Tin Can Travels

12th April – 20th April 2023

A whole year has passed since we put Big Dave and Tin Can to bed in a storage unit in Orlando, Florida and returned to the UK. It has been a year of catching up with friends and family, a year of living a reasonably conventional life in a house, and a year of wondering what our short-to-medium term future looked like. After a month of tent camping in France in the Summer of 2022 we realised that our future is definitely on the road, but not under canvas. We are committed to one last big trip in the USA and have decided to become full-time nomads in Europe and the UK for a few years after that. To that end we are selling our house, have packed our possessions into a storage container, have sold our car, have put a deposit on a motorhome to be ready later in the year and we are now back Stateside.

This trip, like most of the previous ones, started with a degree of uncertainty. What state would Big Dave and Tin Can be in after 12 months idle? This was the first time we had stored them ‘under cover’ rather than inside and we knew that at least two hurricaines had passed over Orlando in the time we had been away. Last time Big Dave wouldn’t start and we had begun that trip with a low-loader ride to the garage, a 3 week delay and many thousands of dollars in repair bills. Nervous times ahead.

We headed to the storage unit in an Uber after a night in a hotel in Orlando. Mid- April is already hot,hot, hot here. We had left behind an unseasonably cool UK Spring and it was lovely to feel the heat again. The lilly white flesh would need some rays to tone down the glare.

First impressions revealed them to be filthy, covered in dust from the past storms but in one piece. Big Dave started first time without a cough or a splutter, the trickle charger having done its job. We opened up Tin Can and apart from most of the pictures having fallen off their 3M fixings with the heat, all seemed well inside too. So far, so good! The first few days of our trip were to be visiting friends in Sarasota so we unpacked and repacked our bags for that and embarked on our first ‘off-load’ of Tin Can. He was staying here as the start of our trip proper would bring us back this way and we had another week left on our storage rental. Big Dave needed an oil change – a very easy task without TC, tricky with him due to his height.

We headed off, procured an oil change – which was nearly a transmission fluid change due to an error by our mechanic that was caught just in time – and drove to Sarasota. The 2 hour journey took 4 hours, which seemed to be purely due to the weight of traffic. En route we realised that Big Dave’s left indicator lights weren’t working. This was going to need attention.

Our hosts in Sarasota were Ed & Karee, the couple that we had met on the ranch in Arizona during our last trip. Karee was away so Ed was hosting us solo. It started in true Ed fashion… He has a regular weekly date with a group of buddies at a local establishment for drinks and an early dinner and we were invited. The venue? ‘Hooters‘, of course! We had a 5 minute turn around after arriving and within fifteen minutes had beers in hand, delivered by a very perky lil’ thing clad in small T-shirt and even smaller orange hot pants. Up until now we had not frequented a Hooters on our travels and I think both of us thought that it would be a bit seedy and frequented purely by groups of lecherous men. That may be the case for many franchises, but this one was delightful! The clientèle was very diverse including grandparents and grandkids and the girls were all lovely, especially to the women. The company -Ed’s friends Ron & Mario- was good, the food was tasty, the service attentive and the beer cold. What’s not to love?!

We had only planned to stay in Sarasota for a long weekend, but Big Dave’s indicators needed fixing. Ed knew a guy who ran a garage and he fitted us in the next day to look at the problem. The indicators required a new relay which needed ordering. There was also a light fitting that needed replacing on one of the flared rear wheel arches. In the end we were with Ed for a week as the truck took longer to fix than planned (due to a part being wrong when it arrived so needing to be re-ordered.) It was a very pleasant week of maroonment after the craziness of the past month. We were happy and well behaved house guests. We cooked a few meals in, had a few meals out – including an evening over at Ed’s mum’s with take away fried chicken – started to do some onward bookings for our trip and spent some very happy hours by the pool. We even did some wildlife rescue of a red eared turtle out of the deep end. It wasn’t entirely happy about being scooped out in a leaf net, but I’m sure felt better in the nearby pond than the salt chlorinated water of the pool.

At the weekend, when Ed wasn’t working, we had a couple of outings. For the first, on Saturday afternoon, we drove the 1 hour up to St Petersberg, near Tampa, to accompany Ed to an LSU ( Louisianna State University) Alumni Crawfish Boil. Ed is an LSU alumni, a big fan of of all things LSU and a massive fan of a boil up. We met his friends, Lou and Barrie, but really it was all about the crawfish. This was served as a massive tray of the bugs, boiled in a delicious red spicy sauce that gets round your face, all over your hands, down your arms and everywhere else besides. Our verdict after this our second boil up? Very tasty, a lot of work for minimal food reward and I shouldn’t have worn white trousers.

Our other noteable outing was on Sunday afternoon to watch a waterskiing show. I thought this sort of thing had been lost to the past, but no! A club called Ski-A-Rees (No idea why it’s called this. Google had no info either) stage a weekly free show to show off their skills. They put on bigger shows once a month or so and compete nationwide too. It was good old fashioned fun with the crowds sitting on aluminium bleachers, a compère giving us a run down of the performers and a steady parade of club members of all ages doing jetty starts on fat skis, twirling on one leg, going backwards and forwards, riding on each others shoulders, doing acrobatics, doing jumps and yes, doing that thing only every seen in retro posters of 50s waterskiing…building a waterskier pyramid! It was fantastic. I would have failed to even do a jetty start, so I was very impressed. The ‘free’ show ended with the donations bucket being passed around, but it was definitly worth the cash we threw in.

Finally the car was ready and before the next Hooter’s rendezvous came around, we were off back to Orlando. The indicatiors all worked now and we could finally turn left without fear. We arrived, we reloaded TC and set off North up the coast to our first camping destination.

5th April – 13th April 2022

Our next journey took us out of the Florida panhandle and sadly away from the delights of the Forgotten Coast. A three and a half hour drive along some very lovely quiet roads through some beautiful Floridian forests brought us to Ozello Key, a small, end of the line sort of place on the West coast of the main Florida pennisula. The area was filled with multiple modest waterfront homes on a haphazard canal complex giving nearly all the properties water access to the marshlands and the Gulf beyond. Our small camp was co-located with a small marina and as the three days here was going to be the last of the touring part of our trip and we were looking forward to being able arrange a fan boat trip out on the water. As usual we had no plans to drive anywhere once we had arrived so we made sure we rocked up with plenty of provisions and our research told us that there was a good restaurant bar an easy walk away.

The marina had spaces for 3 RVs, right on the canal-side, and our host informed us that no-one else was booked into either for the other sites for the entirity of our stay. We were to have a private camp. Perfect! That meant that the little bathroom block and laundry were all ours too. The laundry was even free. How much better could it get?? Well, TV reception and WIfi might have been good, but the location made up for it, sort of….

It was stinking hot and windy when we arrived so after we had set up we did nothing except sit outside in a shady spot with our books and watch the world go by. The world, however, wasn’t going anywhere. Except for the wind in the trees it was deathly quiet, with the only action being provided bay the odd lizard and shore bird. Unfortunately, because of the wind, all the fan boat charters had been cancelled for the next 24 hours and the forecast was not looking good beyond that. It looked like we might not get out after all. Bummer. The heat continued for the whole three days and we put the air con on for the first time and even had to sleep with a fan for a couple of nights. It didn’t seem that long ago that we were sleeping under 5 blankets and a duvet with a hot water bottle and the heating on all night. Warms up early down here.

A couple of fishing charter boats did make it out and we did get to know a young captain of of one of the small boats that tied up just alongside where we were camped. He was called Teddy, was about 25 years old and was a part-time radiographer, part-time fishing charter captain. He worked 7 days a week when he could and seemed to have his life sorted. Quite a work ethic. It was exhausting just talking to him!

So with no TV and no wifi, what was there to do?? Free blimin’ laudry, that’s what! I washed everything and I washed it good. Got to get our money’s worth somehow.

The local restaurant bar was visited for dinner one evening. We walked the half mile there as slowly as we could to avoid getting too hot and sweaty, but without success. We just looked like suspicious loiterers and then arrived with more than a seemly glow and sheen upon our brows. Luckily there was a spot on the lovely breezy over-water terrace and we cooled down with a cold beer or several. The seafood offerings were more than satisfactory and we had a lovely evening.

The few quiet days at Ozello were good to prepare us for our next stop: A long weekend of fun in Sarasota staying with our new friends Ed and Karee. For those whose memories from which this might have slipped, we met this very fun couple at Rancho De La Osa, Arizona on my birthday weekend at the start of January. Once we found out that they lived in mid-Florida we had cheekily invited ourselves to stay with them at the end of our trip as we were booked to fly out of Orlando, a mere 2.5 hour drive away from their place. They kindly agreed and now we were on our way there.

A couple of hours drive from Ozello brought us to the Florida that we had managed to avoid so far, the busy part. There was more and more traffic on the highway the further south we travelled and as we approached Tampa an accident necessitated a diversion off the highway into the burbs. These roads were equally busy. We limped along, finally arriving in Sarasota and after a quick pitstop to purchase booze as our contribution to the weekend’s supplies, we headed to Ed and Karee’s.

