Tin Can Travels

26th Nov- 1st Dec

We cruised back to Alpine, stocked up on provisions and headed another 20 miles north to a town called Fort Davis. This sits in the foothills of the Davis mountains and is the closest town to the McDonald Observatory, one of the world’s foremost facilities in one of the world’s best dark skies regions.  We had booked tickets to one of the thrice weekly ‘Star Parties’ when the observatory hosts an educational evening, with use of some of its smaller telescopes. The observatory, allied to the University of Texas, has some massive telescopes one of which, at 11m in diameter is one of the largest in the world.

Massive telescope

Fort Davis itself, as the name might suggest, was originally a military camp in the second half of the 19th C, and is the highest town in Texas, at about 5000ft. It has an impressive court house and lots of original old buildings, around which one can do a walking tour and the old fort is a national historic monument.

We spent one day mooching around town on foot and bike, doing the tour, browsing gift shops and the historic ‘drug store’, and, on recommendation of the lady in the visitors centre, had a fabulous Mexican lunch at a very unprepossessing restaurant on the other side of town that was so low-key it might have been a military secret itself.

Actual secret mexican restaurant

The Star Party was the highlight of our time here. The observatory was a 17 mile drive up into the hills and having liberated Big Dave from TC and packed a picnic supper, we headed up in time for sunset.

 The back deck of Big D was a fine place for a mug of french onion soup and a cheese sandwich whilst we watched the sun go down and we spent an hour chatting to a fellow party-goer, Jack, whilst waiting for darkness.  It was a perfect evening for star gazing. Crystal clear, moonless, windless and relatively warm (apparently) and our modest numbers of 120 were far preferable to the 500-600 people crowds of the previous Thanksgiving week. The evening started in a circular amphitheatre dimly lit in red. Our host gave a very informative and entertaining hour-long presentation, pointing out stars, constellations, planets and distant galaxies with the most amazing laser pointer that seemed to reach all the way out into the universe. He blew our minds with facts and figures of size, distance and time and despite the dropping temperatures, we didn’t want it to end.  The second half of the evening involved being able to peer into each of the five small telescopes that they had set up, both mobile and in small observatories. All in all it was epic and now (well, this week) we both want to be astronomers.

The next day we took advantage of an unfettered Big D and drove 20 miles to the next town of Marfa.  This might be known to some as the location of the 1956 movie Giant staring Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Rock Hudson and Dennis Hopper, but nowadays its identity is closely allied to its art community.  In 1971 the minimalist artist Donald Judd came to town and eventually bought another old army base to create an artist retreat and location for his massive permanent art installations.

Hampson being serious in the presence of an art installation

 One of these is a field containing numerous massive concrete boxes, and the other comprises of countless aluminium boxes housed in two massive artillery sheds.

Me, not being very serious

As with most modern art, our baseline was ‘skeptical and contemptuous’ but the aluminium boxes were impressive for their numbers, uniformity and setting.  Photos inside were not allowed unfortunately.

Building containing aluminium boxes, honest

After a very tasty cafe lunch we wandered around the town to discover that it was a bit soulless. Many of the galleries were shut and the the shops that we found open seemed to be catering to a type of wealthy tourist that wasn’t obviously in town today. Our last activity was visiting another massive permanent installation that was a series of semi-crushed car body parts welded together.  We weren’t convinced.  Unfortunately we didn’t hang around in Marfa long enough to witness its other curiosity, The Marfa Lights. These are unexplained twinkling lights that happen over the plains close to the town that are visible on many nights each year. There are lots of theories, but the car headlights likely explain most if not all of them.

Our next, and last, stop in Texas was the Guadelupe National Park.  This was   another beautiful drive through the plains of West Texas, back through Marfa and then north. There were a couple of curiosities along the way: an homage to the film Giant just north of Marfa,

and a cool border patrol radar blimp thing further up the road.

The Guadelupe Mountains rear up from the plains, headed by the sheer rock face of the peak El Capitain.  The tallest point in Texas, Guadelupe Peak, is also here and we planned to ‘knock the b*&%$#d off’ to quote a famed NZ mountaineer. Our camp was a ‘first-come-first-served’ carpark site without any services at the trailhead. There was plenty of space on our arrival and we found a corner spot with a view of the hills.

One of our nearby co-campers was another big Lance camper, a bit smaller than TC, sat upon a black truck very like Big Dave. Of course a conversation was struck up, how could we not! Val and Wayne, and their beautiful black lab, Jada, were from Colorado and we got on like a house on fire.  Due to the arrival of some very windy weather we couldn’t do the peak hike, but the next day they joined us, or we joined them, not sure, for a more sheltered 3 hour canyon hike up a dry river bed to ‘Devil’s Hall’.

Them

Us

Devil’s Hall

 

Later, although it was only 4.30pm, they came round for drinks. They left nearly 6 hours later after many beers, a bottle of wine, the significant portion of a very nice bottle of 16 yr old Lagavulin, a cobbled together meal and a game of scrabble. It was our first Tin Can entertaining evening and our first doggy visitation after Jada made herself at home on the sofa for the evening. She was at high risk of being dog-napped as we fell in love with her.

Our next stop was the Carlsbad Caverns, a short journey across the state border into New Mexico. Wayne and Val were headed the same way the next morning, so we went in a mini Lance camper convoy of two.

 

 

20th – 26th Nov

An 80 mile road from the small university town of Alpine runs down to the western entrance of Big Bend National Park, and the settlement of Terlingua. This is 80 sweeping miles of perfect black-top through the astounding beauty of the Chihauhuan Desert, an arid landscape home to a few vast ranches set amongst scrubby flora, scattered RV/shed dwellings and countless packs of wild chihuahuas…..probably. After the humidity of Eastern Texas, the dry air of West Texas was a welcome change, although it left me with skin hydration towards the ‘lizard’ end of the spectrum and a particularly irritating dry cough. Nothing that moisturiser and cold beer couldn’t try and solve…

Terlingua is an odd place to say the least.  The original mining town was established in the 1880s after cinnabar, the mercury ore, was discovered in the area. It boomed, then busted and was deserted in the 1940s, leaving a ghost town. It was slowly re-inhabited from the 1960s and now is a loose collection of ruins, renovated original buildings, RV/shed dwellings & small adobe homes. It has a small permanent population, a medium population of seasonal workers and drifters who stay awhile and is a popular tourist stop for visitors to the park. We arrived at one of the busiest times of the year, Thanksgiving week.  The weather is benign now and the Texans arrive in their hoards to spend time in this beautiful corner of the country.  We had six nights here and found space at a camp which combined RV sites, a motel, tent camping, shop, cafe and petrol station. We had no TV reception, no cell phone coverage, minimal wifi and coin operated showers. ‘Resort’ it was not, but the views were epic, sunset spectacular and we had plenty of space despite the crowds. Mexico is just across the Rio Grande river and modern American life is a long way away. It definitely felt like the end of the road and quite wild.

