Into Red Bay, Alabama

We headed over the Hwy 45, up to the I 78 E, then up a winding country road to arrive in Red Bay, Alabama about 11. a.m. They say the deep south doesn't get any deeper than Alabama. It was discovered by the Spanish at Mobile Bay in 1519, given to the British in 1763 at the end of the French and Indian War. It became the 22 state in 1819 and Montgomery became the first capital of the Confederacy in 1861, when cotton was king. Now peanuts, soybeans, corn and more share the soil. This was where the bus boycott was launched when Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger. In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the march from Selma to Montgomery to protest voting inequities. Today, Louisiana has nearly 5 million people and is 28th in size. You will see silver-green Spanish moss covering the oak trees in the south but it is neither Spanish, nor moss. It is an epiphyte, a plant that lives off the moisture in the atmosphere taking nourishment from the tree's cells. It can grow as long as 25 feet.
We're now parked in the Allegro Campground. It is large with 100+ spaces, water turned off at present due to weather and over 50 bays with 2 service technicians in each for your warranty work. This is a small pleasant little town. The houses are mostly brick or local yellow stone and all have swings and rocking chairs of the front porch. You can only imagine the summer heat. The town park commemorates the citizens who served in the wars.

Going through Mississippi on a Buffalo Trail

Off in clear skies leaving the blooming azaleas behind. We were into Mississippi by 9:40 and stopped at the info center. We are in flat land, with many Ponderosa Pine trees. It looks like we could be anywhere. Arizona is red bluffs and rock, Texas is flat and scrub brush as far as the eye can see, Louisiana is water, swamp and elevated roads. I felt like Louisiana was only 3 feet deep, because when you looked over the water area, only 1 1/2 feet were above the water and probable the same below. It was a funny feeling. Now this looks like B.C., Wash, or Ore.

We stopped at the Welcome Center. It was just charming; the building is built like a brick southern mansion with white columns on the porch and 2 rocking chairs in front of the fireplace inside. This state is a combination of grand antebellum mansions, delta blues, civil wars battlefields and monuments, and the beaches down south on the Gulf of Mexico. We turned onto the Natchez Trace for 160 miles. About 8000 years ago, this was a game trail, traced by buffalo and early natives. It starts in Natchez and is a 444 mile northeast diagonal to the Mississippi-Alabama state line and on to Nashville in Tennessee. It is the story of people on the move. By 1733, the French mapped the trail and by 1785, Ohio River Valley framers would float their crops down the rivers to Natchez or New Orleans. They sold their flatboats for lumber and returned home by foot or riding. By1820, 20 local inns called 'stands' provided food and shelter. It makes me think of the 'mile' towns in B.C. on the Cariboo Trail. There are mileposts telling the history. One told of the Elizabeth Female Academy, 1818, the first school for women, in Miss. A site shows where the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes defined their hunting grounds. There is a spot on the old trace with the graves of 13 unknown Confederate Soldiers. You can hike the old trace in many spots or have a picnic. It looks just like a path through the woods. You follow the Rose Barnett Reservoir for 25 mikes, looks like a lake with low hills on the opposite shore, miles away. We stopped at a campsite outside Tupelo, Elvis' birthplace. It's down to 40 at night and you need the heat. There's a stocked pond with a little log cabin and we sat in the sun at the end of the day.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans- The Big Easy