Happily (to all four of us) we still got on like a house on fire. There was none of the awkwardness that is always possible when you follow up a fun holiday friendship with actually meeting up again, rather than just emptily but very enthusiastically promising it when you say your goodbyes. Especially when that involves parking up your not-inconsiderably sized camper on their driveway and requesting to borrow a long extension lead and to plug it into the mains to keep the fridge cold, then being four day house-guests. Even when for the last of those four days you actully spend the whole day and evening out with other friends and just come back to sleep (more on that later) and then before you leave on the last morning you are equally demanding and annoying and create more chaos by giving the aforementioned camper a pre-storage washdown on the aforementioned driveway. None of this phased Ed and Karee one jot and they were magnificent hosts. It is their superpower.

We started our stay with some light afternoon drinking whilst we caught up on the past three months since we had seen them on the ranch and than had an early dinner before heading out to catch sunset at the beach. We started at the roof-top bar of the Westin initially but the cool view was overshadowed by the chilly breeze and we relocated to the shelter of the gound-level terrace of the bar at the nearby Ritz for second cocktails. How swanky was this?! Quite a fancy sort of sundowner compared to our usual beer-straight-from-the-can-around-the-campfire affair. We had returned to civilisation! The rest of the evening was spent back at their house, sitting around the outside fireplace and much rubbish was talked into the wee small hours.

The next day we slowly emerged and a plan for the day was formed. Our conventional tourist activity was to be a visit to the Ringling Circus Museum. Sarasota was the HQ and winter quarters of the imensively impressive Ringling travelling circus. The Ringling Circus was run by five of seven brothers and in its various incarnations ran for nearly 150 years, closing only in 2017. In its hey days of the forties and fifties it travelled around the country on extended tours, running two mile-long trains transporting the three thousand performers and personel and eight hundred animals including many, many elephants. The circus mostly only visited each town for one day and in that time the team would errect its enormous big top, all the tents and enclosures for the animals, all the tents for the kitchen, canteen, costumes and accommodation, all the tents for hairdressers, blacksmiths, doctors and other services for the staff and all the tents for the candy, popcorn and merchendise sellers. They would usually put on two performances of the show, take the whole lot down again, load it all back on the train and then travel to the next town. It was an amgalmation of a town, a zoo, a business and a show on the move each day, every day. No wonder they needed a winter base in sunny Florida for a nice rest. It all sounds very exhausting. The musuem was set in the grounds of the scenic Ringling estate on the shores of Sarasota Bay. Several of the brothers built rather impressive homes on the estate which are now available to tour or rent for events. We wandered around and then it was time for another meal! We met Ed and Karee’s daughter, Emily, son-in-law, Casey and one year old grandaughter, Leila, in town and had a very relaxed late lunch in the sun whilst all trying not to get sunburnt.

An afternoon lull at home took us back up to sundowner-time again and Emily organised us all to drive up to the beach for cocktails at the Ritz-Carlton Beachclub. This sounds more glamorous than it was. The beach bar was quite literally a sand-between-your-toes sort of place on the beautiful white sandy beach. Unfortunately it got really windy and quite cool and an not insignificant amount of that sand was trying to get into our ears, eyballs and teeth. The beach bar was also only selling its hideously overpriced cocktails in crappy plastic cups and stopped serving ’30 minuites prior to sunset’. What??? At a beach bar whose chief quality is it’s sunset view?? Oh, and whilst the men were buying the drinks (a three-man job apparently), they left us unchaperoned ladies alone long enough for a sleezy chap to come over and chance his arm on a pick up. Well at least I think that was what his intention was. He had a few irresistable lines, like “Do I detect an accent?” and “I like your sweater, is that from England?” What a temptation he was… Anyway after a lovely sunset, no prospect of a second drink and borderline hypothermia we decamped back to the house and ate pizza.

The next day the swank was amped up to level 3 and we found ourselves being taken to watch a game of polo at the Sarasota Polo Club. It was an afternoon of fabulous Ra-Ra, Florida style. (As neither of us have ever been to the polo before, this is now our only frame of reference) Our spectators’ pitch was set up on the sidelines with several gazebos, many lawn chairs, a picnic table or several and a healthy amount of food and fizz. (Of note: most of the food was fried chicken, which incidentally is a perfect accompaniment to a glass of chilled bubbles, or is it the other way around. I digress). Prior to the whistle/kick off we were treated to a guided tour of the ‘backstage area’ by a local polo groupie. She was very enthusiastic and effervesent and happy to have a reason to be hanging out with all the players, grooms and ponies as they were getting ready. I think she was also quite knowledgeable, but again, no prior frame of reference. The match itself was a bit incidental to the day as we were enjoying the chitchat, the sun, the bubbles and the fried chicken, but it did provide a rather lovely backdrop to the day.

On our final day in Sarasota we managed to catch up with our friends Greg and Gigi (and two of their three kids) who were visiting Florida from Conneticut. Greg and Nick are friends from school when Nick spent a year here on an exchange after A levels. We had tried to meet them on our trip around the Gulf Coast, but it just hadn’t worked out. Very fortuitously Greg’s mum lives only about 6 miles from Ed and Karee, and they were visiting her for Spring Break, so we had arranged to spend the day with them. This involved a lot of chat, an afternoon on the beach (the fabulous Siesta Key beach, voted one of the USA’s favorite beaches with silica sand so fine and white and cool on the feet even when the sun is blazing), more chat, lunch on the beach, drinks, chat and a seafood dinner before they delivered us back to Ed and Keree’s. It was great to see them but sad to only have this limited time together. We consoled ourselves with the fact that there is a very good chance that we will see them in France over the summer.

The next day we bade our farewells to Ed and Karee and Sarasota, but not before giving Big Dave and Tin Can their final washdown on the driveway. We had planned to do this at at commercial place en route to storage, but bizarrely for a state full of people with RVs we couldn’t find a tall carwash. We headed towards Orlando and stopped at a place called Davenport, about an hour southwest of the city. We had one night here to do our final clean, laundry and prep to put the team into storage the next day. It was hot, hot, hot but there was no rest for the usually idle and we worked up a sweat doing all our chores. Happily we are now a well oiled machine and know exactly what needs to be done. This storage is below the ‘freeze-zone’ so there was even no need to worry about winterizing the pipes with anti-freeze. We were so organised that we even managed to fit in a swim and a short spell sitting in the sun by the pool before our ‘last supper’ of the usual interesting meal created from the fridge scrapings.

Our last day dawned, still hot as hell, and we cruised to our storage unit which was a short 20 minutes drive from Orlando airport. The bags were packed, the laundry was done and everything was ship shape. We put Big Dave and Tin Can to bed in their outdoor, covered unit, plugged in to a trickle charger. Despite the 30 degC temp we had to change into our travel clothes of jeans and boots before wheeling our bags up to reception to grab and Uber to the airport. When will we stop sweating??! (Soon. We are off back to a UK Spring via Iceland.)

Another trip is over. This has been a five month journey from the Northwest corner nearly to the furthest Southeast of this vast country. A journey which started with the lows of an enormous mechanic’s bill and some terrible wet and cold weather and the many, many highs including fabulous landscapes, interesting people and places, great food and new friends. Coronovirus was the constant backdrop to our travels, but at no point directly affected us or significantly altered what we did. We were very happy to have ‘braved’ this trip and finally got back on the road again. Our happy place.

So as I write the last few lines of this final Tin Can Travels post it is with great relief that, after procrastinating its writing for two whole months, I can finally say…..It’s a wrap!

18th Mar – 5th Apr 2022

Think Florida? Think Disney, Everglades, Keys, retirement communities, suburban sprawl, traffic, developed beach resorts. The Forgotten Coast bucks all these norms, mainly because it has been just that: forgotten. As the crowds have poured into Southern Florida, to live and holiday in the tropical winterless climate, the slightly cooler coast of the Florida panhandle remains a gorgeous gem that seems to have become lodged in the years somewhere between 1950 and 1985. The long term locals and holiday-makers of yore would lament that it too has been a victim of progress and that development has altered its charm, but to our eyes, it was a complete retro delight.

Our day of out-running the storm brought us through Pensacola, Panama City, Mexico City and Port St Joe, with each conurbation getting progressively smaller and less developed. Mexico City and Port St Joe had had their own weather nemesis in the form of hurricaine Michael in 2018, but the rebuild efforts looked mostly complete. Our journey took us beyond civilisation to, quite literally, the end of the road and a small settlement called Indian Pass. Here a quiet 3 mile stretch road ran down a narrow penninsula with a swampy inland lagoon on one side and a long white sandy beach on the other. There are a variety of well spaced out beach houses that are mostly vacation homes but with a scattering of full time residents. At the top of the road is a small grocery store and ‘raw bar’, the only businesses within 12 miles and at the end of the road was a boat ramp, a turnaround and our camp. This was truely ‘getting away from it all’.

Camp was a real ‘sand between your toes’ sort of place that looked like it hadn’t seen any real maintenance for several decades. None of the sandy pitches were very level or had any sort of hardstanding and they were all higgledy-piggledy, slotted between the large old trees. The power and water hookups were placed in random locations, often on the wrong side of the sites, so that it was difficult to get hoses and leads to reach their plug ins. There were no sewer hook-ups and the single dump station for the whole camp was situated in the main thoroughfare. It was also located on the brow of a small hillock so that any tank discharge had to navigate a moderate contra-gravity route. (Physics need not apply here.) There was also no TV reception, no Wifi and the bathroom block, situated in a portacabin, was tired and dated. It was perfect.

