Sam Houston Jones State Park, Louisiana

We awoke to a little early morning fog at sunrise which yielded up some pretty fine photos – again with the Canon s90 at hand. They should be at the end of the Tickfaw album, just preceding this post.

Morty put another free day in the bank with one more consecutive driving day of 170 miles. We were just able to stay in Louisiana with its low prices at the westernmost state park known as Sam Houston Jones. This park is just North of Lake Charles. The prices here are the same as before, but we noticed a new schedule of transaction charges: $3 for walk-in; $5 for using the web site, and $9 for using ReserveAmerica. No wonder I’ve been leery of using the third party site. Can you imagine my reaction if I were charged an extra $9 for making my $8 site rental. Ouch!

Fortunately, reservations are hardly necessary, the park is only about 15% full tonight, though some late arrivals are inevitable. I am getting to like our noon arrivals more and more. The routine of driving for three hours before lunch is working well for us, because first, we can stop for a McDonalds breakfast, when we arrive, we have a larger selection of sites, then we have lunch in the park followed by bike-borne explorations. Then we are soon tired and ready for appetizers and dinner, an early bedding, and ready for an early start all over again -- maybe too Spartan for most, but a good routine for us. Mentioning McDonalds, we are obliged to report that some are doing away with the $0.50 senior coffee because of the expanded breakfast $1 value menu -- we win, we lose this time all in the same place.

As we drove, the skies clouded over, looking quite wintry by Ohio standards, but the temperatures climbed into the 70’s. Today’s wildlife list is fairly short: deer, ibis and duck. We are in Calcasieu Parish on the Calcasieu River, and again, most of the heat-loving critters are on sabbatical. A quartet of yearling deer came up to Morty just as were about to unpack the bikes. Lynne remarked that they looked very thin, so I spread out a little birdseed on the picnic bench, and one came over and licked most of it up. A second had less courage and could only manage a bite while the last two looked on in disgust -- quite a demonstration of peer pressure.

Tomorrow we enter Lone Star where the weather will dictate how far south our path takes us. Tonight I’m struggling with a marginal cell phone connection, so there’s no telling when we’ll get this post up.

Louisiana Rental

Tickfaw State Park in Louisiana is 174 miles down the road from Spanish Fort -- the perfect distance for Morty's new travel plan except for not camping in Mississippi even though we completely crossed over it [albeit the short way]. That's okay, Morty, we'll get back to do some Camping there before not too long.

Today, MLK's birthday celebration is just a little more joyous for us because we are also mindful of the Louisiana Purchase giving us this great land -- some government plans have proven wise and good. We however will just be renting a bit of the bayou for the day. Actually, Louisiana State Parks may be an RVer's Nirvana. Tickfaw is near perfection. Some highlights: paved sites, water and 50 amp power, free Wifi [not that I've gotten a good connection with it -- the cell phone tethering with Sprint is working fine], 50% senior discount with the National Parks Senior Pass card, plastic payments accepted, great boardwalks to the river and through the cypress forests, adequate and convenient trash collection, good bathouses, no weird regulations, and it is all available for $8 per night with a $3 transaction fee. Now that's some good campin'. Plus we have perfect weather: sky severe clear, temperatures in the mid 60s. We will probably want to angle in another stay in Louisiana tomorrow night regardless of the distance covered.



We drove for the morning, and set up camp just about noon. Lynne made some sandwiches and then we set out exploring on the bikes. We explored the roads of the park and hiked the boardwalks and stopped in the Nature Center. Lynne spotted our first armadillo, but then we saw a couple more, one meandering along the road foraging for food very nonchalantly. Must be a fairly common site in these parts. We were also impressed by the geckos and the cypress knees and trees. The park ranger told us we might see the turkey flock making its way back to the roosting area in the late afternoon, but no luck. We sat out on the recliners for our late afternoon sip of wine and watched the locals walking by in their winter wraps. We of course were in shorts, tees and sandals -- so glad to have left behind the snow and real cold. Skyward a flock of about 50 vultures circled lazily overhead drifting with the breeze slowly westward. Something we will be joining in tomorrow morning -- except for the lazily part.

