7 Days in Mobile

Monday (Apr 4) to Monday (Apr 11):

We left out of Fontainebleu State Park (we were lucky - no more rain), dumped our tanks and headed down I-10 east to Mobile. The drive was about 130 miles and we took about 2.5 hours to make the trip. We pulled into the Shady Acres RV Campground and were assigned to Site 21. This was one of only a few sites that had southern sky access so we were able to get a satellite signal at the site. We got set up and settled in for the evening.

On Tuesday we travelled south from the campground to Dauphin Island. This is a resort island with several miles of white sandy beaches. There are a large number of houses that are available for rent on the island and we were surprised at the number of families we saw as we walked along the beach.

We also visited old historic fort located at the east end of the island, Fort Gaines. The fort was built around 1821 and was the site of a civil war engagement: the Battle of Mobile Bay. We walked around the outside of the fort since there was an $8 charge to tour the inside.

We did not see any groceries stores on the island and didn't know how far you would have to go to get supplies on the mainland (we didn't see any stores on our drive down).

On Wednesday we met Michael & Linda Cross who have been wintering in the Pensacola FL area. They drove over and we met them at the Gulf Coast Exploreum. This museum was having a display of Leonardo Da Vinci's machines and artworks. The exhibits included copies of his most famous paintings, the bicycle, a spring-powered car, hang glider, helicopter and robotic drummer. The models of his inventions were done by craftsmen in Italy for the touring exhibit. Da Vinci was truly a "Renaissance Man" with may talents. One interesting note: Since there were no patents or copyright laws during his time, Da Vinci alway put an "error" in his drawings/instructions so that they would have to come to him to have the machine work.

The 2 Mikes putting together one of Da Vinci's bridges.

After completing our visit to the museum, all of us went to Wintzell's Oyster House in downtown Mobile to eat seafood for lunch. We had a great lunch and got to visit for a couple of hours before Mike & Linda had to return to Pensacola.

Thursday was a work day for us. We spent time cleaning & doing laundry. We also called a mobile RV tech, Daryl Green, who came out to the motorhome and worked on our steps and door. He ended up having to replace the motor on our electric steps and "clean up" the wiring to our electric door locking/unlocking mechanism. So now our fobs work on the door and our steps go in and out like they are suppose to.

Friday we spent the day at the Bellingrath Gardens and Home. They are located about an hour south of Mobile on the Fowl River. This is a beautiful estate built by Walter & Bessie Bellingrath during the 1920-1930's. Walter was one of the first to have a franchise to bottle and sell Coca-Cola in the south: his area was Mobile and the surrounding counties. He bought the franchise in 1903 for $1,500. The estate started out as a fishing camp with 5 acres. They ended up buying the 60 acres next to it and then built a large house on the property in the early 1930's. The estate is unusual since the gardens were already well on their way to completion before the house was built. The gardens were overseen by Bessie along with an architect and developed over a number of years. The Asian Garden were added several years after Mr. Bellingrath died.  The home is about 10,500 square with antiques that Bessie collected over the year. All of the furnishing, silverware, china and accesories located in the house are the originals. Here are a number of photos we took during our visit.

Friday night Connie made a pizza from scratch that she adapted to fit our oven (it was a rectangle instead of a circle). We took it easy on the week-end. We ended up buying fresh shrimp at a store near the campground called Dip Seafood. On Saturday and Sunday night we enjoyed boiled in beer shrimp and it was delicious. I spent some time cleaning the front of the motorhome and then tightened a number of the bay doors to that they would close better. Sunday we took a drive through downtown Mobile and saw some of the large homes located in a neighborhood near the downtown area. I also watched the Masters golf tournament and was surprised at the meltdown by Jordan Spieth on the back nine during Sunday's round. On Monday we will head to Pensacola for the next week to visit friends in the area.

Fontainebleau State Park - 1 Year of Full-Timing

March 28-April 4:

We left out of the campground in Sulphur LA and got on I-10. As soon as we got on the interstate, the traffic became stop and go for about 45 minutes. They had closed one lane of the bridge over the lake so everyone had to squeeze into that lane to get across the bridge. Once we finally crossed the bridge, we were able to drive along at highway speeds the rest of the way until we reached Mandeville LA. We had booked at site at the Fontainebleau State Park which is located on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. The campground was very wet from recent rains with standing water in a lot of places. We were able to get into our site without too much trouble, but once you got off of the asphalt the ground was very wet and soft. The sites here are very close together, especially for a state park.

