Category: Travel

Greetings from New Orleans! We are at Pontchartrain Landing and thrilled to be here. This was a milestone for us. The place we picked out is really very nice.

Pretty much all of the campgrounds in the southwest were glorified parking lots – lots of gravel. You figured out where your site was by finding the power pedestal with your number on it. Somewhere near there would be your water hookup and the sewer hookup.

It took us three days to get across Texas, even in Travel Mode. Although we do take our time. We aren’t traveling nearly as fast as we would if we were going by car.

From Deming  NM, we went to Van Horn TX, then to Whistle Stop RV Resort in Abilene TX, which we both really liked. It was a newer campground so although they had grass, they didn’t have trees. But they treated us nicely and had a great salt-water pool.

Then we went on to Treetops RV Resort in Arlington, TX, which was REALLY nice. It was an older campground in the middle of a suburb/city. I think it must have been a trailer park at one time because it had old trees and great landscaping right down to water fountains and a mini-park with a pool for guests. It was somewhat behind a huge mall so we could have walked to Target if it hadn’t been so hot.

That’s where we saw the eclipse. It really was interesting, but we were at 75% so you really could only see it if you had glasses. We were sorry to leave there. There is so much to do in that area but we were traveling.

A friend of our daughters brought us a Bengal kitten to give to our daughter when we were in Abilene.  The poor kitten was terrified, but he settled in pretty quickly.  What a personality he has! I guess it has been a while since we have had a kitten because this guy is a hoot.

Next was the KOA in Shreveport LA, where my friend Margie Krauss Harvey came to visit for a day.  We went out to a Cajun restaurant. Not as spicy as I had expected. Lots of fried foods. After she left, we went to Walmart and stocked up with food. Harvey was still a tropical storm at that point, but better safe than sorry.

When we headed from Shreveport to NOLA, we realized that when we changed our plans to pick up the kitten, we had taken ourselves out of the storm path of the now-hurricane. Dodged a bullet there! I think we should name the kitten Harvey. Here it is a little breezy and overcast, but no rain yet. But I have a story to tell you…

As we were going south on I-49, we saw ahead of us a black cloud on the road. Not unusual, that is the way rain looks in the southwest. Then the pellets starting hitting us and we realized it wasn’t rain but BUGS. Really weird looking black bugs with long bodies, 4 wings on each end and tenacious feelers. They left a big white splat on the windshield, which the wipers just spread, even with the windshield washer spray.

We passed through a couple of those clouds. After we were pretty sure we were out of them, we pulled off the road into a gas station to get fuel and do a better job of cleaning off the windshield. As we approached the pumps, I realized that we might be too tall for the overhang so I jumped out to check our height. I turned to look back at the truck and realized that the entire front cap of the trailer was a seething mass of these bugs. You could just barely see the word Solitude.

I hand-motioned John back because we were too tall and as I did that, I noticed that the bugs were moving. They had formed this mesh and were crawling off the front of the trailer to the edges, where they were flying away in a swarm. I realized I only had a few seconds to get back in the truck so I ran around the front of the truck to help guide John back and realized they were on the grill as well. I don’t know why I didn’t realize they would be there, too, I should have. They were crawling up the hood of the truck like a bat crawls out of a cave, first one side, then the other.

Then they were on me, and I ran, windmilling my arms over my head to get them OFF OF ME. John had no idea what that hand motion meant but he obediently followed me in the truck and trailer as I ran down the access road to I-49. Eventually, he caught up and I jumped in the truck and shouted GO as I was swatting the few who came in with me. We drove for at least another hour before we tried stopping again.

We were glad to see that, this time, they were dead. We were not glad to see that they wouldn’t come off easily. I thought we would just brush them off – nope. They have to be scrubbed off by hand, and they are everywhere. Not just the front of the trailer – all the slide-out edges, the arms of the awning, the roof air conditioners, even the back ladder. Fortunately, we are in a campground that allows you to wash your trailer. A lot of them don’t.

I was kinda hoping that maybe the rain from Harvey would take off, but we tried just rinsing them and they need soap. So John is out there now as I type with a hose, a bottle of Dawn, and a scrub brush. Thank goodness we stocked up!

We do plan on doing some things while we are here. There are lots of tours we can take, the trolley, the steamboat, even ghost tours which have to be held during the day as the cemeteries are locked and patrolled at night.

I was surprised by how much of Louisiana is underwater – at least in this part of the state. When you look at a map of the city, you see the river going through but what you don’t see is the swamp on both sides of the river. Miles and miles and miles of the interstate are actually on piers.

Our campground, Ponchartrain Landing,  is actually a marina so we are pretty close to the water. I can look up and see a boat going by. Behind that is a draw bridge. When you walk over to the office – which also rents cottages – you can see a bigger bridge. They have a great pool here with an infinity waterfall. Everything here is very green. Like Arlington, it is more of a resort. There is a landscaped island between the sites, which are made of crushed shells, not rocks. We did finally buy Rocky some shoes and he seems to appreciate them.

Well, John has finished with the trailer and is now working on the truck. You can see the Chevy logo again.  One of the neighbors came by and said those bugs are called Love Bugs. Nothing lovely about them!

I love the “It’s a Southern Thing” videos. Here they are taking a stab at New Orleans street names.

Have you ever been to New Orleans? What was your favorite part?