The last 87.......

6:48 am - Saturday - January 12th - Gonzales, LA - 55º F, 90% humidity, wind 6 mph out of the east by southeast.....cloudy today with a forecast of rain today, and a high of 71º F.....as I write I am beginning to hear the gentle 'pitter pat' of the rain on our aluminum roof.

We only had 87 miles to cover to our destination for the next days, but we are both glad we saved that last 87 miles for Friday, because as you leave Slidell you are pretty much on elevated road surfaces over water 75% of the time until you get close to Baton Rouge.  I cannot imagine how much fun that section would have been at the end of a 220 mile day in the late afternoon!  In many cases you are below sea level.  These elevated road surfaces appear to be quite old and they are not smooth......think 'bebump, bebump, bebump, bebump' for about 100 minutes as you are simultaneously snaking your way through post 9 am NOLA traffic in lanes that are considerably narrower than the typical Interstate lanes.  Add all that together and you feel your blood pressure rising as the tension, predictably, rises.

But, alas, we finally exited Interstate 10 in Gonzales, LA and found our way to the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center where we will spend the next three days visiting with our friends Forest and Cindy talking about, and planning our trip to Alaska this summer.  The site we had been initially assigned (50-B) was full of water and mud so TLE and I walked over to the office to explain our problem and see if there were any alternate sites in which we could stay.  When I gave my last name so they could look up my reservation the nice lady said "Oh, you're Clarke Hockwald.....we have a package for you...".  I'm thinking how would someone know to mail me a package here?  Well, it turned out the address I had given our son to use to forward our mail was the Expo center, and not the address of our friends.....doh!  Thankfully they held on to the package for a few days!  At any rate, she also gave us 6 alternate sites to check, which we did.  We settled on a site a few down from 50-B which was a pull through site, and quickly moved into it.  

Since the utilities for our site are at the very rear of the site I had to deploy about 45' of sewer hose, my 50' water hose and a 25' extension for our 50 amp cord, and that is why we carry so much extra stuff for just this situation.  It comes up very infrequently, but are we ever happy we have the extra when we need it!  We only have 30 amp service in our site, but it's all good.  By the time we were set up it was about 12:30 pm and time for some showers now that we are connected to a sewer once again.  When we arrived our friends were up in Baton Rouge at an appointment, so by the time we finished with our showers Forest and Cindy had arrived to welcome us.  We talked for about an hour before they headed home. We made arrangements to drive over to their home for dinner at 4:30 pm.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and settling into our digs for the next three days, and were in the VW headed for Forest and Cindy's home by 4:30.  We had a lovely evening talking, and a lovely dinner before heading home around 8:30 pm.

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