We got set up and then went into town to eat dinner. We ended up at Bistro Byronz in Mandeville: I had a large hamburger while Connie had a seafood salad. Both of our meals were very good.

On Tuesday, Connie and I rode the paved roads inside the park and then along the Tammany Trace Trail which is a rails to trails paved path that goes from near Slidell to Covington LA, a distance of 27.5 miles. We rode from the park towards Mandeville for about 45 minutes, stopped at a Ponchartrain Yacht Club harbor for a rest, then rode back to the campground. The trail is very flat and the path is very well maintained.

Cabins in the park that are available for rent.

The cabins sit right on Lake Ponchartrain.

There are the ruins of an old sugar mill inside
the park. Sugar cane was used in the process.

Some of the "trees" in the park

On Wednesday, we took a trip into New Orleans. The Lake Ponchartrain Causeway Bridge runs 24.5 miles from the north shore of the lake to New Orleans. It is the longest bridge in the world that is only over water. There is a $3 charge to enter the bridge from Mandeville, but there is no charge to get on the bridge from New Orleans. New Orleans was packed with spring breakers and it kept trying to mist on us as we walked around the French Quarter. We had lunch at the Acme Oyster House and then went to Cafe Du Monde for coffee & beignets. 

Char-broiled oysters

Coffee and beignets

On Thursday, we once again rode along the Tammany Trace Trail. This time we rode the opposite direction for several miles before turning around the heading back to the campground. We stopped to take a photo of flowers along the trail.

It rained all day Friday. We spent a lot of the day trying to find campgrounds for our trip from Florida to New England and then on to Nova Scotia. We found a few but still have a lot of work to do. April 1st was our one year anniversary of the start of our full-timing in The Duchess. Connie cooked a special dinner of Turkey Osso Bucco which we enjoyed with a bottle of Champagne.

On Saturday afternoon, we drove over to Abita Springs. We took our bikes along and rode them along the Tammany Trace Trail from downtown Abita Springs back towards Mandeville. After a nice bike ride, we went to the Abita Brewing Company for a tour and tasting of their beers. Abita started brewing in 1986 and last year they did a major expansion of their production facilities. The tour was interesting and we enjoyed tasting a number of their brews. Abita does a number of things to reduce their footprint on the environment: recycle heated water, large solar panels on the roof, selling grains from the brewing process to local farmers for cattle feed and filtering waste water before putting in the city sewer system.

The raspberries give it the purple haze.

They also brew a non-alcoholic root beer at the plant.

Along the tour. Everything was spotless inside the brewing areas.

Each of the cylinders holds enough beer for
one person to drink a six pack every day for 60 years.

Different brews we tasted.

On Sunday we rode a bikes one more time with the weather being great (75 degrees and sunny) from the park into Mandeville. We stopped at the Mandeville Trailhead to rest before returning to the campground.

Connie can now say she has ridden across the USA.

Bike Rental/Sandwich-Ice Cream Shop at the trailhead.

 On Monday we will be headed towards Mobile, Alabama for the next week. Hopefully the weather will be nice and the campground not so muddy.

Easter Weekend in Sulphur LA

On Friday morning we left the campground at Cagle Recreation Area heading east towards Louisiana. We took TX-105 from Willis to Beaumont to avoid I-10 for as long as possible. TX-105 was a good road and traffic was light. Once we got on I-10 we ran into construction and accidents from Beaumont to the Louisiana border. We saw where both the Trinity and Sabine rivers were out of their banks and it was still flooding along each of the rivers from the recent rains. I-10 had been closed recently due to high water being over the road, but everything was OK for us.

We continued along I-10 until we reached Sulphur LA where we travelled south about 2.5 miles on Hwy 27 to the A+ Motel & RV Park. We were assigned to Site 66 which is a nice pull through site with full hookups.

Site 66

View down our row

This is a very nice campground with two swimming pools (one for kids and one adults only), a hot tub, workout room, laundry rooms and bath/shower rooms. We took advantage of the hot tub (once we figured out how to work it) and I used the workout room over the weekend. The hot tub was located in a covered area with a large screen TV and nice sound system.