(Soon after we had arrived I noticed that what looked like pale mud splatters all along the passenger-side of Big Dave was actually paint, still a bit wet, but drying fast. We had no idea when we had picked it up, but it was super-sticky and probably road-marking paint. Removing it was a labour of love and over the following weeks it took many hours, much elbow grease, several pints of rubbing alcohol and considerable swearing to get rid of it. It was mostly removed from the paintwork by the end of our trip but the wheel arches are a lost cause. I will just over-spray these dark grey when he needs a pre-sale tarting up.)

We had booked nine nights, and in order to stay so long at the short notice that we had given, this meant a moving sites again during our stay. Despite all its short comings this was a very popular little campsite and many people have been coming here for decades. Nobody that we spoke to wanted it to change one iota. The beach was only a hop and a skip away from most of the sites and the comings and goings at the boat ramp made us very whistful for our past boat ownership days and our paddleboaords at home.

Just off Indian Pass point there is a largish uninhabited island called St Vincents Island and a deep channel with strong currents separates it from the mainland. This attracts lots of fish which is what brings most people here, for the fishing. It also, for the same reasons, apparently brings a lot of sharks to the channel, making it one of the most shark infested stretches of water in the world, or the USA, or Florida. I can’t quite remember what my source of this information actually said, but it certainly put us off swimming even more than the brisk water temperatures. During our stay we only saw one small shark but there was pod of dolphins that hung about most days, obviously grazing on the all-you-can-eat-fish-buffet. Very scenic.

Having avoided one storm to get here we copped a second one soon after arriving. There was much thunder and lightening; it rained and rained and rained; stopped for a bit, then rained again. With the aide of a large umbrella we managed a brief spell on the beach for a ‘sundowner’ and were unsuprisingly out there by ourselves. All the other sensible people were chased inside by the imminant danger of death-by-lightning-strike and eventually we lost our bottle too. Just in the nick of time as the next strike sounded pretty much overhead.

It rained all night, but cleared up the next day again allowing us to cycle the 3 miles back to the raw bar for a late lunch. This place is brilliant. The ‘raw’ refers to the oysters on the menu and this is essentially a very simple seafood bar. On arrival you are given two pieces of paper: a booze tick-sheet to record the drinks that you take from the ‘honesty fridges’, and the menu tick-sheet to order your food and drop off at the counter. Then you pay at the end. It has been here for donkey’s years in various guises, and although been modestly extended in recent decades, it has been doing the same thing in the same way for a long time. The oysters are all from this area and fresher than a fresh thing from freshville.

I think my face says all you need to know about the glorious pairing of a tray of baked oysters covered in an unexpectedly good melted cheese and topped with toasted breadcrumbs and a tray of stuffed prawns having their last swim in a lake of liquid butter served with a slab of absorbant bread. No other words needed.

The rest of the week was a bit of a blur of hot sunny days, a few more rainy days, long walks on the beach, sitting in the sun, reading, chatting to camping neighbours, having evening fires on the beach and finally feeling like we were ‘on holiday’. I know that sounds a bit rich, as our current existance is mostly one big fat holiday, but this place was something special.

One day we took a shuttle boat over the channel to St Vincents Island with our bikes. The island is uninhabited, has no power or running water and criss-crossed by several rough tracks. The cost of the 90 second transfer was a bit steep, but there was no way that we could leave Indian Pass without a visit. In the 1940s the island, which is about 9 miles long and 4 miles wide was originally a privately owned hunting retreat, stocked with many exotic game species like zebra, sambar deer, eland and black buck. In 1968 the island was bought by the Nature Conservancy who removed all the exotic game except the sambar deer, creating a wildlife refuge. These deer are a type of Asian elk and are enormous, as big as a medium sized horse. The island is now also home to many alligators, wolves, eagles and numerous migratory birds. Our boat shuttle only gave us 2.5 hours on the island and we set off on our bikes down the main track, unlikely to have time to make it to the end of the island before we had to turn around. It was beautiful and deserted but very heavy going due to all the recent rain. The brisk breeze was at our backs initially, then compounded the work of our return trip an we saw none of the alleged wildlife except one very small turtle. It turned out to be quite an expensive bike ride through a forest. Yer live and learn.

During our time here we got to know a colourful local couple called (Mr) Lynn and Barb who owned one of the very few permenant trailers on the camp. They had had it for years, and despite also having a proper home in the nearby town of Port St Joe, they spent most of their time here. King and Queen of the ‘sundowner’, which commenced long before the sun was anywhere near the horizon, they held court every later afternoon outside their pad, spending hours chatting to friends old and new who were either passing by or who sat to join them. There was always a cooler full of beer, always a pile of empties, always a couple of tame squirrels who came to be fed monkey nuts, always an endless supply of interesting tales and always the sound of Lynn’s laughter filling the air. They were priceless. Lynn, a renowned artist specializing in reptiles and flora, became louder as the cooler got emptier and then could always be found round the back of their trailer having a wee in a bush at regular intervals. As our pitch was right next to their trailer we found it impossible to resist drawing up a chair and sharing a drink or two as long as the no-see-ums allowed…..

Which brings me to no-see-ums. Biting gnats. Little tiny, flying jaws of menace. Mercilous, miniture bugs that were the only downside of our time spent on this coast. They are about the size of a UK midge, are very interested in procuring human blood, and stalk their prey at all hours, especially dawn and dusk. On the upside, they can’t fly in windy conditions, on the downside, they are smaller than the mesh on our window screens which consequently offer no protection so we weren’t even safe inside. On the upside, they are repelled by slathering yourself in 40% DEET products. On the downside, you have to slather yourself in 40% DEET products. It was the rough to the Forgotten Coast smooth.

Eventually our extended stay here came to an end, which was very sad. We bade our farewells to Lynn and Barb and continued onwards. Our next stay was a single night stop-gap in a far fancier sort of place, Carabelle Beach RV resort. It was just across the road from a very lovely beach (clue’s in the name) and a whole 45 minute drive away from Indian Pass. Life ‘on the road’ was being spent less and less actually on the road these days. We arrived, checked in and were directed to our site which was one of those fabulous enormous and perfectly flat and level concrete slabs. No wiggling backwards and forwards, left and right to find the flattest spot. No arguing about whether we needed to get the levelling blocks out and how many we needed under which wheels to achieve some semblence of horizontal. (This is not only important for the efficient functioning of the fridge-freezer, but makes sleeping more comfortable-any head up or head down is disconcerting, cooking less sporting- think fluid levels, and means the doors on cupboards and the bathroom don’t fly open or slam shut all the time.) Anyway, we just pulled up and it was perfect. The sandy shabbiness of Indian Pass had been absolutely charming, but you have to love 100 sqm of perfect pad and patio. It was hot and breezy, so no no-see-ums, we sat by the pool, we read, we walked over to the beach, it was all rather civilised.

Our next stop after this was another epic 30 minute drive away. We may be paying more for our campsites the further into Florida we go, but at least our fuel costs have decreased considerably. We were booked for the next eight days into another waterside park called Holiday Campground (another clue in the name)on the Ochlockonee Bay which was near a town called Panacea. In the late 1800s the town was originally called Smithville due to the large number of people of that surname that lived in the town. The town was the site of numerous hot sulphurous mineral springs and as the medical tourism industry started to boom in the country, Smithville confidently renamed itself ‘Smith Springs’ and waited for the tourists to flock in. No-one came. Before the turn of the century the town and its springs were bought by a group of Bostonian property developers, who renamed it Panacea and came up with an inspired marketing campaign. Each different spring was touted as benefiting and healing different ailments. A pavilion complex was built around the springs and suddenly Panacea was a popular destination. Unfortunately the boom didn’t last. A destructive hurricaine in 1928 was followed closely by the Great Depression and then the springs inexplicably dried up. Panacea had had its day. It is still a quiet backwater, attracting mainly tourists who come for the amazing fishing.

Camp was very pictureseque with half the pitches backing onto the beautiful Bay with great views of the water and fantastic sunsets. This offset the slight lack of space between the pitches and no pretence of anything being flat. Out with the levelling blocks again… Luckily our neighbours were quiet and neat which couldn’t be said of everyone. There’s something about being on vacation that turns up the volume on an American voice. That ‘something’ is proabably afternoon drinking, I think.

Panacea itself was about 5 miles down the road and we had no need to go there. Locally to camp was a shop, a couple of restaurants and nearby was a nice beach. Despite this area being apparently a bit down at heel it had been singled out to have an enormous amount of money spent on building cycle paths. $35million allegedly. The process was well underway and we were very happy to take full advantage of this luxury. One path went the 3 miles down to the beach which we visisted a couple of times, one path was in progress to link the town of Panacea with the beach area and then extended a further 10-15 miles inland beyond the town (to where, I don’t know) and then another path followed the tranquil road 10 miles through the forest to the neighbouring town of Sopchoppy.