Sweet Home Alabama Parks - Spanish Fort

Morty was determined to make camp in Alabama, even though we were crossing it the short way and very early in the day. So we looked up the Alabama State Parks site on the web and found Meaher State Park in Spanish Fort just East of Mobile. If you were relying on the 2009 AAA Southeastern Campbook, you would probably never pick this park because it is substantially upgraded and tripled in size from their listing. We have a paved pad, full hookups including 50 amp power, a strong cellphone signal from Sprint, a few TV channels over the air, a waterfront on Mobile Bay, automatic senior discount, and lots of wildlife with wetland boardwalks for $26 per night. Just no plastic payments, thank you.

So instead of a 99 mile leg, we only got about 50. Perhaps we should take an overview of what is required mileage-wise to make it to Yosemite on this trip. In round numbers we have 5,000 miles to go there and return home by mid-March. We'll also say that on average we drive every second day so that we can count on 30 driving days. That means that for this trip we need to up our driving chunks to 170 miles. [Also every time we miss that drive on the second day, the remaining chunks increase in size.] Pre -reitrement that would have been a very slow day. Now, it's very doable without getting crazy, it's something we will have to keep in mind when Morty starts whining about camping in every state possible.



Today is Sunday, and we have only a marginal TV signal, perhaps we will get to see some NFL playoff action. We hiked the park and found a couple of boardwalks that we had all to ourselves for wildlife spotting -- no gators but a couple of very photogenic birds. I took the Nikon D90 along with the 70-300  zoom lens and was glad to have the fast frame rate and quick focusing that this combo gives me. Despite the dreary day with only a few sunny rays peaking through, I got some interesting shots.

We're seeing more and more parks removing all convenient trash containers as a cost savings. This has the unintended consequence of having more trash tossed in inappropriate places where it will be very expensive to clean up. I hope our park managers are in line to get some of that free stimulus money and use it to return the trash containers.

Naval Aviation Museum

Saturday's rain started on Friday night, before Lynne could get in her shower. Sleep was perfect -- Morty has perfected the playing of the patter of precipitation better than anyone. As planned, it was a good day to finish off our tour of the Museum aboard Naval Air Station Pensacola [in proper Navy-speak]. Today, Saturday, was a lot different from yesterday because a lot of families had a lot of kids there to enjoy climbing on the flight simulators and such.

We mainly focused on the mezzanine level that surrounds the main display floor. This is great because it brings you nose-to-nose with the suspended display aircraft, but there are also many recreations of places like carrier decks, dirigible gondolas and South Pacific outposts. We will see if the pictures do it justice. We were amazed at how the planes are suspended from the building steel structure with no visible reinforcements. Some like the gliders and even the Cessna 150 equivalent were rotating free in in the wind currents. Before leaving we stopped for lunch in the Cubi Bar and Cafe for a couple of reasonably priced salads that were very good and some great service from Lolita from the Philippines -- highly recommended and not at all what you might expect.



The rain continued until around two in the afternoon when we left to replenish a few supplies at the local Wal-Mart. When we returned, I took a walk in the surf in trunks and t-shirt, and found the water to be nearly cold enough to cramp my feet. Everyone else out there was fully dressed for winter or running, but it was nowhere near that cold -- probably mid fifties again, air and water both.

The sand was remarkable because it reminded me perfectly of the sand-box sand we had as kids on Pennington Rd. The white creamish color, texture, puckers from the rain drops, feel under my feet, and especially the smell took me right back more than sixty years. A huge scarcity of shells, only one of the smallest clam-like shells we had grown accustomed to in North Carolina was to be found. Just now I am realizing that I have only driven by Gulf Coast beaches, never before have I experienced them first hand. So there is a first for me.

Oak Grove Park

RV Genie Pays a Visit to Mortimer! Overnight the furnace repaired itself and was working fine to take the chill off for breakfast. We're glad it doesn't need immediate repairs, but wonder how strange it would be if our furnace had some aversion to the cold.

The Oak Grove Park campground we are in is different from all others we have experienced to date. It is restricted to the military and sponsored guests. It is small -- only 45 sites on a mile and a half of beachfront. The bathhouse is nicer than any we have ever experienced -- finished in ceramic tile and impervious plastic, heated and probably air conditioned, and clean -- twice a day clean; hospital clean! Although the camp is full, it is quieter than you could ever expect. The coin laundry room is locked -- you must sign out a key from the office. Another restriction we have never before seen: No metal detectors allowed. We are happy campers -- but quiet and unobrusive guests.