Large screen TV/bar area near Hot Tub

Hot Tub and Adult Pool

Workout Room

On Saturday we took a trip along the Creole Nature Trail. We took the route heading south from Sulphur to Hackberry to Holly Beach to Cameron back to Lake Charles. We tried to walk one of the several trails along the route, but I was eaten up with mosquitoes so we skipped the other trails along the route. At Holly Beach we drove on the beach until we hit soft sand. With it being Easter Weekend, the visitor center was closed for the holiday. The trail follows the area where the land meets the sea and the area is home to over 200 species of birds.

We had to stop and wait on a ferry along the trail. While we were waiting a large tanker crossed in front of us and the ferry had to wait on the ship to pass. So we ended up having to wait about 40-45 minutes to get across the water. 

On Sunday, we did laundry in the morning. In the afternoon, we travelled over to Lake Charles. The first stop was the Prien Lake Park. This is a very nice park located near the I-210 bridge over Lake Charles. We got out and walked around the park for about 30 minutes on a paved walking trail.

The park had several fountains along with some covered pavilions. There were a number of families in the park on a very nice Easter afternoon. From there we travelled across I-210 to the L'Auberge du Lac Casino, which is one of several casinos here in Lake Charles. Connie had won some money at this casino when she was on a gambling trip with Rhonda Herrington and Rhonda's sisters & mom several years ago. Unfortunately she was not so lucky today.

L'Auberge du Lac Casino & Hotel

After visiting the casino, we went back into the main part of Lake Charles to visit an old historic neighborhood along the lake. Lake Charles has a very nice park in its downtown area along the lake which we drove through on our route. Along Lakeshore Dr and Shell Beach Rd there are a number of very large houses that face the lake. Some are located on several acres of land while others are quite close together. Here are a couple of the older houses we passed along the way.

On Sunday night Connie used our new InstaPot to make one pot spaghetti with meat sauce. She used the pressure cooker function to cook the spaghetti squash, then removed the noodles and made the sauce in the same pot. It was nice being able to do the whole dish in one pot. 

A few days at Lake Conroe

Tuesday (Mar 22) to Friday (Mar 25):

We made the trip from the apartment where we were dog sitting in Austin to Rosanky to pick up The Duchess and start out on our travels this spring. We visited with my dad for a few minutes, finished packing up the motor home and then made the trip east to the Cagle Recreation Area on Lake Conroe.

Site 8 at Cagle Recreation Area

We had made reservations here hoping to spend some time with Carl & Pam Manganaros who we had met at the RV Dreams Fall Rally in Michigan last September. They also started their full timing adventure last year and we wanted to get caught up on our travels. They have been camp hosting at this campground for several months during the winter. Unfortunately their 5th was in the shop having new flooring put in during the week we were there. The work was suppose to be done a couple of weeks ago, but the flooring got delayed and the shop had to wait to start the project. They are staying with Pam's dad nearby and we were able to get together with them for lunch at the Cozy Grape Wine Bar & Bistro in Montgomery on Wednesday. We spent several hours visiting and going through the good/bad/ugly of being on the road full time. Carl & Pam will be camp hosting in Vermont this summer and will be also be attending the Escapees Escapade in Essex, VT during the last week of July.

Cozy Grape Wine Bar & Bistro

Carl & Pam (taken from their blog)

On Thursday we took it easy around the campground until we found a leak in one of our water lines late in the day. It was the hot water line under the kitchen sink and we discovered that an animal had gotten into our rig while it was stored at Rosanky. It ate into several items inside the RV and put a pin hole in the water line. I ended up going into Willis to see if I could find some parts to fix the problem so that we could have water inside the motor home. I was lucky to find an RV dealership open until 6 PM, found some parts to patch the line and then spent a couple of hours "fixing" the problem and making sure there were not any leaks.

You can see where I patched the water line in the middle of the photo

Cagle Recreation Area Campground is located on Lake Conroe. The lake gets a lot of traffic on the weekends with it being close to Houston. The campground is very nice with full hookups, but is isolated from any towns. We had very intermittent AT&T Wireless service and with the trees were not able to connect our satellite dish to DirecTV. We were able to pick up a few over the air TV stations but with the high winds the signal came and went.