Sopchoppy gets its name from a native Indian word for ‘long and twisted river’ and is a small settlement of less than 500 people. I’m not quite sure why a lot of money was spent to build a dedicated cycle path alongside a very quiet road to link a very small town to a smaller bayside settlement, but they did, and we took advantage of it. There’s not much in Sopchoppy: a gas station, a hardware store, a grocery store and……a microbrewery! Hoorah! A microbrewery with a cycle trail to it…Double hoorah! A microbrewery with a cycle trail to it that had a visiting food truck scheduled to be in attendance…Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah!! Of course we had to go. So one sunny afternoon we saddled up and set off. Ten miles is quite a long way to cycle for a beer and dinner, but we are nothing if not committed to supporting local business and very time rich. The calorie burn would also offset the beer and burger fiesta we had planned. Win, win.

It was a delightful hour’s spin through the forest on our almost personal bike path, because you know that there was pretty much no one else using it. We arrived a bit hot and sweaty but nothing that a few cold pints of good beer didn’t sort out pretty quickly.

One important thing that you should know about Sopchoppy is that it is the location for an Annual Worm Grunting Festival. This is a competion to lure the most earthworms out of the ground by creating vibrations made by rubbing a piece of metal along a ribbed wooden stake. This grunting noise apparently sound just like the approach of the arch nemesis of an earthworm – a mole. So they all try and escape to the soil surface, where they are collected to be used for fishing bait. Genius and bonkers. This would usually be exactly the sort of event that we would attend and we were very disappointed to find out that we were only going to miss it bay a week.

After several pints we realised that the plan for a food truck dinner in a few hours was not going to be compatible with retaining the level of sobriety and athletic ability required to make the return 10 mile journey enjoyably. We sensibly decided to head back early and went to one of the seafood restaurants close to camp to continue our evening. This was a good decision.

We managed to fill our time here with walks on the beach, sitting on the beach, lying on the beach, working on removing the paint from Big Dave bit by bit, having camp fires, watching many beautiful sunsets and eating and drinking. You know, the usual. What I obviously wasn’t doing was writing the blog as I sit here back in the UK struggling to finish this penultimate post on the 3rd June, more than two months down the line.

14th Mar – 18th Mar 2022

Alabama is our only previously unvisited state of this trip. We had not taken Big Dave and Tin Can to California or Florida before, but we have holidayed in these states in previous years. So, exciting times! Unfortunately our Alabama stay was going to be limited to its short coast, which we knew was not going to give us a typical Alabaman experience. The state is fairly rectangular and nearly land-locked save for a small forked tongue of territory that juts south between Mississippi and the Florida panhandle to reach the coast. This gives it a shipping port, Mobile, the large protected Mobile Bay and a small slice of quite beautiful gulf coast with white sandy beaches and gulf barrier islands. Our selected stop was a place called Gulf Shores and given the timing of our visit we were going to see it at its zenith, Spring Break.

Spring Break is a quintesentially American phenomenon. It is a week-long holiday from school or college that happens on various weeks in March and which has eveolved into a mass exodus of holiday makers from the cooler Northern states to the warmer climes of the Southern beaches. Often this involves car journeys of epic proportions of which ‘ Peking-to-Paris Rally’ competitors would be proud. Some places have become hot-spots for the mass gathering of swimwear-clad, hormone-ravaged, partying college students and thus has become an important calendar date in the academic year. Gulf Shores is one of those hotspots. Spending time here was like going on safari. We wanted to see this spectacle of the great migration for ourselves. *

*Longterm friends, family and any passing aquaintances of my husband may possibly be aware that he spent his gap year on a scholarship exchange to a US private school in Massachusetts. During that time he too, with a friend called Bruce, made the unfathomable automobile pilgramage to the southern shores during a Spring Break week. You may have even heard the tales of driving endurance, brushes with the law, illegal camping, washing at beach showers, gluttony at all-you-can-eat-buffets, schemes to get into nightclubs with fake IDs and of course the alchohol that washed it all down. Even though his destination had been Daytona Beach in Florida, not Gulf Shores in Alabama, it meant that there was a large degree of nostalgia to this part of our journey.

We arrived into Gulf Shores very,very slowly. The traffic was heavy and it seemed that we had been caught in the (sedate) stampede to the sun. The town is a temple to vacations and has a huge number of hotels, holiday apartments, restaurants and bars. It also has the Gulf Shores State Park with a 600 space campsite. This would have been our preferred location to stay but was fully booked until kingdom come. In fact we were very lucky to find any space at all and we had happily secured four nights at a private RV park a couple of miles from the town and beach. We stopped for provisions at Walmart and spotted multiple small herds of the newly arrived party pilgrims doing the same. They were easily identifiable in their small single-sex groups of four or five individuals (a car-load), dressed in beachwear despite it being a little too cool for it and pale-skinned having come from the wintery nothern climes. The groups of girls were busily filling trollies with a variety of foodstuffs, the groups of boys seemed to have no idea what they were doing.

We had three full days here. Unfortunately we lost one day to crappy weather and another to me having an attack of vertigo. The fact that the two things didn’t happen on the same day is quite unfair. Anyway, our last full day here was beautiful and we broke out the bikes to do three days worth of exploring in one day. This also happened to be St Patricks Day. Wearing nothing green, unlike the majority of everyone else out and about that day, we set off. Our campsite was linked to town by a splendid cycle route which carried on to the state park. We cruised around the beautiful park on miles and miles of lovely paved trails and it was great to see so many people out of their cars doing the same thing. There were even communal bikes at various stations around the park that you could just borrow for free. Our rollings took us on a very circuitous route down to the beach where most of the seafront is given over to the concrete sprawl of hotels and condos. The beach itself is quite splendid and I can completely understand why this place became a popular holiday destination to those that live in the chilly North.

Once on the beach we started to see the first signs of drunken merriment, and it wasn’t amongst the youthful Spring Breakers, oh no. There was a very large contingent of ‘Irish-for-a day’, green-clad, silly headgear-wearing gangs of middle aged people – mainly women – who were already wasted and staggering around at 3pm. We sat outside a bar which was subtley decorated in a pink hue (!) and had a couple of re-hydratory cans of beer whilst watching the spectacle of some ‘sober’ ladies trying to pick up their ‘less sober’ friends from the floor. There was much shrieking and giggling and it was quite an amusing show. By now it was reasonably hot and there were quite a few people sunning themselves on the beach but almost no-one in the water. We strolled down to the shore with our beers in hand to check out the sea temperature and discovered why – it was still brass monkeys. Thankfully the beach patrol police officer that we casually sauntered past didn’t clock that we were (quite innocently) violating the NO ALCOHOL ON THE BEACH law, so we escaped getting into trouble. A travel adventure that we could live without.

We continued our prommenade down the beach and soon discovered where all the young folk were hanging out, and it didn’t involve any alcohol. It transpired that Gulf Shores was hosting the Intercollegiate Womens’ Beach Volleyball tournament, and guess where all the boys were?? Very sporting of them to support the (bikini clad) female athletes…. Nick resisted taking any photos. It was for the best.

After a while we decided that we had seen enough of the outside world and headed back to base before the real madness of St Patrick’s Day kicked off. That was also for the best. We had clocked up a respectable 20 miles in the saddle.

On the morning of our leaving day I woke up feeling rotten again. There was a very dicey weather forecast for lots of rain, damaging hail, high winds and a possibility of tornadoes. Our gut reaction was to stay put and see if we could get another night where we were. Better to be stationary in both a storm and an attack of vertigo. This was not an option however. No room at the inn. So we hastily packed up and set off. The weather was on its way and headed in the same direction as we were for about 100 miles until our paths were going to diverge -according to the forecasts. We were about an hour ahead of the front so as long as we kept moving we hopefully would escape the worst of it. We had the radio on and the programs were intermittantly interupted by a frantic sounding warning sirens followed by storm warning alerts. It was a bit unnerving. Very happily, though, we arrived at our next destination without even seeing a speck of rain. We were now in Florida, in the Eastern time zone and my dizziness, for now, had gone. Our next camp was a rough diamond in a gorgeous location. Indian Pass.

6th Mar – 14th Mar 2022

Our next day on the Hampson Gulf Coast Slow Tour took us a whole one hour’s drive eastwards into Mississippi. We were long overdue a laundry day, with no machines at our next place, so we factored in a laundrette stop en route. There is something deeply satisfying about doing all ones washing in one foul swoop and, despite the obvious evils of tumble driers, that includes leaving a laundry with a big folded pile of hot, dry, clean clothes, sheets and towels. Another cheap dopamine fix for me.

Our next stop was a small, genteel town called Ocean Springs, a short bridge-based journey from its better known neighbour, Biloxi. Biloxi’s skyline is moderately blighted by large hotels and monstrous casino buildings but Ocean Springs is still, with the exception of an isolated town-centre brutalist block, a charming collection of late 19th C and early 20th C homes and buildings. It even had an actual old town centre. Marvellous! Add to that a beautiful white sandy beach fronted with many handsome homes, plenty of safe cycle routes, lots of magnificent old oak trees lining many of the roads, a plethora of hostelries and a definate artsy vibe and this was another of our favourite types of place.

Only 3 miles from town is another great park called Davis Bayou Campground which is located within the Gulf Islands National Seashore. This National Park extends along the coast from Mississippi, through Alabama, to the Florida panhandle and includes many of the gulf barrier islands. We had booked eight nights here thus starting the phase of our trip with extended stays in each camp. The weather was improving and it was time to stop dashing about as much. As I write this I realise that my describing our existence as involving anything remotely close to ‘dashing’ is a bit of a stretch, but even we have scope for slowing down. We also are starting to visualise the end of this trip and are now back-planning our stops and journeys to get to our end-point at the right time. We have time to kill.