Louisiana is an incredible mix of diverse cultures, music, architectures and foods. Discovered by a Frenchman in 1682, it was said to be given by Louis XV to his cousin Charles in Spain in 1762, rumored to be a gambling debt? Slavery had been introduced in 1724 when the cultivation of cotton and sugar gave rise to the plantation era and a wealthy upper class.
The Nova Scotians, expelled by the British, in Canada, arrived in 1764 and thus are the foundation of the Cajun culture and cuisine. They get the credit for Louisana gumbo, athough it is said the native Indians created a soupy facsimile with vegetables, meats and seafoods. The Indians introduced an ingredient that has stood the test of time, a must, ground sassafras leaves. Creole culture, language and food is a mixture of French, West African, Native American Indian and Spanish.
Oil was discovered in 1901. The state now has a population of over 5 million people and is the 31st largest in America.
We drove over 35 miles by car on raised roads on 3' concrete stilts across the lakes, swamps and bayous to get down to the French Quarter, an area of 90 blocks in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras. It is said, this is the city of jazz and fun. As a child, Louis Armstrong used to follow the brass bands through the streets. The city's nickname, The Big Easy means 'Let the good times roll.'
We walked all over, Canal Street, then Boubon Street where we had chicken and sausage Jambalaya at the Checkered Parrot for lunch. Later, we shared a bowl of red beans and rice which also had smoked sausage in it. The food was delicious, something we'd not had before. Many people dress up with purple, green and gold being the Mardi Gras colors as seen in the hats on the ladies on the street and even the icing on donuts. Purple stands for justice, green denotes faith and gold represents power. There are musicians on the streets and very loud music everywhere. These two performers in gold and silver were hilarious, acting like robots and then heading into the crowds to kiss or surprise someone.
An hour parade went by and we all acted like 5 year olds, grabbing for the necklaces, doubloons, cups, souvenirs thrown by the masked people on the floats, as did everyone there. It's expected that you call out and participate. We weren't near the Karina area, so didn't see the rebuilding efforts.
Going home we stopped at a WalMart which 'Gabby' our talking Garmin told us how to get to. We love this woman Gabby. Ron's having a vodka or rum with coke drink occasionally so I was at the till when the clerk passed the vodka through the scanner and said it's not on sale and put it behind her till. I said O.K., then she passed the rum through the scanner and said this is not on sale and also put it on the back counter. I said, that's fine I'll take it anyway and she said "Oh no you won't dear, we don't sell alcohol on Sunday. Can you imagine the look on our faces, I guess you can get drunk as a skunk 6 days a week in St Martins Parish, but you'll definitely stay sober on Sunday.

Into Louisiana to Hammomd

We left Houston this morning under cloud with sun coming through later. Their freeway system is excellent but with 10 intersecting ones, it's good to have a navigator to tell you which lane is best. Some exit left and twice, we've had to done the quirk shuffle through a couple of lanes. One good thing, is good signage, 3 signs in 3 miles and the highway printed right on the lane. Good driving day. We drove through Beaumont TX, settled in 1824 with their economy based on cattle, lumber and rice. On Jan 10, 1901, in the Spindletop Oil Fields, the first great Texas oil well blew. I remember those stories as a kid when Red Adair came in to put out the fires. This area forms one of the largest concentrations of petroleum refineries in the nation.

We drove into Louisiana, which is incredibly fascinating. It is a blend of American Indian, Spanish, French, English and African cultures. We crossed the mighty Mississippi River which has spread very rich soil from the heart of the continent into all the Deltas. There were 2 paddle wheelers in the river. This is America's WETLAND, an ecosystem like no other, which has defined and nourished their peoples throughout history but it is now vanishing at a rate of a football field every 30 minutes. We drove for 20 miles on an elevated concrete bridge with concrete 3' footings over a lake, bayou and swamp with cypress trees and their funny roots lifting them out of the water. Very different to see.

We passed Lafayette, named for the famous pirate of the Caribbean, who stored his plundered goods on this shore. When the French Arcadian farmers from Nova Scotia were expelled by the British, they settled here, called Cajuns and still speaking a French dialect.

We passed through Baton rouge, the capital, which has had the flags of 7 nations fly over it. Their name comes from 'red staff' the name referred to a tall cypress tree draped with a freshly killed animal, that marked the hunting grounds of 2 Indian tribes.
Louisiana has the most oil refineries in the States.
We're parked in Hidden Oaks County Campground' in Hammond, beside a bayou and it is that.There aren't a lot of campgrounds in the area and it's a long weekend for President's Day. This is very wooded area of leafless deciduous trees with many vines clinging to them and some huge Oak trees. The houses are built on stilts with a 6 foot area for shelter from sun and rain backing onto the bayou. Without green leaves at this time of year, it's just brown. It's a very wet state and gets about 4 - 6 inches of rain at a time.

Space Center Houston

We woke at 8 a.m., a nice sleep in; to fog and 64 degrees and humid. We spent the day at Space Center Houston and it was very amazing. The Starship Gallery relives the triumphs of America's manned space flights and displays many of those artifacts. You see spacesuits, a glove, the nosecones, videos from Astronauts, walk through a space capsule, see the seats where the Astronauts are strapped in for liftoff, and everything you can imagine. There is also the world's largest display of moon rocks which I'm touching.

There were many interactive things to do. We stepped on scales and I found that I weighed 54 lbs on the moon. You could sit in a simulator and try to dock on the moon. Ron's in the space capsule with an 'astronaut' somersaulting in 0 gravity behind him. The moon buggy is displayed. There's a nose cone where they are strapped in to thrust off and space suits in the background.