Big Bend National Park was just a  few miles down the road and it is a vast (bigger than the state of Rhode Island) and gorgeous swathe of desert with the impressive Chisos Mountains rising up in its centre. This area is a hiking mecca with countless trails and it is the reason most people make the journey here.  We did a great day hike up to the tallest point, Emory Peak. 2000ft of elevation and 10 miles round trip was enough to earn our picnic lunch and give us sore legs for the next few days. It was stunning. I have to admit, although Hampson would rather not, that we didn’t make it to the very top.

Nearly the top

The last 20 ft was a sheer rock face scramble up to a small plinth, already over-occupied by lots of fellow hikers who obviously had less fear than us.  The benefits of ‘summiting’ were outweighed by the risks of falling to our deaths and we were content to have nearly made it. Besides, we were starving and had sandwiches to eat.

The area is home to black bears and mountain lions, but despite keeping our eyes peeled, we saw none. That’s not to say, however, that we were not seen by them.  We got chatting to a couple on our way down who had been behind us as we were descending and they had watched a small black bear following us just off the trail for a a few minutes. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Our second outing into the park was a driving day. We took a gravel road 15 miles down to the Rio Grande and an impressive canyon called Santa Elena. The road was a bit bumpy, very ridged, and Big Dave, without the weight of TC is not a comfortable ride. His suspension is heavy duty and we arrived bone shaken and dusty. The gravel road was also lined by gnarly thorny bushes, and now the passenger side of Big D has a slightly less perfect paint job than previously. We have a date with a bottle of T-cut polish and some elbow grease at some time in the near future.

Mexico here                                        Hampsons                                    USA here

There was a short walk up into the canyon that involved wading across a small tributary of the river. It was a bit alien to us citizens of two island nations that a different country can be just a stone’s throw away. Literally, even with a pathetic girl throw. After the walk we decided that our dwindling fuel would get us back via the far more comfortable paved ‘long way round’ and we completed our loop drive home via a picnic lunch with a view.

Another thing that we did during our stay here was a rafting trip down the Rio Grande. This started with having to get up before dawn, a very painful thing for our lazy selves, and meeting at the shop to catch our up-river shuttle. The shop did a roaring sideline in selling coffees to the bleary eyed punters and by the time we were on the road we were nearly awake.  The road to the put-in wound its way along the river, through the other enormous park in this neck of the woods, Big Bend Ranch State Park. This road had been hailed as one of the USAs best drives and I can see why. Our rafting party was two boats, each with a guide, who did all the work of steering and paddling.

We had a very pleasant day watching the world go by as we drifted down river. The border is the deepest channel of the river as it was surveyed in 1880-something, so we spent the whole day in and out Mexico, re-entering the USA illegally. I think we got away with it though.

The river wound through a couple of canyons and down a few class 1&2 rapids. The danger levels were non-existent, the ‘wet-bottom’ factor was low to medium and our river-bank lunch in a sandy sun-trap was delicious. Our boat-mates were Jeff and Jen from Austin and it turns out that our recent stay in Austin had been in their neighbourhood. (Jen’s ‘wet-bottom’ factor was at about the level of her naval as she misjudged her raft dismount at the end of the day and found that 1880s deep channel.)

We had two meals out here. The first was very respectable steak at the quirky semi-subterranean local’s bar, La Kiva, on Thanksgiving. This place has a chequered history, most notably for the suspicious death of its proprietor, Glenn Felts in  2014. Another local, a rafting guide from the same company as we had used, stood trial for his murder, but was acquitted. In 2015, during the trial, National Geographic filmed a documentary series in the town called ‘Badlands, Texas’. Ostensibly the timing of the filming was a coincidence, and the coverage of the trial an afterthought, but the locals are sceptical. The documentary, rather than the murder, divided the community, and many believe the not-guilty verdict was flawed.

Our second dinner was a fantastic Mexican meal in a tiny family-run restaurant near our camp. We took advice from a chap at the next table who was a regular and had two amazing plates of food. I can’t remember what Nick had, but mine was beef in ‘red sauce’. No frills deliciousness.

On our last day we cycled the 5 miles from our camp up to the Ghost Town area. The road there was mostly uphill and it was a bit warm. Seeing as we had already visited this area in the car, our purpose was not really exploring but exercising and one of us might have enjoyed it more than the other. We had a good iced latte at the other end and the view was good. After a mooch around the old cemetery we headed home, but unfortunately the brisk headwind completely cancelled out the glory of the downhill run. Neither of us enjoyed that.

By the time we left Terlingua, so had nearly everyone else and we practically had our camp to ourselves for our last night before we headed back up the road to Alpine and its semi-civilisation. On the road, about 20 miles north of Terlingua is a US  border security post. This is mainly keeping an eye out for illegal Mexican interlopers, but the jovial chit-chat from the border patrol officers was thinly veiled sleuthing and our British accents, New Zealand home and Washington plates had us having to dig out our passports and visas to reassure them that we were legal.  Amazing how stress levels increase under scrutiny. I couldn’t even remember which airport we arrived at.

 

15th – 20th Nov

With slightly heavy hearts we extracted ourselves from our Austin oasis and continued west, further into Texas Hill Country and to our next stop, Fredericksburg.  The hills in question are very modest, but after the flatlands of eastern Texas they completely change the flavour of this vast state.  Texas is huge. It is, to be fair, not the largest state. That accolade goes to Alaska, which is more than twice it’s size, but let’s put that to one side as an incomprehensible vastness more like the moon. (Isn’t that right, McWillies?!) If Texas was a country, it would be the 40th largest in the world, being about the same land area as France.

The Hill Country felt a lot like South Australia: dry, scrubby and undulating, and the area around Fredericksburg is gathering vineyards at such a pace that it will be a Texan Barossa before you know it.  The town itself was originally settled by German immigrants and has lots of residual influences. There are strasse where there would normally be streets, wurst where sausages should be and there is a kirche in the marktplatz.  The town has one wide main street lined with businesses catering to mainly one type of customer: the ‘weekender’.  People come here from the cities in their hoards for this 48 hour excursion of eating, wine ‘tasting’ (in large quantities), and shopping (if they are in the market for leather goods, cowboy boots and hats, home decor items and general kitch).  It is land of the wedding, the hen weekend and the romantic getaway. It was charming, but the locals say it is being taken over by Californians who have moved in and turned all the smaller homes into Air B&Bs, catering to the tourists, but pushing out the young families. Such is the familiar story of progress.

Fredericksburg also has the highly renowned National Museum of the Pacific War full of WWII exhibits and an area outside with a recreated combat war zone. We were wandering the streets on Veterans Day to the soundtrack of a re-enactment: gunfire and shells, with a vintage P-51 Mustang fighter plane doing laps around the town and doing fly-overs of the museum. Tragically we learnt that the loud bang that we had heard a short while later was not another part of the show, but the plane crashing, killing both veteran pilot and 93 year old passenger. Very sad, but miraculously it went down in an apartment block car park in town, avoiding  anyone else.