As the name might suggest, the park was situated on a bayou. Happily the mosquitos weren’t too bad and there were some very sweet little bats that came out at dusk to help with bug control. We saw the first fireflies of our trip and the first moderately sized alligator ‘at large’. It was only about 15m away but we unfortunately have no phographic evidence. Oh, and there was one worryingly confident racoon. This was out in the broad daylight and had absolutely no fear of anything. I had to fend it off with my camp chair. It might have just been used to humans, but there is rabies here and although it was not foaming at the mouth it did look a bit dishevelled. We reported it to the resident ranger. She was going to get maintenance to ‘deal with it’. Sorry dude. You were just a bit too freaky. The most annoying wildlife was the dreaded ‘No-See-Um’. A tiny biting gnat that was small enough to squeeze through our bug screens. There was no escape. They were everywhere. Kept at bay only by a smokey fire, a brisk breeze and 40%, skin-melting DEET spray. They are evil.

We cruised in and out of town several times during our stay here. The weather was mostly lovely and we found a few good places to have lunch. One of the bar/restaurants was owned by a very interesting chap called Ken who had many amusing anecdotes of his work and travels in the Middle East. He managed to match the garulous chit-chat of my beloved and we spent several pleasant hours chewing the fat with him over a pint or two of his own brews. The town’s art credentials are grown on the back of its most famous son, the nationally acclaimed artist Walter Anderson. In his later life he was a recluse and spent much time by himself out on Horn Island, rowing out the 12 miles in his little wooden boat. He would draw and paint the wildlife and landscapes in bright watercolours. The town has a great gallery museum of his life and work, including his old boat and a relocated little studio cottage, the interior of which he entirely decorated with murals. No-one had seen this during his lifetime. The museum is also connected to the original community centre of the town that he also completely decorated internally with murals. He had offered to do this for the town but they weren’t that keen for some reason. He wasn’t that well known then. Eventually they relented and paid him $1 for the commission. He didn’t quite finish the work before his death from lung cancer at the age of 62 in 1965. Now he is famous and the town is pleased as punch with their masterpiece. Suprise, suprise. His work wasn’t really to my taste.

There were a few nice shops in the town but we resisted the urge to buy anything. After four trips we are really maxed out on storage space. We have all that we need and no space to store anything new. Our extra stuff is slowly taking over the back seat of Big Dave and its a ‘one-in-one-out’ situation now with clothes and things. If it ain’t consumable by us (food & drink) or by Big Dave (petrol) then generally we don’t buy it!

This was a week with many strolls and bike rides, many camp fires and meals cooked over the hot coals, many games of cards,one thunderstorm and one dump-station drama. (Nothing that a brisk hose-down couldn’t solve but was a trifle embarrassing). We had a whole day of doing absolutely nothing and one day we had to move campsites. I even managed to get the height-shy Hampson to cycle to the mid-point of the Biloxi Bay bridge. He is very brave.

25th Feb – 6th March

Our slow easterly trajectory continued and we found ourselves spending the weekend at The Hollywood Casino, Bay St Louis. Most casinos have adjoining hotels and many also have RV parks on site. They are usually pretty good and relatively cheap, subsidised by gambling losses no doubt. Our visit here was a happy stop-gap. At this time of year, as the weather starts to improve, the state park camp grounds, like Fontainebleu where we had just come from, get fully booked up really early for the weekends. We had been far less organised than the weekending locals and found ourselves looking for space at short notice. The casino came up trumps and this had the added benefit of the prospect of an evening’s entertainment. I am partial to feeding $20 into the slot machines with the express purpose of taking more than $20 out. (It’s something learned at my mother’s knee – in my thirties) It is also one of my lesser used methods of accessing dopamine. There’s just something about the noises they make….. I have absolutely no interest in pulling up a chair to a green baize table.

The RV park was quite satisfactory and we picked a site away from the melée in a quite corner near the swampy waterway (which was much nicer than I realise than that sounds). There were no alligators to see but a large number of jumping fish which kept us amused. The nearby hotel and casino were concrete monstrosities in muddy yellow and there was a busy golf course. There were some very impressive rigs in the park and one of our near neighbours made us feel quite insignificant…

It was easy cyling around here and during the day on Saturday we had a great few hours cruising around the waterfront, admiring the houses. Now we were in hurricaine Katrina territory. The massive hurricaine that hit this coast in August 2oo5 caused immense damage to a wide swathe of Gulf coast, but most of the international news that reached our ears was focused around the unparalleled human toll that weighed on the heavily populated New Orleans when the levees broke and flooded the city. This area lost many, many buildings but luckily most people heeded the call to evacuate and the death toll was thankfully quite low considering the force of the beast.

We had Saturday evening in the casino. A cigarette smoke-filled, maskless place that stepped us back in time to 1999, let alone pre-Covid 2019. Its amazing how what once was normal has become so weird. We got a bit dressed up (although this is the land of casual attire so we stood out like a sore thumb by virtue of the fact that we weren’t wearing baseball caps and trainers) and I even put on some make up (well, a lick of mascara-if that counts). Our itinerary for the evening: Play the machines, have a few drinks, have a nice meal in the steak restaurant, listen to the live music, play the machines, home. Our gambling budget was $20 each. Somehow this translated into Nick losing $30 within about 9 minutes and me spending $10 over the course of the whole evening and winning $12. I am very satisfied to have extracted a whole $2 from the casino coffers. It is the principle of the matter. We ate fish in the steak restaurant, which was delicious and the band wasn’t bad either. This was a genuine ‘night out’, a rarity indeed.

Our onward journey from the casino was a mega 9 mile trek to the other side of town. The adjoining town to Bay St Louis is called Waveland. It was originally part of Bay St Louis but granted status as a seperate municipality in 1888. It was badly hit by hurricaine Camile in 1969 but in 2005 it had the misfortune of being ‘ground zero’ for the landfall of hurricaine Katrina. The 125mph winds and 30ft storm surge all but obliterated the town, leaving only a few brick builings partially standing. The rest was match wood. We visited the town’s museum – originally a school house and one of the aforementioned two brick buildings – which documented the destruction of the hurricaine. There were some amazing photos, videos and first person accounts of the destruction. It was very sobering. It is also amazing to realise that everything that we could see now was due to rebuild efforts, even if there are still many ‘ghost plots’ dotted around the place. This is the name that I gave to what was obviously the site of a previous home that had been destroyed, but with the foundation/driveway/gate posts remaining. These quiet spaces where homes once stood sometimes evoking more emotion than the photos of their destruction.

I don’t know why Waveland is called Waveland. This is the Gulf coast so there isn’t really any consistent surf. It was a lovely coastal community, however, and had a lovely beachfront bike/walking path all the way round to Bay St Louis. Waveland is apparently the only city on the gulf that has banned commercial contruction on the waterfront, and this gives it a very relaxed vibe. We were staying in Buccaneer State Park, a park on the site of a parcel of land once owned by Andrew Jackson, 7th US President. It was a big, busy park with lots of weekenders still in situ. Luckily our site was on an outside corner with a bit of space and privacy but lots of sites were cheek-by-jowl with RVs packed in like sardines. It was Sunday before Mardi Gras and people were in party mode. America celebrates a federal holiday called Presidents Day on the third Monday in February. In the Mardi Gras states they swap out this day off for the day of Mardi Gras. Sensible.

Like everything else in this area, the park was obliterated by Katrina and had been rebuilt with all the key buildings: office, laundry, shop being hoisted aloft on stilts. This was a real family orientated park with lots of playgrounds, a wading pool and a waterpark (both shut for the season), a frisbee golf course and the park roads were a general race track for kids marauding around on bikes. We thought that it would be the kids that irritated us here, but instead it was the adults. The music blaring, golf cart dependant, tobacco-chewing & spitting adults. There is definately a difference of attitude between the vacationners/weekenders and the long termers in the RV’ing world. It is mainly to do with the level of noise they create. There is much more ‘hooplah’ with those on holiday. The golfcarts are riduculous. Lot of people bring them purely to drive around the park instead of going for a walk. One chap was golfcart walking his dog. Plenty of people were taking their dogs for a ride. Freaking madness. As for the spitting. Please. No. Its. Gross. Don’t stand there talking to me whilst chewing tobacco then hoik brown disgustingness at my feet. Excuse me whilst I quietly retch.

The joy of our stay here was, suprise, suprise, the bike path . It ran alongside the white sandy beach from near the park entrance all the way round to Bay St Louis, a distance of about 6-7 miles. We did the journey multiple times and enhanced our exercise by seemingly hitting headwinds in both directions every time. How is that fair? On Mardi Gras day itself we found ourselves in downtown Bay St Louis to be confronted by the crowds awaiting the arrival of the parade. This was entirely unplanned and we were kicking ourselves for chosing this day to come for lunch. Surely it would be too busy to find somewhere nice to eat? We needn’t have worried. After we strolled about to soak up the buzz of the building crowds we stopped at a dacquiri shack and got a oversized alco-slushi each. We drank these too quickly whilst sitting on the kerbside, then stood up and realised that our legs didn’t really work. We staggered off to find a place for lunch just as the parade was starting, thus guaranteeing getting a table at a cool waterfront restaurant. We were just finishing up when the parade finished and as the bead festooned hungry hoards arrived, looking for a late lunch. Perfect accidental timing. Our cycle home was slow and steady as we battled the duel handicaps of the ever-present headwind and dacquiri-plus-beer legs. We got there eventually.

