The Deep South

     As I mentioned briefly in the last blog, the last few days in Texas we hit up Houston. We took the longer scenic drive towards Galveston, and spent the night on the beach in Seaside before making it to Houston the following day. The drive was so beautiful, aside from the brown water in the ocean. Also, it was way more built up than the Baja. Here, all the houses are on stilts. That sure was a surprise to see. I did love how colorful they all were! I heard from a local that Galveston used to be the biggest city on the east coast way back, and then it was hammered by a storm that flooded it, causing major damage. Since then, they have raised all of Galveston 12 feet, put all the houses up on stilts (building code) and built an extensive sea wall. If anything, the US people will not back down and move their location. They will adapt! I think mother nature always wins, and because of that, this is not a place I would live. But, who am I say. Another thing I asked about was the brown water. The local told me his dad lived here back in the early 40’s, and back then the water used to be blue! However, since the south is so populated now, and they don’t let the rivers travel/wander like they used to, these set routes they have now erode more, which brings with it, a lot of sediment and organic matter. To add to that, the warmer ocean water is creating more algae bloom, that changes the color as well.    

So back to Houston, and its Space Centre. NASA was really cool to see. There was an actual rocket ship and shuttle that we could tour. We also got to see staff working on a replica of the International Space Station. Each of these were entertaining to explore. It promted us to watch Apollo 13, which made us realize that none of us want to become astronauts. 

Side note: much of the site-seeing we are doing is giving us ideas of movies to watch. After Roswell, we watched MIB 1 and 2, which were a hit with the boys. Also Independence Day, which has led to a Will Smith following. This has lead us to Fresh Prince of Bel Air- Ahhh! what a great show, and glad we are watching it now. But back to the diary of daily events. We stayed 3 nights at Brazo Bend State Park, just outside of Houston, and took a couple day trips in to see its sights. Again, I cannot say enough great things about the Texas State Parks. The people are so kind and informative, and the facilities are user friendly in any capacity and clean!!! Brazo Bend was our favorite by far becasue of the marshland/habitat that boasted endless alligators (along with their babies!!!), birds, wildlife and caring, helpful people that made us actually sad to leave. The Nature Centre there pulled out snakes for us to touch, little baby crocodiles to observe, and even had crawfish cleaning the tanks. I learned so much about the surrounding area from the rangers there. I would tell you all about it, but I would bore you with a history lesson you probably already know about.   I just loved getting out and being able to see real live gators in their habitats! We tried some fishing there. All Texas State Parks allow free fishing (no licence required) within the parks. We just ended up donating a bunch of lures to the swamps! Wyatt did find a camping chair. It was a compact, fold-up type that you can strap to things. So at the end of the day, when no one had come back for it, we allowed him to claim it- finder’s keepers rules. 

Big US cities are BIG! The traffic and noise are just so much! I don’t think any of us really relish the idea of staying in them for long. We also stress about nagivating them, especially in La Jefa. Houston was no different, but here we were able to get laundry done, buy groceries, visit another museum (The Health Museum) and hit up a thift store before leaving to Louisiana.

We had fallen in love with Texas’ State Parks and so we decided to book a State Park outside New Orleans, Bayou Segnette State Park….. I’m sorry but you do not compare. No real trails to bike or walk, your nature centre is closed and your staff don’t seem like they want to even deal with the public. I know you say that you are having trouble finding staff to work, but when you deal with tourists, I would appreciate your help. The washrooms are dirty, so I will be sticking with my motorhome shower while we are here.  So far, we are finding that Louisiana is much the same as its own state park. People are not all that happy to help you. They don’t look happy themselves, and it’s actually kind of sad. New Orleans is definitely not age appropriate for the kids. The street entertainment was so krass and abrasive, with sexual undertones, and even blatent sexual content. We had to just keep on walking. Now I know, NOLA is an adult town, known for its colorful entertainment, but this was at 3:30 pm in the town square. The highlights of The French Quarter were The Escape Room (which we managed to escape- our first time trying!), and the sweet beignets, covered in icing sugar- a NOLA specialty.  Mmmm! The kids don’t care about the quaint old architecture, or history, so walking around and enjoying the city was not on the agenda.  I remember doing the ghost tour, and I still get scared thinking about it today, so I was not going to let the kids hear those stories just yet! 

Tomorrow we are visiting The Laura Plantation to learn some southern history, then we are going to do a swamp tour, which I hope are more upbeat! 

 The Plantation was so interesting… We all learned so much: about sugar plantations, Creole people in the south and slavery.  The house was over 200 years old and was built with no nails. Seriously! The Cypress trees that grow down here, they grow in water, and so they are immune to rotting, but are quick to light on fire. They secrete an oil that smells like kerosene, which is what makes them easy to ignite. Probably why New Orleans has gone up in flames a few times. I was eager to soak up all of the info.  We have learned that we are more readily ignoring google maps, as they always take you on the freeway, where we can’t even do the speed limit and there is never anything worth seeing. Just lawyer billboard after lawyer billboard advertising. It’s just like going into Kelowna and seeing all the realtor signs. We have become  ‘Shun-Pikers’, which means, given the opportunity, we avoid the freeway (AKA “turnpike”). When going to the plantation we followed the Mississippi River and got to enjoy the little towns and farms. Such a great sight to see. 