Our camp was a lovely park about 1 mile out of town, so an easy walk or cycle to get around.  There was an nice ride out to the other side of town and a short hike up a hillock, called Cross Mountain, for obvious reasons. Good view from the top. We were again, the only people travelling by  bike.

Our 4 days in Fredericksburg was very serene, but slightly marred by snot and coughing. The cold snap had brought me a cold virus. This is the first winter we are having since 2015, and I have avoided getting sick for a few years. I guess you can’t dodge the bullets for ever. Hampson, however, despite being stuck in a small tin can with me and my affliction, has dodged it so far. I am taking note of his sympathy levels for future reference… We met some interesting park residents, including a couple who were off to NZ a few days later for a 6 week trip to see family. Earlier this year they had cycled 4400miles coast to coast, tent camping along the way. Now THAT is travelling (or madness. One or the other!)

From Fredericksburg we drove miles and miles through the unchanging landscape of West Texas to where the Hill Country comes to an end and the flats and oil fields begin again, at Fort Stockton. This was just an overnight stop for us on our way to Big Bend National park. The town is full of RV parks along the highway corridor but this is not a holiday destination. The vast majority of people here are either passing through or are oilfield workers. It seemed a strange place, but our park was lovely. It had a small cafe that was open from 5-7.30pm, and we couldn’t resist having our dinner there. It was perfect: catfish for me, deep fried steak (with a fried chicken style crispy coating) for Hampson, both served with overcooked green beans, mashed potato, gravy and a biscuit each. (Biscuit = savoury scone in this part of the world). True Texan fayre.

The next day we continued our ‘wilds of Texas’ drive down to the inland edge of this vast land, Big Bend National Park and our stop, Terlingua.

 

 

11th – 15th Nov

‘Keep Austin Weird’ is the unofficial slogan for this kooky city in the heart of Texas. It isn’t small, having about a million inhabitants; it is the 11th most populous city, the second most populous state capital, and it is one of the fastest growing large cities in the USA. It is a little pocket of liberal blue in the otherwise conservative red blanket of Texas. It has food trucks and independent eateries as it tries to fend off the the march of global food chains. It has city parks and a lake in the centre of the city. It has cycle lanes, paths & trails, pedestrian bridges, pavements, buses and the car is not king. You can dare to be different here, and nobody cares. It has more live music than you can shake a stick at and BBQ to die for. In short, it manages to combine all that is wonderful about Texas, Texans and the USA without a lot of the negative characteristics of American cities. It was delightful.

Our positive experience here was in large part due to the place that we managed to stay.  This was a slightly shabby tree-filled city centre RV park, a stone’s throw from everything. It was mostly occupied by permanent residents in a variety of rigs from buses to old airstreams and definitely had an Armistead Maupin vibe going on.

We arrived at lunchtime having made an easy getaway from our carpark camp at College Station and it was a fairly short and easy journey into Austin. We set up and hot-footed it to the very nearby collection of food trucks for a very satisfactory lunch of fish tacos and Thai fried rice. From there it was an easy stroll to the nearby Zilker park, and the jewel of this area, Barton Springs Pool. This is a municipal outdoor natural swimming pool fed by a diverted thermal spring, keeping it at a constant 20-23 degrees all year round. It is about 3 acres of surface area and about 300m/900ft long. The water was amazingly clear and even during the ongoing unseasonably chilly weather there were some hardy souls doing some lengths. What a facility to have in the heart of the city, especially during those sticky Texan summers.  The outflow stream was home to turtles (what I would call a terrapin) basking on rocks and tree stumps and allegedly the eponymous rare Barton Springs Salamander, only found here. Didn’t see any of those.

The next day was freezing cold. Brass monkeys cold. Arctic polar blast cold. We stayed in with the heating on and didn’t emerge until about 3.30pm when we walked up to the nearby cinema to see a showing of Bohemian Rhapsody. I know some critics are disappointed with some of the artistic licence taken, but who cares. It was, to someone who grew up in a Queen-loving family, magnificent. Rami Malek was fantastic.  The cinema, in true Austin fashion was independent, had alternate rows of seats and fixed tables and waitress service of a fine selection of food and beverages. We had intra-movie beers and appetisers in lieu of afternoon tea and were happy as pigs in the proverbial.  We emerged into darkness of evening and scampered across the road to a very nice bar which has a renowned food truck stationed outside. Once you have ordered food outside, they will deliver it, and you can eat it inside. How civilised!

The next day was slightly warmer and we walked across the river/lake to downtown for a snuffle around. The highlights of the day were a visit to the State Capitol Building and an amazing cup of soup and a shared toasted sandwich for lunch. We are easy to keep happy! Later that day we cycled down to Congress Avenue Bridge to witness an Austin spectacle, the dusk emergence of nearly a million bats from their roosts under the bridge.

(This is a mural. Not a real bat…)

The colony, now the largest urban bat colony in the world, originally moved in in the 1980s when the bridge was renovated, creating slots in the underside of the deck that was the perfect size for a bat to hang-out. (Pun intended.) They are migratory, and winter in Mexico, leaving Austin in the first half of November. We had it on good authority that they were still in residence but after very cold 90 minutes stood on the bridge, dusk fell and not a bat was to be seen. I think Mexico had called, and I am not surprised. The small assembled crowd drifted away in dribs and drabs as this realisation hit and the hypothermia kicked in. We went home to defrost and eat.

If Barton Springs is the jewel of the city, its crown has to be the town lake, (named Ladybird Lake after the wife of Austin son, President Johnson) and the 12 mile multi-use leafy trail that runs around it. The lake is formed from a dammed section of the Colorado River that runs through the city, and provides facilities for boating, rowing, sailing, paddle boarding and kayaking and the trail is a magnet for walkers, joggers, cyclists and countless dogs. We spent a very pleasant few hours doing the loop the next day, marvelling at how these sorts of facilities completely change the feel of a city. It was a joy.  The fine day was capped off by a fine dinner. We walked half a mile to an Austin institution, Terry Blacks BBQ. We could see it was popular by the fact that the 30 min queue for the canteen style restaurant was snaking out the door into the cold. The waiting was assuaged by the fact that you could start drinking your beer whilst standing in line. Also civilised.  It was Delicious. I need say no more. No carry-out boxes for us. Ate ’til we we were groaning.

We were sorry vacate our little slice of Austin heaven the next day, but onward we must roll, further into Hill Country, Texas.

10th – 12th Nov

College football is a phenomenon here. It is televised and can get some pretty decent viewing figures, but the thirst and passion for the teams are more reflected in the colossal size of some of the home stadia.  Supporters are current students, alumni of the college, family and friends of current and past students, locals of the  home towns of the colleges and complete randoms. Like Us.

Going to a college football game was on our original list of things we would like to do on our USA travels. We wanted to go to a big one, to see a team with a massive stadium filled with crazy fans; and we wanted to experience true tailgating.