Our next weekend involved an EVENT. Not far from where we had been was a town called Kiln, called The Kill for some reason by all locals and those in the know. Whereas Bay St Louis was an important port for the bootleggers of imported illeagal booze during prohibition, The Kill, given its location on large waterways, was an important distribution hub to get this booze to cities such as New Oeleans and up to Chicago. This was also the location of ‘Swamp Pop Music Fest’. A three day extravaganza of who knew what!

I found out about it by pure internet browsing accident and before we knew it we had booked tickets for the whole three days including three nights RV camping on site, the local county fairgrounds. Information was very limited but the weather promised to be good and it was going to be a cultural experience in some shape or form!

The fairgrounds had a large area for RV parking with power and water hook-ups and hardstandings. When I booked I had paid a bit more for a site ‘on the fence’. There was a significant derth of online information and I had assumed that this was going to give us a perimeter spot with a bit of extra space away from the crowds and noise. What it actually meant was a site by the fence on front row of the RV park right next to the music stage. Exactly the opposite of what we wanted. We sucked up the extra cost of the mistake and hastily reorganised a quieter spot with Brandon, the man in charge. It transpired that there was plenty of availability as the festival had been organised far too close to Mardi Gras for it to be well attended. He was overly laid back about the whole thing which led to him accidentally reassigning us one of the few spoken-for sites. It was a particularly nice one with a shady tree, which was obviously why the stern, local lady who pitched up two hours after we were well and truely installed, had specifially requested it. She had arrived in a small convoy of a large motorhome and a truck towing a trailer carrying a golfcart *. She coughed and spluttered, flapped and harumphed, postured and paced. We sat serenely, unmoved by her irritation and immoveable from our camp chairs in the dappled sunshine under our disputed tree and sent her back to Brandon. His problem, not ours. She might be local, but we are British. Top trumps, lady, top trumps. Happily for us all, there was another similar site available with another (smaller) tree and she was mollified. There was not going to an uncomfortable trans-atlantic diplomatic incident after all.

Now true Swamp Pop is a music genre specific to the Arcadiana region of south Louisiana and an adjoining section of southwest Texas. Created in the 1950s by young Cajuns and Creoles, it combines New Orleans–style rhythmn country and western, and traditional French Louisiana musical influences. That was what we thought we were getting. What we actually got was a variety of bog-standard bands playing covers of mediocre country music with the headline act, Doug Stone – seller of 9 million albums- playing his own mediocre country music. It was a very small, very local affair with one small stage, one beer concession selling only three types of light beer, two food trucks, two small bouncy slides for the kids and four portaloos. Glastonbury twasn’t.

The joy of staying on-site was that we could easily wander backwards and forwards to the festival enclosure, using our own loo and opting in and out of procedings depending on how the music sounded. One evening it was too cold to stay more than 30 minutes, so we extracted. One evening we ordered fried catfish and crawfish with chips from one of the food carts and then took it home to eat then couldn’t be bothered to go out again. On the last day there was a Crawfish Boil -a competetive cook-off- and a teeny tiny car show during the day, and the underwhelming Doug Stone in the evening. We endured 45 mins of his durge, then extracted. We knew that this was not our natural environment or our preferred music genre but the locals seemed to enjoy it. Everyone seemed to know each other and every third or fourth number triggered an influx of folk to the front of the crowd (seated in a higgledy-piggledy collection of BYO camp-chairs) and a spontaneous outburst of line dancing. I think they learn it at school.

*Now back to the golfcarts. It was approximately 100m from the back of the RV area to the festival enclosure, so most people were camped closer than that to the gate. At least 1/3 of the 30-40 RVs had brought golfcarts with them to do the ‘journey’. Many of these were obviously people that had no problems with mobility because we saw them dancing. Stern Local Lady amongst them.

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!

18th Feb – 21st Feb 2022

We find ourselves in the heart of Mardi Gras country in peak Mardi Gras season. The purple, green and gold colours, baubles and banners have been increasingly festooning homes, RVs, fences, lamp posts and people as January ended and February has progressed and there is a definite building of the party–time vibe.

Christmas has barely been over a month before Mardi Gras gets going, and before that the halloween decorations are only begrudgingly taken down as Christmas trees and inflatable festive lawn ornaments are seemlessly erected. This country loves a themed party, but in this part of America it loves Mardi Gras best of all. They definitely ‘Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler’.

The town parades that characterise Mardi Gras start on mid-february weekends and build to a crescendo on Mardi Gras day itself. ‘Fat Tuesday’ fell on the 1st of March this year and seems a decidedly more fun way to celebrate the last day before the start of Lent than whipping up a few pancakes, à la Shrove Tuesday.

Most towns will have some sort of parade season and they are of various sizes, themes and levels of professionalism. A lot of the more historic parades are run by Krewes which are Mardi Gras specific members-only clubs that organise and man the floats for each parade. It can be quite ‘closed door’. Like the Masons, but with beads.

We wanted to experience Mardi Gras but had no desire to go anywhere near New Orleans to do it. We hunted for a smaller town that was vaguely on our route that had a weekend of parades where we could easily camp close to the action whilst staying safe. How hard could that be?? Actually, not very hard at all as it worked out. Houma was the place.

Houma, pronounced Homer, strapline ‘Home, Sweet Houma, is only about 35 miles from Morgan City and had exactly what we were looking for. It’s a city of about 33,000 people and still heavily steeped in its Cajun culture, the surrounding swamps and bayous isolating the area from outside influence for much of its history. The Mardi Gras celebrations here are some of the oldest and biggest outside New Orleans, with a much more family friendly, relaxed vibe. The icing on the cake was our discovery that the Houma Civic Centre, a mere 1 mile from the parade route, had RV hook-ups on its massive carpark and so we could stay within walking distance of the action. Perfect!

Our farewells to Trevor and Krista in Morgan City were made easy given the promise that they were going to come to Houma to find us for one of the parades over the weekend. We headed off and cruised to our next stop. Every town has a fairly recent hurricaine story and Houma is no different. Its is very recent, having taken a direct from huricaine Ida last August. It did not pack the punch of Katrina but in some areas many of the roofs of homes are still sporting the waterproof blue temporary fixing as the roofing companies are inundated doing the repairs. Many older, more fragile buildings did not survive and there were many piles of rumble where they once stood. Rebuilding is part of life here.

We found our allocated parking area at the civic centre centre and joined our place amongst numerous fellow RV dwelling Mardi Gras revellers. The organisation of the space allocations seemed very haphazard, bearing no relation to the lines painted on the ground and there were all shapes and sizes of rig parked in a happy jumble of angles and overlaps. Most people had a seperate vehicle and a few visitors vehicles too, giving the place definite drunken Jenga vibe. As long as no one wanted to leave in a hurry it was going to be fine. Our spot was a bit out of the fray but we had no plans to move either.

It turned out that the Civic Centre was the staging area for a lot of parade floats and was also a hub for the ubiquitous party buses. It seems that the standard operating procedure on parade days is that the members of the Krewes for that parade spend ALL DAY, from DAWN until the parade, being driven around the city in converted and decorated decomissioned school buses with the roofs cut out, DRINKING HEAVILY and having a jolly old time to the backdrop of INCREDIBLY LOUD MUSIC. Their route was repeated laps around noteable destinations of the city that featured the Civic Centre front and centre. There was no mercy for campers trying to sleep.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and there were four parades planned for the weekend: Fri and Sat evenings and two on Sun afternoon. We decided that we would go to the Friday eve one and this was our (hideously poorly calculated) plan:

The parade started at the top of town at 6pm, so we estimated that it would get to our part of town at about 7.30pm based on the time it takes to walk the distance. We had a cup of tea and a piece of king cake* at 4.30pm – very sensible pre-hydration and carbs to see us through to our street food dinner later. We set off slowly walking through a moderately tatty, semi-industrialised part of town at 5.15pm, arriving at the fairly deserted parade route by 6pm. There were only a few people around and we were surprised to secure great seats with good parade route views in an, also oddly deserted, Irish bar. We settled in for an hour or two of beers whilst waiting for the parade to arrive. A hour and a half later, nothing had happened. Still not many people had gathered. Was this to be a very poorly attended parade or had we made a naive misjudgement…?

Well it seemed the latter was true. We sat at those seats like Lord and Lady Muck for FOUR HOURS before the parade finally arrived. By that time the place was packed, many beers had been drunk (mostly by my companion), no food had been eaten and many friends had been made. Our English accents cut through the ever increasing chatter of the amassing revellers, marking us out as curious imposters that needed investigating. We met ‘Pork Chop’ (a 25 year old who was fortifying himself with the industrial quantities of vodka redbull that only a heart under the age of thirty can withstand), Gerald (a local who had driven TWO BLOCKS to the bar-I berated him for his laziness), Raymond, apparently known as ‘Brother’ to all (including his mother, apparently. Which is odd…your mother calling you Brother…isn’t it?) There was a girl who let me try on her deely boppers (look it up) and another who had badly twisted her ankle on her first evening out since having a baby 4 months ago to whom I gave up my valuable barstool. It was noisy and crowded. There was not a mask in sight. It was the first time I had felt a strangers breath on my face for nearly 2 years. Somehow it didn’t really matter.

