Destin, Florida

The hosts at Organ Pipe Cactus National Park had said that Destin, Florida, is a must, so  this is our next destination. We follow the coast and pass through some nice areas like Gulfport. Overnight station is at Spanish Fort State Park, nothing special, just convenient.
Henderson Beach State Park is at a nice location, indeed! White sand beaches, not too busy at this time of the year - however, I wouldn't want to be there at peak season.  This is a stretch of resort-free land about 1 mile long ( maybe less), but neighboured by resorts of any kind, amusement parks, shopping malls, factory outlrts, you name it. We have 3 nights there, then it's on the road again to Tallahassee via the coast. Some nice beaches here, overnight near Lanark village.

We now have to decide whether or not to go to South Florida. From what we have seen on the internet like Orlando (Disneyworld), Daytona Beach and worse South of there, the region would definitely not be what we like, overcrowded and absolutely touristy. Our decision is easy: we'll bypass South Florida and go across to somewhere near Jacksonville on the East Coast.
After another night near the highway on some actually quite nice RV park we stumble upon St. Simons Island. This is one of the most beautiful places I have seen on our trip so far, well manicured gardens and houses in an almost surreal environment of live oaks, again overgrown with Spanish moss. Most houses have huge sections, probably at least an acre (4000 m2) or so and are just beautiful. I could name a dozen houses at least where I would love to live! Small problem here: it becomes apparent very quickly that this is an island of the wealthy, sometimes maybe the filthy wealthy. Sooooo, maybe  a little early to order the moving van :-).

There is no campground on the island (surprise!), this means we have to go next door to Jekyll Island. Not as posh as St. Simons but still nice. We  are lucky and get a spot on the campground despite it being fully booked out officially, so that's where we will stay for the next 5 days.

New Orleans

Our camping ground in New Orleans is another great state park, spacious camping sites in a beautiful environment, clean facilities, free use of washing machines and dryers, and all of that for just $18 a day.

The weather forecast for the next days is bleak: a cold snap with temperatures below 10 degrees Celsius combined with high winds and rain. And rain it is for the first night! Next morning however, the sun comes out every now and then, couple of clouds and an icy wind. So, we put on the windbreakers and beanies and drive to Algiers Point for the ferry to Canal Street. We want to see the French Quarter and Central New Orleans ( or what's left/rebuilt of it after Katrina).

The ferry is a free service for pedestrians and gets you straight away the middle of it all. Opposite is some casino that apparently is one of the main  attractions on Canal Street but that we ignore as we simply can't be bothered with casinos. Straight away on to the streets of the French Quarter, then!

Some famous names here like Bourbon Street, but actually we're not overly impressed. If you only know American towns it probably  is something really special despite half of the shops / bars / galleries being still deserted after Katrina 5 years ago. The architecture looks definitely French, more intriguing, however, are the narrow streets and the little traffic that goes passes through.  
If, on the other side, you have seen older French or Belgian towns, you might think what all the fuss about the French Quarter is about. I have to admit that things may be different on a balmy summer evening with Jazz music around .....

Anyway, New Orleans is one of the nicer cities we have seen so far, not as micky-mousey as San Antonio, not half as ugly as Las Vegas. They still have to do a lot of work to repair the damages from Katrina and - the way it looks - more so to get the people to move back into town.
We return by ferry to Algiers Point which by the way is almost as nice as the French Quarter. It is one of the oldest parts of town, has apparently not suffered to much damage from Katrina and seems definitely a hip neighbourhood to live.

Lazy buggers!

Uh oh, we have been lazy, no entry for 2 weeks now! Well, we have been travelling a lot, so here's the report:
The stay at Lake Charles was relaxing, not much to do besides using the bikes a lot and going for some longer walks.
From here it's off to New Orleans via Lafayette and a couple of old plantation homes. Lafayette seems nice enough, but it's Sunday morning, so we only fill up on gas and continue to Darrow, close to the first plantation home that we want to visit, Houmas house. On the way there we already come past a couple of smaller, not so well known plantation homes, not open for viewing but still worth a photo from the fence.

Houmas house is really impressive, well kept gardens, one can really imagine life at it was here over a hundred years ago.

For the night we find a nice RV park at another plantation, not so impressive but still quite nice. What all those homes have in common is a more or less impressive alley of live oaks, sometimes 'decorated' with Spanish moss. Looks cool!