There were a few things to co-ordinate: knowing where we we going to be on our travels, a big game with available tickets, and finding a close-by campsite. We had spent an afternoon of intense multi-device research in early September in Connecticut and locked in our plan. We secured tickets to see Texas A&M (Agricultural & Mechanical) play Ole Miss at Kyle Field in College Station on Nov 10th. This stadium holds over 102,000 people. That is nearly double the capacity of Eden Park, NZ’s national stadium. It’s crazy. By capacity it is the 5 largest stadium in the world, after Rungrado (North Korea, 150,000) and 3 other college football stadia.  We also managed to book an RV spot on the campus, only a mile from the stadium, for 2 nights. This was essentially a gravel carpark with spray painted lines to demarcate the sites, so no facilities at all. The price did not reflect this obviously. But this was to also be our tailgating experience as it was to be the weekend home of about 100 other rigs, all armed with awnings, gazebos, chairs, BBQs, smokers, outside TVs, coolers of beer and tables groaning with meat, chips, dips and sides. Many of these people come only to tailgate and don’t actually go to the game.

We really had no idea what to expect when we pitched up at about midday on the day before the game. We were fairly early and one of the first to set up. (The place looked quite different about 5 hours after the photo was taken, by which time the place was heaving!).

We had some lunch then rugged up warm to walk into the central campus to buy some supporters gear. The balmy Indian summer had given way to an icy arctic blast. It was cold, cold, cold now. On our way out we got chatting to a nearby neighbour called Bruce. He had done a solo set-up of an epic tailgating outfit based around a large RV/horse trailer and was now happily sat watching football on the large flatscreen TV. His wife and their friend (both alumni) were joining him later, and they had 2 kids between them who were current students and would come by too. He was kind enough to extend an open invitation for us to join their festivities over the weekend, and we accepted straight away. How could we refuse?! This looked like a professional outfit.  We walked up to the merchandise store and both bought a body warmer in team colours, and I bought a woolly hat too. If the game had been last week we’d have been buying T-shirts. Madness! Then we walked across campus to a recommended bar called Dixie Chicken, which is a college institution and the sort of place that looks like nothing from the outside but was enormous and packed full on the inside. We did the sensible late-afternoon thing and shared 2 jugs of beer without eating and then rolled ‘home’. It was fully dark by the time we got back to Tin Can and it took us a while to find him amongst the new arrivals. The place was buzzing and noisy. Nearly every rig had a generator running to power the business of having fun. This was to be the soundtrack of the weekend. After some stomach-lining food we headed back out to join Bruce, wife Kenny Kaye and friend Kevin for drinks. They were amazingly welcoming and we had some top-tips for being true supporters for the game the next day. This included the gift of two ‘spirit towels’ from Kenny Kaye. She said we would find out what to do with them….!

The game was scheduled for 11am. The time dictated entirely by the TV networks, and the least favoured slot. Too early for pre-game tailgating. We basically got up, had breakfast, dressed in lots of warm layers and set off walking to the stadium by 9.30am. We managed to find a cup of coffee on the concourse and then took our seats.  For this we had to gain some altitude having deliberately booked seats as high up as we could. This would have given us some cover in case of rain, but mainly gave us a fantastic view of the whole spectacle.

The team is known as The Aggies (from ‘Agricultural’) and the entire A&M student body are known as The 12th Man. This originates from an episode in 1922 when the Aggies were playing an away game in Dallas against a much stronger team. The team suffered multiple injuries and potentially might have run out of players to field. An A&M student E. King Gill, who had been a Aggies player earlier in the season, and was a Dallas local, was in the stands that day. He was pulled from the crowd and asked to be on stand-by to play if needed, a 12th man. He willingly did so, joined the bench but in the end was not needed. The Aggies won the game despite being the underdogs and the day was cemented in A&M history. Now the student fans all stand for the entire length of every game, demonstrating their support and readiness to be called upon if needed. They constantly sing, or ‘yell’, lead by ‘yell leaders’, they link arms and sway to certain songs and they twirl their small white spirit towels above their heads. (Mainly to put off the opposition). Now we knew what they were for! We had a ball. A 3.5 hour chilly ball. And we won! A much needed victory after a few losses.

After the game we headed back to camp and joined our adopted tailgate again. There was a mouthwatering offering of freshly smoked meat on the BBQ, and a fantastical amount of accompaniments. Our offerings were worse than paltry in comparison, and didn’t even make it out of the bag, I don’t think.  There were a few more people to meet, including Cameron and Lane, the ‘kids’, who gave us the current student insights! The party was reasonably civilised and a bit curtailed by the cold and the long day, but we had a great time and very grateful to our new Texan friends for including us. It had been an amazing weekend.

The next morning we surfaced to an already half empty parking lot. Even Bruce had managed to pack up and leave before we got up. We did our easiest pack up so far, and set of west to Austin.

 

 

3rd -9th Nov

We left New Orleans on another lovely sunny morning, sailing above the swamps on more of the elevated highways.  Water is never very far away in the flatlands of Louisiana. It looks pretty, but something to be admired from a distance. Too many alligators, water moccasins (snakes) and mosquitos for my liking.

Lunchtime coincided with our tourist activity of the day which was to stop off at Avery Island.  Avery Island is one of the few elevated areas in this neck of the woods being essentially a dome of salt linked to the mainland by a short causeway, and it is home to the world famous Tabasco sauce.  All the sauce is still made here, to the original recipe, with peppers descended from the original seed stock and the company is still run by the same family. I love that. The factory complex was in some beautiful red brick buildings surrounded by gardens and the air was filled with the unmistakeable aroma of hot sauce. Having had a perfect, mildly spicy lunch sat on the veranda of the very pleasant restaurant we did the self guided tour around the visitor area of the complex. It was charming.  Chilli sauce and other interesting herbs and spices are so common nowadays, but I remember Tabasco from my youth in the UK: the most exotic ingredient in the cupboard. The Queen likes it too, from the looks of things.

Our next two nights had us in a small wooded site just on the outskirts of  a small town called Abbeville. This is known (mostly) for its annual omelette festival when the town has a weekend of fun, music, food and drinking, capped off by twenty or so exalted chefs creating a 5000 egg omelette in a 12ft diameter skillet over a log fire in the middle of main street and serving it out to the assembled crowds.

This is a custom imported from France, from which this area takes huge influence.  By sheer coincidence our visit coincided with the weekend of the 34th incarnation of this celebration. We arrived in still blazing sunshine on the Saturday and opted to stay in camp and enjoy the peace and quiet. We broke out the camp chairs, the BBQ and were entertained by the squirrels. Overnight the weather broke and the heavens opened. The campsite became a bayou and we sat inside awaiting news of ommelette cancellation on the Facebook page. Nope. The show was to go on. Happily the forecast was correct, the rain stopped and the town came out to play again. We cycled into town to observe the battiness.  We had beers whilst we marvelled at the scale of the task and I bought a commemorative fried egg necklace.