We went on the NASA Tour, which first took us to the Mission Control Center that was used on the Gemini and Apollo Missions in the late 60's and 70's. We sat in the gallery where the families sat during takeoff. It had little metal containers with lids on the back of the seats in front of you - ashtrays. This is where Celebrities and Presidents have sat when they came to see it. The computer at that time was the size of 3 Greyhound buses and their 'email' system was a pneumatic tube that would print something needed and zip it up to the Control Center. It was state of the art stuff in the 60's. Our cell phones today have more RAM than this computer did at that time.

Next we visited the Astronaut Training Facility and several Astronaut are training there now, although we didn't see anyone outside of the crafts. They are launching a Shuttle Feb. 22. It is huge and they had all of the pieces of the spaceships so the astronauts practiced everything from dressing in their gear to getting strapped in for liftoff or doing the duties in the floating space. The Canadarm was attached as you can see in the background and they mentioned that this was from Canada where the Astronauts go to train on it. They also train in their suits in a huge water pool in a different location because you can't achieve 0 gravity on earth so they learn in water what it feels like. The Saturn V Facility was next, being preserved in a building. It is over 385' long, higher than the Statue of Liberty. Very interesting day.

On the way to Houston

We woke to a beautiful sunny day, 49 degrees and much hotter shortly. I went for a walk and looked over the pecan orchard which was planted in the 1920's. The 'clubhouse' is under 2 magnificent oak trees and built like a family residence where the owners and staff eat most of the time. The oaks are 200 - 300 years old. There is a Live Oak Society, headquartered in Lafayette, Louisiana. They are trying to preserve these evergreen shade trees. Membership is limited to live oaks at least 100 years old and annual dues are 25 acorns. When I asked if they were oaks, the lady said yes and there were 2 magnificent lava oaks by the river. I asked what lava oaks were and she said 'Well, lava, dear' I asked how it was spelled and it's l-i-v-e. She said it must 'be a Texas thing'. The accents/drawls of some are unbelievable.

We don't have a satellite dish so it's very interesting to hear all the local news as we go along. With the weather, they give pollen and ash counts as well as the humidity.

We drove in beautiful weather, about 74, past San Antonio. It's famous for the Alamo. It was originally an Indian village, then a Franciscan mission and it's protective fort in 1718. This was occupied by Spanish soldiers and named for the alamo or cottonwood trees which grow along the river. Steven Austin, a Missouri pioneer obtained a land grant from the government in 1831 and brought 300 American families to settle in Texas. There was a constant struggle between groups until the Battle of the Alamo where the legendary James Bowie and Davy Crockett lost their lives. In the final battle at San Jacinto, Sam Houston was victorious and the Republic of Texas was born and became the 28th state in 1845.
Every small town you come to has a high water tower? usually with the town name on it. You see these little windmills in lots of fields on small acreages.

We arrived just west of Houston at 4 p.m. Houston is 50 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico and but they converted the winding, marshy Buffalo Bayou into the Houston Channel making it one of the major seaports in the United States. The petroleum industry made Houston one of the most populous cities, the 4th by the 60's. Interesting fact. Houston has NO zoning ordinances so their skyline is amazingly different with much innovative architecture.

Balmorhea TX to Ingram TX

Ron and I enjoy traveling together. You are always meeting someone interesting or seeing how differently others live.

It seems survival of the fittest rules here in West Texas. At rest spots there are warnings about rattlesnakes and insects, such as scorpions. There is so much history here, starting in the 1500's. Amazing to me as B.C. only celebrated it's 150th birthday this summer.

The old 'black gold, Texas tea' ( oil ) has waned over time with cotton fields, timber, forests, aerospace and high technology taking its place. We're still going through West Texas, which used to be a rich hunting ground for the American Indians with buffalo, wild turkeys and waterfowl in abundance. One water spring was the half point on the Comanche War Trail. It is part of the Chihuahua Desert. We're heading toward Central Texas which appeared to be a desert of grass. Dallas and Fort Worth to the north are on part of the Blackland Prairie which is a narrow corridor of grassland that made a grass highway down to the bottom south. This route was used for the famous cattle drives right up to Kansas. The top part of the state is called the Panhandle Plains as you can see by the shape on the map. It has rolling plains dotted with mesquite. 125 years ago, only the Comanche knew how to navigate these empty plains, knowing where the few waterholes were. When we went for fuel in a truck stop, we saw a cute little truck driver. we're nearly invisible surrounded by the big trucks. We're into slightly rolling hills now and the cuts in the sides of the road show total rock. Harsh land. The ocotillo cactus has given way to the prickly pears which the Texas longhorn cattle thrived on. Today was a pleasant drive, not too much wind and we're stopped overnight at the Johnson River RV Park, a friendly place with a lookout over the little creek, in an orchard of pecan and oak trees.