the southern tip of Barataria Bayou there lies the unincorporated village of Lafitte, LA.  Most of this town sits on or abuts marshes and mud flats. Our first stop was The Wetland Trace Nature Boardwalk.  Here we found a park which contained a couple of miles of elevated boardwalk that allowed us to explore the 41 acres of wetlands. We saw wild alligators for the first time, as they laid sunning themselves on the mud flats. We found a picnic table and had lunch. The “gators”, as they are called by the locals, were not interested in us or our lunch (If you can believe it there were signs indicating not to feed the alligators).  Our second stop was at Airboat Adventures for a 2-hour ride on an airboat through the bayou. We boarded a small airboat, on a warm sunny afternoon, with an experienced guide, and cruised through the cypress swamps & bayous to see alligators, snapping turtles, herons & hawks. Ever been on an airboat before? That makes two of us. When the engines are cranked up, these machines are a thrill a minute. But they are also capable of silently gliding into delicate bogs where alligators lie in groups and snapping turtles sun themselves on logs. We found ourselves thoroughly engrossed in the natural beauty of the cedar, live oak, and bayou environment. One of our best excursions, and hopefully the included pictures give the experience proper justice.

Wetland Trace Nature Boardwalk

I think I have whiplash. There was just so much to do and see in and around New Orleans, which was a complete flipside from our week in Gulf Shores, AL. The key to the success of any stop on our journey is, of course, the weather. If the weather had been more cooperative, then Gulf Shores would have been a fabulous beach stop, and one that we will have to try again. In the meantime, we will be remembering our stop in New Orleans for years to come. And just like that, our seven days stop in Bayou Barataria RV Park was over. We had reached the westernmost point on our southern tour and were headed north to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Another week, another new state.  But not without one more pass through the city of New Orleans, as we drove around the west side of Lake Pontchartrain, to pick up Interstate 55 north as we continue our travels and tell …the Rest of the Story.