The omelette was more like a parsley frittata, but very edible. Abbeville was a sweet little town; I wonder what happens here on non-omelette days?

 

After Abbeville we slipped south towards the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. We were to see our 3rd coast of the USA, the southern one. (We saw west and east coasts last year, but I don’t think that we can count the Upper Peninsula Michigan on the shore of Lake Superior as a northern coast. Northern Alaska may be the tick in that box) This land is very flat, created by the sediment washing down from the Mississippi. The road was very straight, quiet and for the most part was set back from the sea by huge tracts of marsh land. Every now and then we passed through a small settlement with a beach, or access to the sea via a channel. These seemed to mainly be holiday houses with some permanent homes, but generally the place was deserted as it is now out of season. Despite the heat and humidity this area is busiest in the summer months when the hoards descend. The other thing that has completely defined and reshaped the human habitation of this coastline is the storm damage it has suffered over the past decade or two, and the constant threat of future events.  There really is nothing for miles to protect from storm surges. Those ‘homes’ are now mostly comprised of large semi-permanent RVs, the original cottages and houses having been turned to matchsticks in 2005 by hurricane Rita, and again in 2009 by Ike. There have been multiple hurricanes of note, but these are the two that the locals talk about. Some people have rebuilt their houses, high up on sturdy poles to satisfy new stringent building regulations, but the RV is king. Cheaper to buy than building a home, quick to move in and, more importantly, removable if the weather forecast is looking particularly dicey. To be honest. I think that a lot of people couldn’t afford to rebuild. In a small town called Cameron (small town, but biggest local conurbation)we had a  very satisfactory lunch stop at a roadside establishment called Anchors Up Grill.  We shared a cheesy spicy bacon and fat shrimp po’boy sandwich and crinkle-cut fries. The words ‘died’ and ‘heaven’ spring to mind…

For the princely sum of $1 a small vehicle ferry took us from Cameron across a small shipping canal so we could continue west along the coast. Our next stop was just for one night at a beachside village called Holly Beach.

This was a veritable ghost town with only a few permanent residents.  It was completely flattened by Rita in 2005 and it now is a town on stilts.

After the rain the heat and humidity had returned and the mosquitos were like rabid bats.  After total body applications of toxic levels of DEET we grabbed some beers and scurried through the clouds of the suckers to the beach for sunset, which was amazing. The distant oil rigs were a small taste of how the landscape would change as we travelled further west into Texas.

The next day, after another hour or so of travelling along the straight flat coastal road, we left Louisiana by means of a long bridge over another shipping canal and entered Texas. Fossil fuels and their conversion into useable substances are the heartbeat of this part of Texas. There are oil rigs, oil pipelines, LPG pipelines, tankers and refineries all around. Strangely handsome and impressive plants line the roads and canals.

There is work and money here. This oil and gas help fuel the USA’s huge appetite for energy. It makes you realise that changing attitudes and habits to consumption, and the development of renewable alternatives in this part of the world is a humungous task. I try not to feel too hopeless about the future of the planet. Anyway, we continued our journey in our 8.1L V8 petrol vehicle, long since resigned to our 9 mpg mileage, and wended our way along the Bolivar Peninsula to our second ferry crossing of this trip. Here the 20min crossing, costing an even more outrageous sum of $0, took us across the 7th busiest shipping lane in the world to Galveston Island. Despite the traffic there are a couple of pods of dolphins that live in this channel and we were treated to a fine display. Double win!

Galveston Island is home to Galveston, a beachside town with 3 piers, a long prom and the usual serving of hotels, restaurants, bars, fast food joints and urban/suburban delights.   It boasts a historic district which we didn’t quite get to and the greatest mini-golf course that we definitely did visit.

Our two nights here were at a beachside camp with a view of the sea from our back window. It was still very hot, 100% humidity and a constant onshore breeze. It was a very pleasant 10 minute cycle down the wide promenade to the nearest pier upon which was situated a restaurant with a sundowner deck.

That was a very agreeable place to spend our first evening.  The next day we found the mini-golf and played both courses. It was a fabulously gimmicky and we won a game each, with exactly level scores over the 36 holes. Still level pegging in the Hampson Trans America Mini Golf Challenge.  After a brief shopping trip by bicycle for necessities (drawing the usual perplexed looks from the car-bound) we beetled home in the shadow of a large dark cloud that was threatening to unload. It didn’t and we spent the afternoon faffing about before we were treated to another fabulous sunset from camp.

The next day we were on the road relatively early (for us) at 9.30am in order to get to the days entertainment: the Houston Space Centre. We left the island by way of a highway and bridge and headed north. The Space Centre was only about 40 mins away and although we arrived only 10 minutes after it opened it was already getting busy with school groups.  The enormity of the carpark indicated how popular this can get as a destination. There are a couple of training jets on poles at the gate, and as you pull up to the main visitor centre building you just can’t miss the life-sized mock-up of a space shuttle piggy-backing the actual transport 747 that used to ferry them about. Pretty amazing.

We started our visit with a tram ride around the Space Centre complex. This took us to the Mission Control building where we were able to see into the training room.

This is set up exactly like the room that flies the International Space Station, but uses simulation to train the operators. It is apparently so life-like that the real operators can’t tell the difference. Next was the building where they build mock-ups of the capsules, vehicles and equipment etc to train the astronauts. There were robots and stuff too.

A big boys (and girls) toys dream world. Finally there were a few old rockets to see and most impressively, a shed containing a real-life Saturn V which was massive. Photo does not do the size of it justice.

Back at the centre we went through the shuttle (surprisingly small) and the 747, and some of the shuttle and moon landing exhibits.  We left before the school children numbers reached critical and thrashed through the traffic laden mega highways of the Houston southern ring road before rush hour even considered starting. By the time we arrived at our roost for the night in Katy we were definitely frazzled. This is the worst side of American road tripping, the overwhelming concrete monsters of highways and the stupid driving that often accompanies them.

Katy is really just an extension of the Houston metro area. This was a single night stay to put us within easy striking distance of a significant destination, College Station. Home of Texas A&M University and the location of our first and likely only college football game.

Bring on the fun!

 

 

29th Oct – 3rd Nov

New Orleans is a city of many facets. It is built on a swamp and much of the outlying areas are poor, damp and still recovering from the chaos caused by hurricane Katrina 12 years ago.  It has a nondescript modern CBD and ‘burbs, an area called the Garden District which has streets and streets of impressive old character homes, and it is crisscrossed by a spaghetti mess of flood-resistant raised highways. But of course it is best known for its French Quarter. The small,  historic, low-level district built on a grid, packed full of classic old buildings with balconies, stoops, alley ways and intrigue. It is also packed full of the tourists, the musicians, the bizarre, the drunk and the intriguing. We were here during the crazy town’s second most crazy time of year after Mardi Gras, Halloween.

