21st Feb – 25th Feb 2022
Our last morning in Houma was blissfully quiet as the partying, for now, was over. Until next weekend. When they do it all again. But bigger. Busy times for party bus drivers and street cleaners. Our leisurely extraction from the Civic Centre carpark was punctuated, but luckily not obstructed, by a little bit of drama. A chap in a large truck towing a good sized 5th wheel trailer was leaving the carpark at an excessive speed that got our attention. Ten seconds after he passed us there was a crash. The trailer had fallen out of the hitch, smashed the tailgate of the truck and crashed to the tarmac. Whether this was due to ‘user error’ or due to the hitch failing as he claimed, it made for a very bad start to the day for Mr Speedy Gonzales who had been in such a hurry. He had sustained quite a bit of damage that was going to take a lot of time to sort out. Our emotions were equal parts pity and schadenfreude.
Our journey for the day was not that long, but promised to be one of our more interesting ones. New Orleans was on the way, but we had decided many weeks ago that we were not stopping here this time. The city sits on the south side of Lake Pontchartrain, a shallow 630 square mile lake. There are highways that circle the lake on both sides, but 1956 saw the opening of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. This is an epic feat of civil engineering that saw a low slung bridge carrying two lanes of road built right across the middle of the lake from New Orleans to Mandeville, a small north shore town, a distance of 23.8 miles. In 1969 a second parallel bridge was opened, increasing the road to two lanes each way. In the same year it was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest bridge over water. In 2011, after the opening of the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in China, Guinness split this catagory into ‘continuous bridge’ and aggregate bridge’, thus allowing the Louisianna behemoth to retain the title of ‘longest continuous bridge over water’. It is quite a weird senasation to drive over it. There is a point midway when land nearly completely disappears from view. Quite amazing. It is a toll bridge, but to ease congestion on the city-side, and on the bridge itself, only to south-bound traffic. Winner, winner for us as we were only taking a one way northbound trip.
Mandeville is another classically arranged American town. It has a historic district with some nice old buildings and boutique business but the majority of the action is located in strip malls and roadside businesses that line the highway that run through the more newly developed areas. We navigated some unusual road layouts involving some counterintuitive traffic flow at junctions and some bizarre, compulsory U-turns and having stocked up on food and firewood we headed to camp. This was at the exotically named Fontainebleu State Park, about 3 miles east of town. Named for the forest of the same name outside Paris it was on the site of a historic sugarcane plantation owned by Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville, founder of the nearby town. There were some crumbling brick ruins of the old sugar mill and lots of the informative signs around the park detailed the lives and struggles of the slaves who had been instrumental in him garnering great wealth from his endeavours. The park had some nice walking trails, and most importantly was located on the Tammany Trace Cycle Trail. This is a 30+ mile. ex-railroad, paved trail that links all the north shore towns which gave us a delightful and easy route to get into town from the park. I just love cycle trails, but you all know that by now.
The camping area of the park was a bit stark and open having lost a lot of trees in the recent hurricaine Ida but happily many of the gorgeous and ancient oak trees in other areas had survived. The well oiled machine of Hampson Camp Set Up was put into action and we were soon installed. Very soon after that we got chatting to our neighbour, Jeff, and instead of having a mid afternoon cup of tea we found ourselves sampling moonshine with him from the tailgate of his truck. This is how we were discovered by his wife, Monica, who arrived back from town in their other car half an hour later. She rolled her eyes and lamented that she couldn’t leave him for 5 minutes without him making friends and getting into deep philosophical discussions about the American Civil War. I can sympathise with her. Jeff and Nick are brothers from a different continent. Jeff’s moustashe is better though.
Monica, Jeff, daughter Ivy and Zeke, the late middle aged German Shepherd who would like to murder all other dogs and all the squirrels if only he could be bothered to move fast enough to catch them, are another family of ‘full timers’. With another daughter now at college they sold up 18 months ago and now call their big 5th wheel home. Ivy, 16, self home schools and joins local swim teams for training wherever they are, Jeff is an sales agent for tools and shower doors and plies his goods nationwide, chatting and charming his way into many business he has contacts with and many that he doesn’t, and Monica picks up the occasional part time job if they are stopped anywhere for long enough, plays tennis as much as she can, and practices her English accent frequently!. They also have a regular gig as ‘camp hosts’ at a camp in Georgia. This is where you can get a free site in exchange for helping manage a camp for a block of time. We clicked with them instantly and spent many hours of the four days that we were here in their company, laughing a lot. Along with sharing a couple of early evening sundowners around our camp fire they also joined us in town for our first crawfish experience.
Chowing down like a hungry labradors on a pile of spicy, flame-red, boiled crawfish, served on a tray with a pile of potatoes and chunks of corn-on-the-cob, with juice and (crawfish) brains smeared around your face and up your arms to your elbows, whilst sat outside at a waterfront restaurant in a light breeze on a hot and humid day, throwing the husks through a hole in the table directly back into the water was the perfect Southern eating experience that we had been hanging out for. It was becoming apparent that that might not exist so we decided that the time was now and settled for the more civilised version in the Mandeville Seafood Market, a casual restaurant on the north side of town.
That morning we cycled into town along the Tammany Trace. It was lovely and warm and we parked up the bikes and wandered around the old part of town and down to the lakefront in the beautiful sunshine. From there we could see the causeway head out across the lake and disappear into the far distance over the horizon. We had arranged to meet Monica and Jeff at the restaurant at 1pm so we got back on the bikes and followed The Trace as it wound its way up to this area of town. Unfortunately we were forced us to take a very long way round due to the lack of a bridge over a swampy ditch and then only way to get to the restaurant involved half a mile on the busy main highway with no shoulder. We arrived on time, but very hot and bothered and glad to be alive!
With sweaty, pink faces we joined our new friends at our table and planned our food attack with help from our next door table neighbours, who seemed to have the lay of the land. A massive serving of ‘mud-bugs’ as they are also known, was procured along with a round of thirst quenching bottles of the local brew and we dug in. Jeez! They are messy, spicy, fiddly and very delicious. We were coached on how to pull off the heads before sucking out the brain juice then pinching out the tail meat, which was mostly quite slim pickings. Despite the massive pile of detritis indicating that we had eaten many, many, many crawfish each, plus the added potatoes, mushrooms and corn that accompanied them, we were all still hungry by the time it was all finished. Nothing that a couple of shared po’boys, cajun fries and the most spectacular portion of onion rings couldn’t fix though. With by now very full tummies we were saved from the prospect of the return cycle journey by loading the bikes into the back of Monica and Jeff’s truck and getting a lift home. It was for the best.
The rest of our time here was filled with walking, another cycle along the Trace, joining the campsite pilgramage to watch sunset over the lake, an explore of the town’s sports complex – an enormous acreage of sports pitches, courts, and indoor gym facilities – and genearal loafing.
We were sad to say our goodbyes to Monica and Jeff but we will find each other again in this large and bonkers land – some day around some campfire, with some sort of drink in hand on some campsite somewhere. And that’s a promise!