Pensacola

Yesterday we finally left Gahanna -- still in a freeze. The icicles hanging from our front roof broke all records going back at least 24 years. But it was dry and bright so that we were able to get out the garden hose and fill Morty's water tank -- something that I was expecting not to be possible in those conditions.

We left at 2:30 PM and drove to Tennessee, stopping at 10:30 -- about 400 miles -- but still in a hard freeze. It was a little distressing to find Morty's furnace suddenly dysfunctional. On top of that the coach batteries were dead from running the tank heaters all day -- something that I thought was supposed to be handled by the engine charging system. That makes two things needing some attention.

Today, we were up and at it at the crack of dawn, driving another 400 plus miles to the Naval Air Station at Pensacola. When we stopped for lunch we were dumbfounded to see McDonalds stuck in a time-warp and still serving breakfast. Who knew that Alabama observes Central Time.

We were headed for the Naval Aviation Museum aboard ["on" would not be proper navy-speak] the base, but saw that there was a family campground on the Gulf there also. We pulled in and were lucky enough to get their last available site. Also lucky enough to look like we might fit in well enough with retired military to garner a sponsorship from the campground hosts -- otherwise the camp is not open to civilians.



The weather here is delightfully mild -- mid 60s to mid 50s. Still, everyone here is pleased with the warming trend, the same as we are. Rain is forecast tomorrow, so we plan to give the Museum a thorough going over. Today's quick look was very favorable. We took turns sitting in simulators for helicoptors and transports and were amazed at the work-loads involved in each. This is the home of the Navy's Blue Angels.

Between apetizers and dinner, we walked down to the beach, and in the near-darkness saw a Great Blue Heron swoop in down to the water's edge looking for a good fishing spot. More amazement from the Canon S90 in extremely low light

Winter Dreamin

The 101st blog entry. The last before we set out for the Southwest. At last we can expect to be above freezing in the deep South.



We went to Damascus to visit the mother-in-law. We went to Waldo for fried baloney sandwiches. Now we will be heading for Pensacola.

Such a Winter's Day

I'd be safe and warm
if I was in L.A
California Dreamin'
on such a winter's day

Weather Holdest -- Held Hostage

The Cold extends all the way to the southern Gulf of Mexico with the promise of further temperature drops. Lynne wants to restart the paper.

The weather is warm in the sunny southwest. The folks already at Quartzsite, Arizona are probably having a grand time. We are stuck -- the only consolation is that it is in the comfort of our own home.

We are shoveling snow four or five times a day. Al Gore is beside himself with mirth. At least we are able to keep up with our workouts.

It is bad -- but it could be worse -- a lot worse.

Weather Holder -- Warmer Memories

There's no warming in sight. So we sit tight and look at some memories from July -- Airventure to be more specific. These were taken with my Nikon D40 -- with some lens dirt that has since been cleaned away. My neighbor who went with me wondered how my camera was able to fire off shots so quickly. The answer is simply  that is the way most Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras work.

Weather Hold

Saturday came -- and went. The freezing cold is penetrating to central Florida. No point in trying to travel in such mess and cold. So we sit tight and run a few errands.



Our traditional first Saturday night of the month is Gallery Hop in the Short North. So we do that in a snow storm and get a few pics. A few more effortless available light grabs with the Canon S90. I am continually impressed by these results. It's hard to believe how hobbled I was with the Pentax Optio Wpi.

We were blocked out of Buca di Beppo -- no matter. Dinner at J. Liu's in Worthington was very good -- having the best Pad Thai in Columbus -- recommended.

Happy New Year

The celebrations are now behind us. We wait now for only the completion of the Rose Bowl. Tomorrow, Saturday we will head South unless the weather is just too stacked against us. I would like to make for Pensacola, but that too has a weather contingency attached to it.



On Christmas day, my brother drove down from Cleveland and we went to our favorite restaurant McCormick & Schmick's. Once again they delivered a magnificent dinner. We went back there a few days ago to get a gift card for some friends, who later suggested that we stop there for dinner after our traditional New Year's Eve movie. That turned out wonderfully. We had a table of 10. I was the only one to order the celebration dinner which came with a flute of champaign. When it came time for the bubbly they served it to all ten of us at the table -- that is really classy.