The next morning we visit Oak Alley plantation where they have the annual Spring Fair. Lots of food stalls plus some artists displaying the art, some of that not so arty. Reminds us of our youth in Germany when we had our stalls at the markets! On the other hand this fair shows that we are in the provinces, far, far away fro urban life, well, it's actually not that far....

From there it's along the levees to New Orleans. We found a state park close to the city center, just 8 miles from the ferry station Algiers Point - Canal Street/French Quarter.

Louisiana, land of the swamps

 On our way into Louisiana we pass by the Aransas Wildlife Refuge, home to the endangered whooping crane. Couple of short walks here, we actually see 3 of the birds, but more gators in the swamps at the wayside. When we drive out of the reserve one decent sized alligator actually  crosses the road straight in front of our vehicle.

Our destination for today is Port Arthur, on a lake and the first bigger town on I 10 into Louisiana. On arrival we realize that Port Arthur is long beyond its prime, some refineries, that's it. So we go on to Lake Charles. Quite the opposite of Port Arther! The town seems well kept and we go for a bicycle ride along the lake shore through a posh neighbourhood. Beautiful villas. The town center however is deserted on this Sunday morning despite a home show at the convention center on the lake. This is the same in all those American towns, businesses have moved out of the center to the highway servicing the town taking people with them.
Anyway, we'll stay here for a couple of nights at a State park in the middle of a ... swamp.

Our trip to March 14, 2010

Click image to enlarge!

This is how far we have travelled so far. Quite an amazing trip through mostly desert  and highlands. We had snow and heat, now we're looking forward to reach the East Coast in probably 2 weeks time. Not sure whether we will go down to Florida or not, we'll see!

Port Aransas

Again, we have done a lot of driving recently, so the plan is for some relaxation on the beach. On the internet we have found a nice looking RV park on Mustang Island, some 30 miles or so from Corpus Christi.
On our way here there were incredibly huge refineries - which we had not expected - to remind you that Texas is an oil state. We are actually a little sick of those cities where all business life exists along the highways and you'll never find an 'old city' worth mentioning. Therefore, we bypass Corpus Christi and reach Port Aransas on another overcast day. The weather forecast is for sunshine, however, so we'll be fine.
Well, sunshine it is, once the mist clears up late in the afternoon. This goes on for 3 days until we leave, unbelievable!
We discover another phenomenon of American beaches, at least that's how it seems to us. At Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles we had been wondering that there was a paved 'boardwalk' along the beach, straight on for miles, no trees to provide shade, nothing green, kind of machined beach,hmmmm. Same here in Port Aransas, some apartment blocks along the 15 or 20 miles along the beach, some resorts, and a 3 lane wide road along the dunes, absolutely straight, going for miles, no tree, nothing but car parks on the sand where you have to pay for a parking permit.It seems to confirm another impression we had earlier: the Americans are not the greatest walkers in daily life, everything has been made accessible by car. People drive to the beach, sit in front of their car and ...  slightly different from life in New Zealand or Australia.
For the following week the area expects hordes of teenage students, it's Spring Break! This means: we're off again, leaving Texas for Louisiana.

Big Bend to San Antonio

From Big Bend it's first up to Fort Stockton, another historic site remembering the battles of the past. The Fort is actually not much more than a few barracks built from stone and the Stars and Stripes in front. So we give that one a miss again and move on to San Antonio. The landscape changes from desert style to farmland and bush, after all those weeks a welcome change to more green colours.

Before San Antonio we go to New Braunfels to visit a Camping World store for some accessories to our motorhome. New Braunfels is a centre of German culture in Texas, they say. We don't find much of culture at all, the town seems past its heydays. We have to visit the oldest German bakery in Texas, of course, Claudia buys a date scone, I'm having a cinnamon role that has been drowned in icing sugar. The first cinnamon role I have not finished as far as I can remember!
So, nothing keeps us in New Braunfels, off to San Antonio for the night.