Our journey into New Orleans took us via another large plantation home along the banks of the Mississippi. This one was called Oak Alley, for a fairly obvious reason. The  tour around the house itself was a bit half hearted, but the grounds were lovely and there was a small kiosk selling mint juleps on the veranda. We bought one to share but it was so strong that I had to drink most of it as Nick was driving. I was subsequently reasonably merry. Bring on NOLA!

On the outskirts of the French Quarter, a mere hop and a skip from its mayhem is the French Quarter RV Resort. It looked like a gulag from the outside with a high cinder block perimeter wall topped with spikes and electronic security gates, but inside it was a beautifully kept and spacious park with gym, club house, pool and hot tub. We arrived with a sigh of relief having ‘white-knuckled’ it through the frantic urban highway traffic and within 30 mins we were padding across the tarmac for a soak in the pool. The unseasonably hot weather was ongoing and this was going to be a great place to hang-out for a few days.

The next morning we ventured into the French Quarter. The best known street of them all, Bourbon Street was an awful sight. By night this is a no-holds-barred party street. The music is loud and the drinking is hard by blitzed revellers, young and definitely-old-enough-to-know-better alike.   The clear up from the usual boozy night before was in full swing with bar workers hosing the vomit from the pavements and sweeping up broken glass. It reeked of stale beer and regret. To add to the mess there were extensive roadworks. We headed to a restaurant called Court of Two Sisters for brunch. This was in a beautiful courtyard shaded by the most spectacular wisteria vine, with live jazz playing. Very civilised, although half of the music that the band played was individual serenades of ‘Happy Birthday’ to about eight different tables. It is obviously the place to go for birthday celebrations.

We took our full stomachs for a stroll around the quarter, taking in some churches, the waterfront, the French Market and Frenchman St. It is a bit surreal to be surrounded by so much french-ness again having spent our summer in France. (C’est très bizarre, mais nous l’aimons, MC!)  The steadily increasing heat sent us scurrying back to the sanctuary of RV Gulag Resort and the coolness of the pool for the rest of the afternoon.  That evening we partook in very popular activity peculiar to the French Quarter. The walking tour. Lots of these are ‘ghost tours’, taking in the haunted and spooky corners of the district. We chose a less supernatural one which featured more general history, unsolved and notorious crimes, some film locations, interesting architecture with only the occasional ghost story thrown in.  It was busy evening for tours and seemed that half the humans in the Quarter were sporting a tour sticker, holding a skull fan and trailing around after a loud voiced, steam-punk garbed, twenty-something guide. It was actually a great way to spend a couple of hours, especially as it was sultry, still evening, having a drink in hand was entirely expected and the place has some seriously interesting history. In the day and age of digital information exchange it was great to see that verbal story-telling is still so popular. We finished the evening with a few drinks far from the madding crowd at a cocktail bar on the way home.

The next day we took the old bone-shaking street-car up to the fancy Garden district and spent the late morning sauntering the streets, ooggling at all the lovely and enormous old homes.  This area was originally a large plantation, was sold off to a property developer who sold plots to the great and good who built their town houses to impress their friends and neighbours. Some things never change. In the middle of the district is one of those large old walled cemeteries filled with impressive but crumbling mausoleums and graves. All burials are above ground in New Orleans. If you dig a hole in the ground in this town it soon fills with water.

We came, we saw, we lunched and we took the street-car back to the FQ. This took longer than planned as there was a film crew cluttering the place up whilst filming a Jamie Foxx movie. We didn’t get the name of the film, but another crew was filming  a new series called Shadows elsewhere in the quarter. It seems that mostly film crews spend their time eating and drinking. We base this on our analysis of the number of catering vans parked in environs of both these filming locations. I don’t know how they get any work done.

Having had great and grand plans to dress up for our Halloween evening in New Orleans, in the end we did not. We contented ourselves with the admiring of those that had make the effort, and there were plenty of very imaginative and inventive costumes. It was nuts out there. I particularly enjoy watching people in crazy costumes doing very normal things. Without irony. Like these mermen and mermaid on a walking tour earlier in the day. All three were only wearing stars over their nipples.

After dinner at a place called The Gumbo Shop we headed out into the fray. The streets were filled with pirates, scarecrows, cats, zombies, witches  and the like. The whole district was abuzz (ie drunk) and Bourbon Street, as expected, was already carnage by 11pm. I can only imagine was 2am looks like around here. We found sanctuary in a side street bar and made it home without being thrown up on. Quite an achievement in this neck of the woods.

The heat and humidity eventually produced an impressive thunderstorm overnight. Rain on our roof is very noisy so sleep wasn’t very forthcoming. Happily it had dried out by late morning the next day and we walked over to the National World War II museum in the neighbouring Warehouse District. This has been ranked as the 2nd best museum in the country, and was personally recommended by Mr J Armitage (I think he was particularly impressed by the fact that it had an on-site bar that had a happy hour running during his visit). It was a very good museum. Obviously very American-centric (Little mention of 1939-41), but great exhibits, and some cool interactive stuff. It is massive, and they are still adding new buildings.  We did as much as our attention spans would allow, and after museum fatigue set in, (unfortunately long before happy hour started at the bar) we left.

We strolled back along the waterfront to another French Quarter institution, Café du Monde. The only place to have café au lait and a beignet or three. It was co-incidentally exactly afternoon tea/coffee and beignet time when we arrived, so we did. Flagging bodies revived, we headed back to  Casa Tin Can to spruce up for our fancy dinner that evening at Arnauds Jazz Bistro. Well worth the spondoolies.

Our last day in New Orleans had to include that other classic Louisiana experience, the bayou airboat tour. Today the heatwave was gone and an icy wind had replaced it. Just the day to sit in an open boat and blast around the water at 30mph.  We dressed for it, incredulously pulling jumpers, boots and coats out of their storage lockers. The shuttle bus collected us from the gulag gate, scooped up a few others from various hotels and drove us out to the airboat dock. What an operation! There were about 100 of us all together on various tours, all leaving a the same time. We were all ‘processed’ within 20 mins: names checked off, credit cards swiped, coloured wristbands applied. We were encouraged to view the captive albino alligator in a small pool in the back of the shop. It looked sad, if that is possible. The shop did a raging business selling their branded hooded sweatshirts to those under-dressed punters who were already freezing just waiting in-line for the bathroom. And then we were off. We were in a boat skippered by a gnarly chap called Rich. He was a full blown bayou born and bred hunter-gatherer who definitely brought his own brand of wisdom to our tour. More focus on how much you can earn as an alligator hunter than on the ecology of the environment. Interesting nonetheless.

We saw a few mid-sized alligators, who were lured closer to the boat with marshmallows. ‘Gator crack’ he called them. Not sure they can be very good for them. An alligator with tooth decay is a problem. The bayou was beautiful and man, those boats are LOUD!

We returned to base only partly hypothermic and were shuttled back to town. We spent the rest of the afternoon gathering our thoughts, doing the weekly laundry and generally sorting out for moving on the next day. New Orleans was great fun, really interesting and it was amazing to be able to stay in such a great RV park so close to all the action. We will be sorry to leave, but the Tin Can must continue its travels!