A couple of photos from the trail along the lake

On Friday morning we made the trip from our campground to Sulphur, LA were we will spend Easter week-end. We traveled along SH 105 instead of I-10 for as long as we could. I-10 from Beaumont to Louisiana was very crowded and traffic slowed to a crawl in several locations.

House/Dog sitting in Austin

Feb 22 to Mar 22, 2016:

Connie and I have been house/dog sitting for a month in Austin. This is for the same couple, Vic & Pam Gallagher, that we took care of their two King Charles Spaniels, Murphy & Emma, last year. They have a two bedroom apartment located in the Arboretum area of northwest Austin. It is a great location with lots of shops, grocery stores and restaurants within walking distance of the apartment. Pam & Vic go to the British Virgin Islands each winter and their kids/grandkids come to visit them during spring break.

Vic & Pam Gallagher

Murphy on the left and Emma

We got to see Xena, the labradoodle that we raised from a 8 weeks old until she was about three. We found her a great home with Crockett & Carol when we decided to go full timing in our RV. Crockett takes Xena almost everywhere he goes, even to work. The two of them take long walks every day. We spent about an hour with Xena at our friend's house, Katie, when Crockett was having his acupuncture treatment.

We have been able to visit with a number of friends here in the Austin area during the month. There have been a couple of happy hours with friends and we have gone out to dinner or lunch with friends on several occasions. We been able to eat fresh fish from the Highland Lakes caught by Brooks Ivey at their house. It has been good to visit with everyone here in Austin, but we are both ready to get on the road again. We are amazed at the changes in Austin during the year we were gone. Austin continues to be a boom town with all of the good & bad that go along with the growth. One thing we will not miss is the Austin traffic.

Connie was able to visit the senior living facility in Cedar Park where her parents resided for several years. Connie and her sister, Debbie, attended the "happy hour" that happens every Friday afternoon. One of the ladies at the facility, Dorothy, was a close friend of Connie and Debbie's mom and they all had a nice visit.

Dorothy & Connie's sister Debbie

While we were here we accomplished several tasks: (1) we both updated our wills, power of attorney, durable medical power of attorney & medical directives, (2) had blood work done to see if we need any changes in medications/diet, (3) had Jeep serviced & tires rotated, and (4) bought clothing to replace some we had worn out during last year.

We also purchased several items for the motorhome: (1) InstaPot pressure cooker, (2) Viair RV air compressor with accessories (much smaller than the one we had been using), (3) crossbar for the screen door in The Duchess (I'm not sure why the manufacturers don't install one of these with every RV), (4) a small Dutch Oven, (5) small sitting stool that folds for the bedroom and (6) a small Char-Broil propane grill that uses Tru Infrared Technology. Notice how many times I used the word small: see a pattern here? We have used the InstaPot several times during our stay and it seems to do a good job of cooking food quickly while keeping it moist and juicy. We also purchased a few smaller items for the motorhome kitchen and some tools to have onboard during our travels.

Connie went on a "girl's wine trip" with 12 other women to help celebrate Pat Robinson's 65th birthday. It was an all-day trip through Slowpokes Winery Tours that included visits to 3 wineries along with an outdoor lunch. The trip was organized by Heidi Ivey and a great time was had by all.

The group that went on the tour.

A good time was had by all!!!

We were able to meet with Fred and Bonnie Lee for lunch before we left Austin. The Lees  were staying in San Antonio/New Braunfels over the last month. They travelled to Nova Scotia last summer and we were able to gather a lot of good information about their trip during our visit with them. It always to great to talk to someone who has travelled in an area before to get their insights and advice. Fred & Bonnie are going to travel along the Lewis & Clark trail from Missouri to the west coast this summer. We were able to hold one last HAPPY HOUR at Brio's Restaurant near the apartment we were house/dog sitting. We had a good turnout with about 20 people attending over the 3 hours we were there.

We are planning to visit the north east part of the USA along with spending a month in New Brunswick & Nova Scotia, Canada during the summer. Our route will take us from Texas to Florida before we head north to an Escapee's Escapade in Vermont at the end of July.