Finally, at about 10pm, the parade arrived. Then stopped. This is normal. This is why it takes so blinking long. We headed outside to soak up the Mardi Gras Energy and score some beads. One float inched by and then I suddenly realised Nick had peaked. I bought him a burger and we weaved our way home. We had had a lot of fun, but the parade had been the least of it. We were denied a sleep-in by the next fleet of music blaring party buses that started their laps at an ungodly time on Saturday morning. Lather, rinse, repeat for the Krewes.

We opted out of Saturday. Completely.

Sunday was another day, by which time we were ready for Mardi Gras again! Perhaps we were not ready at 7am which was when the Krewes collected today’s floats that were parked up at the civic centre accompanied by more VERY LOUD MUSIC. Still no mercy for sleeping campers. There were two back to back parades today with the first one setting off at midday. Trevor and Krista collected us at about 1pm and the four of us headed back to the same area where the Irish pub was and set up camp chairs on the parade route in a small park. We spent a very pleasant three hours sitting in the sun, chatting, eating junk food and drinking the odd daiquari whilst waiting for the equally slow parade to get to us. Eventually it arrived and it was two hours of pure joy!

It is many decades since have I reaped so much dopamine from the acquisition of such piles of plastic junk. They weren’t just throwing beads, they were throwing whole bags of beads. Big beads, small beads, novelty beads. There were soft toys, hats, frisbees, hula hoops, snacks. Krista got a whole pickle in a bag. Nick got some Elton Johns. I even got a pair of boxer shorts. It was loud, it was messy, it was fun. Considering the parade had been going for up to six hours hours by the time it got to us, the Krewes on the floats were still amazingly enthusiastic and nowhere near running out of paraphanalia to lob into the crowd. I possibly can’t say the same for the members of the four or five school marching bands in the parade who were looking decidedly over it by the time they got to us. There were some pink faces and fixed smiles.

At the end of the day we had to make some serious decisions about how much of our haul to keep, what to gift to the (actual) children around us, and what to leave on the roadside (Spoiler alert : the undercrackers didn’t make the cut) The tail-end-charlie float of the parade was a ‘bead recyling’ trailer and there was a mad rush to collect up the excess bags of beads and hurl as many as one could into it. Great idea.

Trevor and Krista dropped us home and we said our goodbyes. Who knows when and where our paths may cross again in the future, but I would love to think that they will. We had had a great Mardi Gras experience and Les Bons Temps had definately Rouler’d.

*King Cake.

This purple, green and gold glitter covered confectionary is an absolute fixed feature of Mardi Gras. They are mostly massive, sold everywhere and appear to be a sort of spiced cake filled with a variety of flavours of sickly sweet goo. There is a plastic baby. The name comes from something to do with the Three Kings and the baby is to signify baby Jesus, I think. Historically the baby was hidden inside the cake and whoever got the baby in their slice was meant to have good luck. In litigation-rife USA the baby is now placed atop the cake and looks disturbingly like it is drowning in a sea of glittery icing. We managed to find a smaller version that was heavier than a neutrino star. We only managed to eat half the cake. The baby is displayed on our pinboard of treasures, for good luck.

11th Feb – 18th Feb 2022

Our next stop was Morgan City and despite its grandiose title it was only a modest sized town of about 12,000 people. Our camp was a town-owned park on the shores of a fairly large lake, Lake Palourde. We were here for a whole week.

This place had all the ingredients for our favourite sort of destination:

A lovely waterfront pitch in a nice park.

It had great views, a small beach, a marina, firepits, lots of mature trees draped in very photogenic Spanish moss, a perimeter walking path and a bazillion squirrels that, due to the locals’ habit of regularly feeding them, were exessively tame. Some of the squirrels were an unusual jet black and were particularly bold. Being approached by a beady eyed ninja squirrel was quite unnerving.

All the above, yet cheap.

We have paid a variety of prices for a variety of campsites, but this one was great value for money, which makes everything rosier!

All of the above, cheap, plus some friendly neighbours.

It’s always great to make meet our fellow campers but these encounters are often fleeting and reasonably superficial. Every now and then we are lucky enough to make a connection with camping neighbours that evolves into a friendship. Here we met a young couple called Trevor and Krista who were newly married and living the full-time RV life with a cat and a very cute dog in tow. They both work remotely from a trailer (caravan) and have embraced the post-covid ideal of a simpler, lighter life. They were very good company. It is also very refreshing to spend time with some youthful people. Usually, with this lifestlye, we are the young’uns, which is saying something!

Our park was an easy and safe 2-3 mile cycle to town.

It is always such a pleasure to be able to get around by bike without having to battle with traffic and I love spending time in places that have invested in cycle and walking trails.

The town was the perfect mix of old, interesting. Small enough to be easily explored, yet big enough to have plenty of amenities.

It was haircut time again and we randomly selected a salon in the picturesque historic part of town. The building had a tiny shopfront and then opened out into an enormous room with a definite ‘industial chic’ vibe. (Apparently properties used to be taxed on the basis of linear footage of street front, hence the ‘Tardis’ design.) Our shearer, Amber, was a font of all knowledge for everything Morgan City, especially the locations of all the best drive thru’ dacquiri shacks. Her answer to the question “What is there to do in Morgan City?” was “Drink”. She didn’t really understand why we were visiting here. After acquiring our more than satisfactory new hair-dos (Compare and contrast our Port Aransas experience where I had to coach the girl through my haircut and still came out unhappy) we headed to lunch. Our destination was a very old, local cajun food joint called Rita Mae’s. It looked like a little house from the outside, and felt like a little house on the inside too. It’s very modest appearance was at odds with its overwhelming good food & reviews and we happily tucked into a delicious lunch of a shrimp and oyster po’boy and a crab pattie with jambalya and buttered sweetcorn. MMMMMmmmm! We also found a brilliant family owned hardware store on a back road which we ended up visiting a couple of times. Fellow lovers of these establishments will know that one rarely needs a reason to enter and browse their hallowed aisles, but one will always find something essential to buy. We had a few minor repairs to do on TinCan that involved a tiny amount of sealant but having opened the tube it made sense to finish it up as it wasn’t going to keep. For this reason I found myself on the roof for two hours on a hot, windy afternoon, refreshing all the seals that I could see. This was much to the entertainment of our fellow campers, especially the ladies of a certain age, who definately saw this as a ‘blue job’. Unfortunately our ‘blue job’ operative is scared of heights so I left him doing ‘pink jobs’ inside. Besides, I am the Caulking Queen – Cue Abba earworm……..

There were a few specifically unusual things (accessible by bike or feet) in the environs to entertain us as tourists geeks.

A modest 1.5 mile stroll through the campsite and then along the grass verge of the main road (no pavements obviously) was Brownell Memorial Park. It was 9.5 acres of swampy land that was gifted to the city by the Brownell family and is the site of the family vanity project: a 106ft tall, 61 belled carillion tower The bells used to be rung manually but now an automated system chimes the quarter hours and plays a variety of tunes. It was quite lovely and we were the only visitors. There was a small welcome centre manned by an elderly, fairly deaf lady who had absolutely no idea what we were saying. The centre was a one-roomed cottage that was set out like it was the lounge of her house with a small dusty TV in the corner playing gameshows and she seemingly filled her time by feeding the birds. She was convinced that the place was occupied by spirits of long dead native americans. We bade our farewells and left her to Wheel Of Fortune.

Morgan City is in an enormous wetland area called the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland swamp area in the USA (bigger than its more famous Florida Everglades cousin). For this reason it is extremely vunerable to flooding so the town is protected by an impressive levee and flood barrier wall that winds around the waterfront. It has big solid gateways that allow access to the river and all the business that operate on the water side of the levee, and these obviously are clanged shut when the water level starts to rise. I was glad to see that there were fixed ladders at regular intervals to allow any stragglers to escape to safety once the gates had been deployed. They do spoil the water views somewhat.

One of Morgan City’s claim to fame that it was the origin of the world’s first submersible oil drilling barge, Mr Charlie. Launched in 1954, this was pioneering technology at the time and allowed the drilling of wells in water up to 40ft depth, which was considered very deep in the 50s. It also could be moved around and re-deployed at multiple drill sites which was also a novelty of the time. It was in active service until the late 1980s when it was retired back to the river bank of Morgan City where it is now a training facility for oil rig crews, a sometime movie set location and a living museum offering guided tours. We cycled up to it, having blithered around looking for the entrance for a while. It was completely unsignposted and we were working with a dot on a google map coupled with it being plainly visible on the otherside of the levee wall set back from a down-at-heel residential area. Even when we arrived at the right place, there was little evidence of the fact. A grizzled man sauntered out of a delapidated port-a-cabin and confirmed that this was the place and after a short chat we were escorted to join the current tour (of two other people). It was a very interesting couple of hours. Our guide was a garrulous ex-oil rig worker called Virgil who kept us talking much longer than our empty stomachs and full bladders were comfortable. We eventually extracted ourselved with fond goodbyes and a promise that we would call him if we needed anything or if we wanted to drop in to his house for a coffee. Louisianans sure are friendly.