The following day we did the same and avoided the highways and enjoyed our road trip to Cajun Swamp Tours. Here our captain, Dustin, was knowlegdable and fun. The whole family enjoyed the tour. This area is actually where Disney came to get their inspiration for the swamp when creating ‘The Princess and the Frog’.  Interesting fact of the day is that Cypress trees that grow in these swamps give off a pheramone that keeps the bugs away. It is only created when the sun warms up the tree and its inner sap, and so you actually don’t have to worry about the bugs until the sun goes down, then WATCH out!

From the swamp tour we drove to Mississippi and found an awesome boondocking place, at a trailhead for some MTB trails. Here we met some special people, Danny and June. They are retired Louisiana

residents that where on their way back from celebrating their 40th anniversary at Dauphin Island. We both choose to boondock here and had such a fun time. June had a puzzle table that the kids were obsessed with, and they ended up doing 2 large puzzles in only 2 days. We chatted about everything, enjoyed their happiness for life, and swapped stories. By the end I think we convinced them to come visit us up in Canada. Fingers crossed.  Once our friends left, we stayed one more night and then went into Biloxi to catch a shrimp boat tour.  I will say, we found Biloxi and even Mobile (where we went next) were cities we really enjoyed. Less over the top and less populated than places like Texas and the New Orleans’ area. 

Our tour in Biloxi was great, but once again we were the only kids, so the captain was great to them, keeping them entertained and involving them. However, we did a big NO-NO in the boating world. Have you ever heard that you are not to bring bananas on a boat? Well, google it, it’s a real thing!! And Gibson had brought two on for a snack, and when he brought them out we got some serious razzing!!! I never knew…. Ooops. Made for a funny story, and if anything bad happened I’m sure it would have been all our fault, however; it was successful and informative, with no real disasters to speak of. 

One thing to mention about these southern states, they take safety to the next level, like waivers, extra information, life jackets, no stepping out of line safety. Not sure if it has to do with all the sueing/lawyers things, but it was quite cumbersome, and irritating as you are catering to the stupidity, and it kinda takes the fun out of some things. I had to fill out a ton of information just to book a 2 hr public swim slot, and I can’t count how many times the lifeguards blew their whistles at all the kids at the pool, ours included.  So not to get our spirits down, we just played nice and followed ALL the rules. 

In Mobile Alabama we hit the USS- Alabama Military Memorial Park. This was epic for the kids! The destroyer (USS Alabama) was huge! There was also a Submarine (USS Drum) a dozen or so tanks and a bunch of aircraft as well. It was so fun to actually be able to tour the military vessels and see how the people lived and worked. They had successful careers, and were very usefull in WWII. Now, I am not a history buff, as it is always told by the winners and sometimes skewed, in my opinion, but seeing these feats of engineering was enthrawling. The kids were all about the gun power 😆, Massive cannons/guns everywhere on the ship.  

While there, we met another Canadian family that are actually living fulltime on the road. They run a motorcycle club, and travel the world. They made a schoolie from a bus in Vernon- 40 footer.  They had just come from a schoolie convention/meet up, and it made me realize that if we are wanting to meet other families on the road, we are going to have to have a more online presence and post on sites to schedule meet ups. This is something many people do, but I don’t feel that anymore time spent online is helping my mental health. I already spend too much time there, to research locations and places to stay. It is actually too time consuming and hard to weed through all the advertisments trying to sell you places to book, places they want you to see or buy, and whatever else is in their algorithm.  Ugh! I feel caught between looking forward to coming home and letting the kids play with other kids more regularly, and trying to make as many memories with them as I can. Such a pull either way. Hugs. It’s hard. 

Best southern food. Brisket and pulled pork!

I have a dental conference to go to in Vancouver, so I am flying out from Nashville in a few days. Because of this detour, we are going to have to cut our time in Florida short. Now, originally I was okay with it, but then I saw the white sand and everyone was saying that Key West was full of kids on holidays, I was lamenting the loss. Now I realize that I would have had to fight for camp spots with too many people. Plus, in Florida you can book spots 11 months in advance, so it is nearly impossible to get a campsite on short notice. Well spots that are affordable, anyways.  There are private spots ranging from $90-190 US a night. Today we hustled over to St. George State Park as they were one of the very few that have first come first serve sites (only 5). We got there before they opened the gates at 8 am, as they had one spot avaliable (I called the night before to see if people were leaving), but we were beat out by some retired European couple that were there even before the park employees got there an hour before at 7am. So we did not get a spot near the beach. We are now away from the coast and in the Apalachicola National Forest. Great Turkish neighbours and I am sure it turned out for the best:) A few days here and we will work our way up to Nashville.