 

 

28th-29th Oct

There is plenty to see that is a bit bizarre in America and in truth we do actively seek it out. I know that there is oddness and quirk everywhere in the world but it seems that here it is found on a scale that surpasses anywhere else that we have been. (Let it be known that we have not yet visited Japan.) There is an excellent publication called Atlas Obscura (atlasobscura.com) which details global oddities for the reading about, or the searching out, depending if you are living a normal responsible life or escaping reality and wafting around aimlessly in a Tin Can for months on end looking for focus and direction.

It was from Atlas Obscura that we learned that every Sunday in October the inmates of the largest super max prison in the USA, Louisiana State Penitentiary, put on a rodeo for the public. We had bought our tickets months ago when we realised that we were going to be in the area at the right time. This was not to be missed

The prison is known as Angola because it is located on the site of an old plantation that used many slaves who originated from the country of Angola. It is also still a working farm of 18,000 acres, hence its other nickname: The Farm.

It houses over 5000 inmates, mostly in dormitories rather than cells. Despite the excruciating heat and humidity of summer air conditioning was only fitted in the 1990s. A death row facility was completed in 2006, without aircon. About 75% of the inmate population is black, about 71% are serving a life sentence and about 1.6% are on death row. The last execution was in 2010.

The rodeo started in 1965 as a small internal event as a reward for well behaved inmates. No public were invited. Now it is a sellout ticket-only event with over 10,000 visitors each event. The inmates have since built a rodeo stadium and the farm raises the horses and bulls.  There is also a large arts and craft fair selling all sorts of things like paintings, carvings, leather work, jewellery and garden furniture.

There was a 90min traffic jam to get through the gate. 90 minutes of ever-filling bladders, no bushes and the beginnings of discussions of what receptacles we had in the car that would be suitable. I nearly caved but we arrived and parked up just in time. We have never been so pleased to see a porta-loo. Ever. There were a lot of rules associated with attending an event inside a super-max prison: No phones, no cameras, no alcohol, no drugs. No bags over a certain size and all bags had to be transparent. I took only one essential item. A lip salve. Hampson took the money.

It was boiling hot despite being the 28th of October. I cannot imagine what it is like down here in mid-summer with 100% humidity. Sweaty, sweaty, sweaty is my guess.  We cleared the security into the fenced area on the edge of the farm.  There were lots of stalls and lots of eateries. All were manned by inmates, overseen by a large guard presence. The guards dealt with all the money. These inmates were obviously the good ones.  There was another area where the inmate artists manned their stalls from behind a 10ft fence. These were obviously those who were less trusted and they did look a bit edgier. We didn’t buy anything except lunch and an unfeasible number of bottles of water. Then the rodeo began.

Now, our previous rodeo experience is limited to one small town event in Michigan last year, but this did seem a lot more gung-ho than your average event.  These guys were not doing this for money or fame, just for the pure escapism and personal achievement . Most of them have no background of rodeo or horsemanship prior to incarceration, but what they lack in skills they sure make up with pure guts. It was odd knowing that amongst the performers were violent offenders and murderers. Sometimes the bulls seemed to feel the need contribute to the punishment. It was carnage out there. One of the events was called The Poker Game. This involved 4 inmates sitting at a poker table in the centre of the ring, ostensibly playing cards. Then they added an angry bull with a tight strap cinched around its nether regions. The winner was the last person to leave the poker table. Some ran. Some were removed by the bull. Madness.

We have no photos, obviously, but trust me, it was a visual feast. Performers and crowds alike. We headed off before the end as we couldn’t face being stuck in traffic to get out too. Exiting was a breeze and we soon found ourself pulling into our accommodation for the night, the nearby St Francisville Inn.

St Francisville was only about 30mins away and another very cute historic town choc-a-bloc with preserved homes. The Inn is a small 10 room hotel in perhaps the most lovely of the old buildings. The front lawn was picturesquely shaded by huge old oak trees draped in Spanish moss. It had recently been bought by its new owners who were reeling with the extent and costs of renovations, which had begun in earnest. It will be utterly gorgeous (and three times the price) by the time they have finished with it. Our night’s accommodation included happy hour drinks in the sultry heat of the courtyard and a very delicious and fattening breakfast. Adding these extras to a very enormous and comfortable four-poster bed made this a very worth while night on ‘dry land’.

Before we headed off the next morning we took a stroll around the well signposted walking tour of the old homes of the town. Most are privately owned and beautifully kept. I think this would be a nice place to live, for nine months of the year. Summer is just too hot to imagine.

 

 

 

24th – 28th Oct

On the way down to our next stop at Natchez we took a bit of a detour to see a place called Windsor Ruins.

A rich plantation owner, Smith Coffee Daniel II (what a name!) built an enormous house on his 2600 acre plantation. It took 2 years to complete and was finished in 1861. It was the largest Greek revival antebellum mansion in the state of Mississippi.  Tragically he died only a few months after the house was completed at the age of only 34.  His family lived in the house until it unfortunately burnt down in 1890, leaving only the columns.  Having survived the ravages of civil war it was a stray cigarette that saw the house’s demise. The ruins were gifted to the state of Mississippi by one of the daughters after her mother’s death. Valiant efforts are being made to try and stop it falling down but I fear that this is inevitable.

Natchez itself is a beautiful spot. Established on a bluff it is another historic riverside town and boasts to be oldest settlement on the Mississippi. Named after the native tribe of the area, it has previously been in the hands of the French and Spanish over the years and was the site of the principle port for the export of the cotton and sugarcane that was grown on the fertile land of the river basin. It was a rich place, funded by the proceeds of vast plantations and slave labour. Huge antebellum homes were built built by wealthy plantation owners who needed to impress their equally puffed up neighbours. This makes for some great modern day touristic ogling.

The pre-industrial method of transporting people and their wares was on foot and by horse and Natchez is the Southern terminus of an ancient forest trail called the Natchez Trace which extends up to Nashville, TN.  The advent of motorised boats made the river the primary transportation route and the Old Trace became less important, eventually being completely superseded by road and rail. The route has been preserved as a National Park and ‘The Natchez Trace Parkway’ is a wonderful 444 mile stretch of beautifully sealed roadway which follows the route of the original trail. It is closed to commercial traffic and has a 50mph speed limit making it quiet and a dream to travel along by RV, car, motorbike or bicycle. We joined it about 50km north of Natchez making our arrival into town very scenic and serene.

Our camp site was just across the river from Natchez in a town called Vidalia, which is actually in Louisiana. The park was one our favourites so far. It was between the levy and the river and really well kept, large and spacious with mature trees and lawned areas up to the river bank. It had a nice pool and hot tub and a huge clubhouse. The place was awash with squirrels. It was like a squirrel safari park with dozens of the blighters seriously busy with the important task of collecting acorns. One morning we found one sadly in its death throws near the back wheels of big Dave, making it look like we had run it over. (Framed by a squirrel for a crime we did not commit.) It must have been a less agile individual that unfortunately didn’t land a leap. We knew it needed a ‘coup de grace’ but were too soft to deliver it ourselves. We found a man with a rake and more resolve than us. RIP Nutkin.