Our time in Morgan City was a delight. It was great to be in one place for a whole week, to have some good weather and to meet some good people. But, to coin a phrase ‘the show must go on’, and so we headed off to our next destination, Houma, a massive 35 miles away.

1st Feb – 10th Feb 2022

A moderately long drive brought us to Lafayette, the 3rd largest city in Louisiana after New Orleans and its capital, Baton Rouge. Named in 2014 as America’s happiest city, its agricultural roots were superceded by the discovery of oil in the gulf in the 1940s leading to its growth and now it is a hub for tech, medical and financial business.

We knew that our next park would not disappoint us. As a KOA (Kampgrounds of America) campground, liveried in jaunty yellow branding, it was one of a large chain of parks which are all of a great standard with amazing facilities. This one was no exception. It was located just outside Lafayette city in a place called Scott, and if we ignored a bit of road noise from the nearby I-10, it was like an oasis compared to Crystal Beach. Good showers, an enormous laundry, firepits, a boating lake, swimming pool (unfortunately closed), and, wait for it….MINI GOLF! We thought that that would be enough for us, but it got better…we had accidentally arrived in the Boudin Capital Of The World and there was one of the best makers of said foodstuff, Billy’s, a mere 100 metres from our spot.

A boudin is a sausage-like creation, filled with a seasoned mixture of pork and rice and is quite delicious. Mostly eaten by squeezing the filling out of the caseing, it was like the lovechild of a sausage and a haggis although nobody has even heard of a haggis in Louisianna so that comparisson falls flat here. Our walk to Billy’s felt like a sort of pilgramage. To give the establishment it’s full title would be to call it Billy’s Boudin and Cracklins, which brings me to the second pork-derived product worthy of worship. Cracklins:deep fried, seasoned pork rind served warm and by weight. We approached the shop-front of the large shed with awe as if it was a shrine. Amusingly there was a drive-thru which was even busier than the shop. Only in America…! We spent a long time selecting our boudin varietals and were very restrained in only ordering a quarter pound of cracklins. We scurried home and had cracklins for our lunch. Delicious AND nutritious!!

One day we walked into the centre of Scott. This was about a mile and a half away and the experience was unremarkable for two common reasons. 1) There were almost zero pavements. No-one walks so no need for them. We muddle along verges and roadsides and luckily drivers are usually so surprised to see us that they give us wide berths and generally we feel quite safe. 2) There was no ‘town centre’ as we’d expect in the UK. This keeps catching us out in the USA as we forget that most towns and cities here have evolved with plenty of available space and since the invention of the motor car so their CBDs are disseminated and unfocused. We walked until we got to the vague central area of Scott but there was nothing really to see so we had a cold drink in a nice cafe and walked home, calling in at the interestingly named ‘NuNu’s Cajun Supermarket’. It sold some quintessential Cajun products…

Finally had some lovely warm weather here. We wore shorts, we broke out the BBQ, we had a few evenings sat out around the campfire, we played mini-golf (Nick won by one stroke after us being neck and neck for 21 holes), Tin Can and Big Dave got a long overdue wash, we walked laps of the park and its small lake.

Lafayette itself was about 8 miles away so one day we took an Uber into town to check it out. A cold front had arrived and it was chilly again so we bundled up and headed out early afternoon. Our plan was to get dropped off just north of ‘downtown’, explore, do some bits of shopping and then stroll slowly a couple of miles south to a bar/restaurant that had live music and looked a good spot for an early dinner. It was a good plan but again scuppered somewhat by the derth of civilisation/shops/anything to see or do in downtown. When will we learn?! We wandered around, cold and bemused, until we found where everyone was – a cool coffee shop in a re-purposed autoparts store. It was full of Gen Zs and Millenials. We felt quite old. We had cake. It helped. We started our walk towards the restaurant about 2 hours earlier than our informal schedule. It might be a very early dinner! Our route took us through the campus of the University of Louisiana. This was beautifully kept, had some lovely redbrick buildings, some magestic old oak trees and not a student in sight. It was a term-time week day. Where was everybody? Drinking coffee in downtown, perhaps? A couple of chilly laps around a small park filled another hour. Another hot coffee in a very cool retro diner warmed us up and killed thirty minutes. We’d made it to 5pm and headed to the restaurant.

We arrived at the appropriately named ‘Bontemps Grill’ after an exciting dash across a four lane road with no crossings or verges and discovered a full carpark – a good sign. Despite the early hour the place was buzzing and we had a welcome twenty minute wait for a table which we spent having a drink at the bar. This place served Cajun fayre and we ended up eating spicy deep fried Alligator bites, Fried Catfish with crawfish ettouffé (a spicy cajun gravy) and grilled chilli butter shrimp with sweet potato and sage mash. We very quickly decided that we love Lousiana and its food and we might stay forever. After dinner we moved ourselves back to the bar for some digestifs. The band was good but very, very loud. They were playing at about 4000000000 dB, making our conversation with a new friend very difficult. I think she was a lawyer called Lauren who was in town for a family funeral, But she might have been a librarian called Lyndsey who was in town for fun and frolics. Either way, she was very nice.

From Lafayette/Scott we headed south across the flat and wet lands of rural Southern Louisiana, travelling deeper into the bayou. We were going to Abbeville, a small but well serviced town that we had visited before. Stalwart TinCan Travels fans may remember our stay here in early November 2018 for the Great Omlette Festival where the town has a parade of eggs and chefs then cooks up the ‘world’s largest omlette’ made from approx 5000 eggs. This visit was less eggy, although we did stop at a cute Mom’n’Pop restaurant for breakfast where eggs were involved and then we stocked up on provisions for our next stop, a state park about 12 miles south.

Palmetto Island State Park – named for the Palmetto, a trunckless palm tree – was a delight. The park itself was quite small but the campsites were huge and well kept and we discovered to our suprise had both laundry and wifi. Both of these are apparently normal in Louisiana but we had seen neither at any other state parks in the rest of the country. Here we went the full banana on our camping experience. All the toys were liberated, the fairy lights were deployed and we sat around the campfire every one of our five nights here. There were some walking trails, some small fishing/boating lakes and there were enough paved roads through the park to make a bike ride of about 10 miles.

In this area was another eatery that Anthony Bourdain had visitied for his show, Suire’s Restaurant and Grocery. We decided that it was worth offloading Tin Can for the day to go and visit for lunch and to take the opportunity to explore the area a bit further. Firstly we headed south to the coast to an intriguingly named conurbation called Intracoastal City. This is not really any sort of civilisation at all, more a collection of shrimp boat docks, boat yards and businesses servicing the offshore and inshore oil industry. It has a shop but only a small number of homes. Calling it a city was using some creative licence, but I don’t think that the Louisianans care.

Further along, at the end of the road are some large locks, allowing the large barges carrying oil to navigate up the intracostal canal to and from Texas. The internet informed us that although the locks were gated, all one had to do was ring the buzzer on the gate and one would be granted access. We pulled up and saw the gate and buzzer and a sign saying that the locks were operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. I rang the buzzer.

Me: ‘Hello, can we come in and watch the boats come through the locks?’

Intercom lady: ‘Urm…What’s your affiliation?’

Me: ‘Affiliation? We are just tourists exploring the area and were advised we could come in if we rang the buzzer’

Intercom lady: ‘Urm…hold on a second, I’ll check for you’

Pause.

Intercom lady: ‘Urm, Mam, this is a Army Corps of Engineers facility. We do not allow civilians to come in and wander around.’

So we failed to gain access to a US military site by ringing the doorbell. Who’d have thought?? Just goes to show, the internet can be wrong…

Never mind, by now it was lunchtime so we drove up to Suire’s. It is part of the fabric of this area having been family run from this site for 92 years. Part grocery store, part take away restaurant with seating, it was a shabby looking place, but appearances were very deceptive. The walls were covered with art, memorabilia, photos and print articles. Anthony Bourdain’s visit was only one small part of this local gem’s history. Apparently the fried chicken on special was amazing, but the group of burly crawfish farmers who arrived just ahead of us cleared the kitchen out of that. Rats. Instead we shared ‘turtle in sauce piquant’- slow cooked turtle in a spicy red sauce, served with fried catfish and a carbohydrate fiesta of rice, cornbread, potato salad and a piece of cake – and an deep fried shrimp po’boy (a long soft roll) with Cajun fries. Whilst waiting for our food to be prepared we got chatting to a very friendly local rancher called Tommy who imparted his life story to us with chapters being delivered like automatic gunfire. He, like many in this area called Acadiana, spoke a form of Cajun French and peppered his conversation with random French terms and phrases. He was very entertaining and interesting but it was a surreal ten minutes. The food was amazing and we reafirmed our new love for Cajun cuisine. By the time we finished our meal we had the place to ourselves and spent some time chatting to the owner and reading the walls.

Our time at Palmetto Island State Park passed in a blur of camp fires, walks, bike rides and the odd game of Weasel Bag (My name for our small, plastic, travel version of Corn Hole – if you don’t know what that is, google does.) We didn’t really want to leave, but this charabanc keeps on rolling and after six nights we moved on.