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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The Jello has the last laugh......

6:37 am - Friday - January 11th - Slidell, LA - 36º F, 77% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the northeast....clear skies again today with a forecast high of 60º F.

It was very, very cold overnight in Quincy, FL, and I was up by 6 am to turn on our three Suburban gas heaters to take the chill off the coach.  It was 39º F outside, and 55º F inside....a nice differential considering we didn't turn the heaters on at all the night before.  Although we had no plans to drive more than 200 miles Thursday we were on the road before 8 am.....wait, what?  We never get on the road that early!  

The day began with kind of wispy clouds and finished with clear blue skies, and virtually no wind.  The road was flat, and straight as we cruised at 60 mph westward on I-10 at 100-200' above sea level, then as we approached the Alabama border just feet above sea level......

 A lot of trees blown down by the hurricane back in October....the cleanup continues

 Leaving Florida.....very few states thank you for visiting

 Almost at sea level!

.....our Jello plan had us ending our driving day in Daphne, AL, just before Mobile Bay, but as we approached Daphne I just could not see myself stopping so early (11 am, because we gained an hour back when we reentered the Central Time Zone), and so we set a new goal......Moss Point, AL....another 40 miles.  But, as we approached Moss Point I still could not see myself stopping for the day so early on a day when the driving was just magical.  At this point we had driven some 230 miles, a typical driving day for us, but I asked TLE to see how far Slidell, LA was. She quickly reported it was another 100 miles.....that sounded about right, so I reset the Garmin Truck GPS to Slidell, LA and we continued on our way westward.....

 Entering the Mobile Tunnel

......soon we were entering Mississippi.........

.....and just a few miles later we entered the state of Louisiana......wow four states in one day......Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana! 

Our original plan at the beginning of the day was to drive another 200+ miles to Daphne, AL which would give us just 200+ more into Gonzales, LA.  When the driving is as good as it was on Thursday and there are a plethora of Rest Areas to choose from (we stopped at three this day including a 1 mile walk in the 3rd one of the day....it was finally warm enough!) why not drive 333 miles, right?  By the time we pulled into the Walmart Supercenter Parking lot in Slidell, LA it was just coming up on 3 pm......perfect!

We spent some time relaxing before walking into the Walmart to do some shopping.  About 5 pm we walked over to the Cracker Barrel to have 'breakfast for dinner'.  The parking lot in which we are parked has a Walmart, Lowe's, Murphy Gas USA, and a Cracker Barrel.....how much better does it get?  Almost 7 years ago when we had just begun our full time journey we overnighted in this same parking lot on our way to Florida for the first time.  I have to be honest.....it does not seem like 7 years.

So, as I write this morning we find ourselves just 88 miles from our destination today where we will spend 2, or 3 days planning our trip to Alaska with our good friends Forest and Cindy.  The weather today, Friday, is the same as Thursday.....clear with blue skies.  We are now less than 5 months from the date we will enter British Columbia and begin our journey to our 49th State (49th in our Newell, as well).

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which helps defray our travel expenses to a small degree.