There was lovely paved walking path that went through our park and down the riverfront for about 2 miles. We broke out the bikes for an explore and found a hairdressers at the other end of it meaning we could book our long overdue haircuts whilst we were here. Hampson was starting to look like a cross between Crusty the clown and Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Hair crisis averted.

Although Natchez was only about a mile away over the bridge there was no safe way to get across on bikes or foot. There was all this money and effort put in to paths and trails on both sides of the river, but no link between the two. Bonkers, but not unusual. So Big Dave was liberated from his burden of TC again and, having driven the short distance across the busy narrow bridge, we spent day exploring Natchez on foot and decided that it was a thoroughly nice town. Lots of well preserved beautiful historical homes, good eateries and drinkeries, shops and a great riverside park that was a fine place to promenade and watch the river traffic. We then drove out to do a tour of one of the fancy antebellum homes.  There is a whole trail of them, but we decided one would be enough. We chose one called Longwood.

This was started just before the Civil War and built as an impressive 6 story octagonal home. The shell and lower level were completed in a speedy 18 months but the onset of the war meant that the tradesmen returned to their homes in Pennsylvania, arresting the build. Anticipating a speedy resolution to the war, and a recommencement of work within months, the family of the fabulously wealthy plantation owner, Haller Nutt (another cool name), wife Julia, and 8 kids moved temporarily into the lower ‘basement’ level of the home. Unfortunately fortune did not favour them.  The war dragged on and on and on. Despite being Unionist supporters who had been promised that their plantation would be protected by the Northern army, it wasn’t. It was destroyed, the valuables looted and the fortune was lost. Haller died of pneumonia in his late 40s soon after being ruined although his wife was convinced it was a broken heart that saw him off.  She was left with no money, eight kids and a shell of a home. She valiantly raised her family on peanuts and lived another 30 years in the lower level of the unfinished house, passing it to her children on her death. None of them ever had the money or will to complete the house and it eventually fell into disrepair and lay empty for 30 years. It was finally sold to its saviour, a philanthropist whose name escapes me, who restored it to how it had been when the family lived in it and gifted it to a local garden club to run and maintain.  His only stipulation was that it remained in its unfinished state. It is an amazing place made all the more atmospheric by the history that comes with it.

The next day we went back up to the Trace Parkway and took the bikes. There was a 4 mile walking trail just off the road that was a part of the original Old Trace trail. We performed a logistical manoeuvre and left the bikes at the end of the trail and drove back to the start so we could hike to the bikes then bike back to the car. Brilliant. And it was. The day, and the walk were beautiful and there were no other souls to be seen. In places the path is sunken well below the forest floor, worn away by hundreds of years and hundreds of thousands of feet and hooves. I love feeling part of history. The short bike ride back down the Parkway was equally lovely. We were passed by only two vehicles in 20 minutes. Where was everybody on such a gorgeous autumn Saturday afternoon??

We spent our last afternoon doing the usual faffing that all RV and boat owners will understand. We scooped TC up again, cleaned and racked the bikes, drained the waste tanks and did some small maintenance jobs. Now we were all ready for an early-ish start in the morning. Tomorrow we were off to an event that we booked months and months ago. The Louisiana State Penitentiary Inmate Rodeo.

Oh, and we just couldn’t resist driving the Chevy to the levy. And Yes. It was dry.

 

 

 

19th – 24th Oct

Our day’s journey took us onward to the riverside town of Vicksburg. Here the terrain changes with disappearance of the flatlands of the delta and the river cuts through rocky escarpments.  The Mississippi really is a cargo highway and powerful tugs push huge rafts of laden barges (slowly) up and  (much more quickly) down the river.

Vicksburg is also another important Civil War site. The Confederates held the town, aided by the topography and saw off numerous attacks by the Union army. After multiple failed attacks, high losses and no apparent way to breech the town’s defences, the Unionists changed tack and decided to lay siege to the Confederates. For forty two days during a hot and sticky Mississippi summer the Confederates, and thus the townsfolk of Vicksburg were subjected to a near constant barrage of artillery fire, near starvation, malaria and dysentry. On July 4th they surrendered, coinciding with the victory at Gettysburg to the north. The town has done another great job of preserving the battlefields, around which you can do a 16 mile self drive auto tour and they are dotted with over 1500 monuments and memorials.

We booked five nights here in another casino RV park, the Ameristar. The casino is built right on the river’s edge and made to look like an old paddle steamer. There was a 24 hour shuttle bus provided for the 300m journey between casino and RV park to facilitate the money spending. We did utilise it one night, losing only $30 in the slots before our nice steak dinner.

The park was about 3 miles from the town’s historic downtown and I cajoled Hampson into walking there one morning. It wasn’t the most scenic of strolls as it passed through a slightly down at heel neighbourhood but there was one house with the most spectacular halloween decorations I have ever seen.

Town itself was a bit over-hyped as a destination, but we found a mediocre coffee and sat and watched the world go by for a bit. Then walked home again. Beer and dinner earned.

The next day we liberated Big Dave from TC so we could explore a bit further afield. We drove up to the battlefields and did the driving tour. Now we could see first hand why the battle for Vicksburg was so protracted. Lots of hills. It was not quite as impressive as Gettysburg, but a lot more intimate and much quieter. The tour took in the preserved steam powered paddle ironclad ship, the USS Cairo. This was part of the fleet that helped supply the Unionists up and down the Mississippi but was unfortunately sunk by a mine. When it was looking for mines. Very unlucky and ironic. Pretty cool restoration housed under an impressive tent.

Despite the battlefields being owned by the National Parks Service it had no dedicated walking trails and the only real option for walking was to follow the road route. The next day we went back and finished the last four mile loop that we hadn’t driven the day before on foot. It was lovely and quiet with only a few cars passing us. We got to see lots more cannons and monuments of bearded officers in frock coats on plinths up close and personal. Unsurprisingly, no other walkers.

For lunch we drove out to a place we had been recommended called The Tomato Place. This was an unprepossessing food stall on the side of a duel carriageway at first glance, but through the back had a great little cafe doing a variety of local dishes and old faves.  We shared a plate of fried catfish and fries and a fried green tomato BLT. Mmmm, mmm, mmm! Think we might have undone all our good work with the walk through.

On the way home we took the opportunity to wash Big D whilst he was unfettered. It knocked the worst of the dirt off, but despite a ‘prewash de-bug treatment’, a ‘hot soap wash’, and a ‘jet wash rinse’ he couldn’t really be described as clean. We wonder how all the other trucks and buses in the RV parks stay so shiny. He is generally the filthiest wherever we go. And of this we are secretly proud.

On our return to camp we threw a sponge over TC too and reloaded. All ready for the off again in the morning.