We stay at a RV park close to the center of town and next morning drive in by bus to see the Mexican market, the Alamo, the famous Riverwalk.....
To keep things short, it is an overcast day, starts raining later, the Mexican market is a couple of small touristy shops in a semi old market hall (mall?), the Riverwalk may be nice in summer for people who like eating out , the Alamo has been restored a little too much, anyway, not for us, feels very much like Disneyland, so after maybe 3 hours we're back to the RV park and leave the next morning to Corpus Christi, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Big Bend NP

Boy,  have we done a lot of driving to get here but we wanted to get out of the desert and simply relax, do some more hiking and try the new bicycles we've bought in Las Cruces. There's no phone or Internet at Big Bend, no power but your own generator that you don't want to hear all day, so that's exactly what we were after as our last semi-desert experience for a while.

Because Big Bend has been farmland close to the Rio Grande  there are some areas where the surrounding desert is interrupted by areas with big cottonwood trees, a surreal contrast with fresh green leaves with the desert background.

Our hike from that area that has been a farm some decades ago  along the Rio Grande Canyon shows how hard it must have been for the first settlers to get here in the first place, then build up their farms from the scratch. Besides the long trip through desert like country there are still mountain lions, black bears, snakes, scorpions, you name it that might have a bite at you still today.

 

After our experience in Canada last year, we carry our bear spray with us most of the time, just in case. It has the same effect as the old umbrella: if you carry one with you, it doesn't rain. So that's a no show for bears and mountain lions as well! What we see a lot of is eagles ( at least we believe they are eagles), one night there are nine of them flying around a tree close to the campground at nighttime. There are also huge numbers of small bats coming out in the evening.

We also meet one type of bird that I had seen on TV quite often as a child : the Roadrunner, meep, meep, a funny looking running bird that is actually quite fast, up to 30 miles per hour, I believe.

To Big Bend National Park, Texas

At White Sands NM we had decided against a sidetrip to Roswell. There aren't really any aliens there, are there? We think not, and there's not much to do but shop for alien memorabilia, so it's off to Texas, Big Bend National Park right at the Mexican border on the Rio Grande.
First, it's some more shopping for groceries (and 2 bicycles with a carrier for the motorhome) in Las Cruces, then the endless drive through a little more desert to El Paso. We had tossed around the idea of staying in El Paso for the night if we would like it on first sight, but on approaching the city limits it becomes quickly clear that we will go on the Van Horn. At least as far as you can see from the highway - and you can see quite a bit of El Paso - we weren't able to discover a single inviting spot. Sure, it is winter and somewhere in the desert, but still......
Van Horn is a small town again in the middle of nowhere, but is has gas stations, a bank, an RV park and.....
a bakery. It must be a sign from heaven, we will have to settle in Van Horn one day, maybe not just now.

This is it. We only need to move in and keep the business going, yeehaa !
By the way, it may pay to click on the picture to have an enlarged view. You'll see what I mean!

It's a long way to Tipperaryiiiiiiiii

It sure is. From Organ Pipe Cactus NM we had planned to travel to White Sands National Park via Fort Bowie, a historic monument re the battles Cochise. Maybe stay a night at Fort Bowie and then carry on through the endless desert. However, Fort Bowie in our imagination had some of that Western appeal, the Indians fighting the US cavalry and all that stuff - and that's what happened some 140 years ago - but today you'll need a lot of imagination for this picture. Sure, the 1.5 mile walk from car park to Fort is nice, nothing to spectacular, on the other hand, what did we expect. The Fort was built with Adobe bricks i.e. non-fired clay bricks and even here it rains every now and then. Have a look yourselves at the remains!

But first things first: We had spent the night before in Willcox, after a long drive from Organ Pipe Cactus NM. Willcox is the biggest town in the area, but still... It's close to nothing there, the middle of nowhere. But.... we woke up at sunrise in the morning after a good night's sleep to the sound of wild geese flying North. Amazing view, there are hundreds of them, wave after wave, coming from a lake nearby that had only formed after heavy rain the week before. It's wave after wave. Beautiful sight!
After breakfast through more desert, a little more desert to Fort Bowie, maybe 2 1/2 hours there, then some more desert, another drive through a little desert...you are getting the picture. Finally, we reach White Sands National Monument late in the afternoon, right at the best time to see it.
White Sands National Monument makes you blink and scratch your head. You've been driving through various kinds of desert for hundreds of miles and all of a sudden your in the snow! At least it looks like it. This really makes up for the long drive past The White Sands Missile Range, 'the birthplace of the NASA ' whatever missile program.

For the night we retire at a nearby RV park in Alamogordo as we will return to White Sands in the morning to enjoy a sunrise breakfast in a desert that really looks like it's made up from snow.