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Weekend drive to Cocodrie. LA

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Katya Posted in out and about, travel | Leave a comment

We left Bayou Vista at about 2 in the afternoon on Saturday with the intentions of driving down another road that ends deep in the marshlands, this time to Cocodrie. After about an hour of taking down the tarp and putting things away, we headed out on the road towards Houmas having eaten nothing as often in the case by that time in the day. It’s normally not an issue but on a traveling day, eating is more of a pain in the ass than days when we can just open the fridge and cook something. When we got to Houmas we only had about 2 hours of daylight left and ended up having to eat garden burgers at Burger King because the only other chain that has them at every single location is Denny’s and they don’t have one. We wanted something quick as well due to fleeting light and increasing clouds but after choking down the chewy, freezer-burnt
burgers and cold fries we ended up deciding to stay in Houmas for the night so we wouldn’t miss anything on the drive. After running a couple errands at Best Buy and Lowe’s, we found a Thai restaurant just across form the Walmart we planned to stay at and had some pretty great – and hot as hell – tofu Thai curries. Our waitress was friendly and asked how the tofu was since she hadn’t tried it before (she was from LA), in fact, she hadn’t tried hardly anything on the menu because by some sad cruel irony – she works at a Thai restaurant and is allergic to coconuts, peanuts (all nuts), raw vegetables and milk. She cant have Thai curry, peanut sauce or even Thai tea, all my favorites. It was sad news but we enjoyed our meals anyway, although a 4 out of 5 on the hot scale is a little too painful. The owner even came up to us after our meal to check it wasnt too hot, Ross ate all of his but I wasn’t quite as big of a bad ass.

It was only 9 when we finished out food but we headed over to Walmart anyway. We wanted to see a movie but will all the bad reviews, I’m still afraid to see The Wolfman and nothing else was playing. I love Benicio too much to watch him flop. I might still go anyway and think it’s fine. I usually don’t read reviews but I cant remember the last time a movie I wanted to see really bad had got a 20-30% approval by rotten tomatoes and paid critics.. a sad state. I suspected the effects were terrible but that rarely bothers me when a story is good – sadly the story is said to also be total crap. We decided to save money by just eating Thai and watching a movie at home. I wanted to see a large male comedian flop around like an idiot, so between what was on instant on Netflix for John Candy and Chris Farley, Beverly Hills Ninja won. Sad that I would rather watch Beverly Hills Ninja than The Wolfman but that’s how afraid I am right now.

Boondocking at Walmart almost always works out pretty great. We get left alone far in the back of the parking lot – by security, customers and other RV drivers, and we have a bathroom open 24 hours. We run the generator if we feel we need extra electricity (than our backup batteries can provide) and we can cook, run the heat and do anything that doesn’t involve running water. We even got to see some cops search a guys car right outside our front door – an unfortunately uneventful event, but nevertheless -something, and we left feeling good about our 40 year old RV as the guy in the Southwind motorhome next to us was stuck with his hood open and looking grumpy. It was also the first time we left before the other RV’s in the parking lot – and we left at 10 so we were shocked, but nevertheless we finally WON! (dork)

Cocodrie, LA

We drove to Cocodrie pretty much immediately, heading south on highway just barely elevated out of the swamp. The weather had managed to pull itself out of its extreemly long slump to give us a 71 degree day, humid and windy in telling of the coming storm. When we arrived in Cocodrie we were pretty impressed. We expected what was at the end of the last swamp highway, a stilted fishing town with one closed market, but instead got a stilted fishing town with a closed market AND a closed marina/restaurant/boat rental! It was actually pretty though, unlike Holly Beach and Creole. Aside from a couple nice houses, Creole had no awesome trees, fishing boats names “Big SexSea” or a bubbling outdoor pool. Cocodrie is a fisherman’s wet dream destination town as we deducted. The whole area is full of things they call “camps” which are basically rental cabanas on the water with docking, parking and of course, the pool. Said on the marina website to be the best fishing in Louisiana, while completely surrounded by swamp, several lakes and the gulf of mexico, we really couldn’t doubt it. There was even a small airport for say… boats that land on water? Men who jump onto marlins from helicopters? Unfortunately the cabanas go for $75 and up a night or we might have rented one. There were 2 trailers with hookups parked among the cabanas, causing us to get giddy at the thought we might be able to stay for the week, but on closer inspection – those were the only 2 empty spaces with hookups and they were probably just the “houses” the owners of the lots chose to setup. It was a really interesting town and reminded me of the town in Robin Williams Popeye, although much smaller of course. Anyway, Ross decided to take a look at the bushings and try to tape them into place, so me and Chena walked around and took photos. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many little skeletons stacked in one place as I did in the mountains of oyster shells in Cocodrie.

Chena on the oyster mounds

We left disappointed that we couldnt stay and made it into New Orleans about 5:30pm. We drove around the French Quarter till after 6:30pm, the biggest vehicle on those narrow streets, and checked into camp just after 7. More on that tomorrow!

I’ll post some more photos tomorrow when I have better internet. night!

Cypress Lake RV Resort, Louisiana

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Katya Posted in RV Parks | 3 Comments

When we left Baton Rouge with the intention of swampier waters, we ended up where we are now, pretty much in the middle of Southern Louisiana just outside of Morgan City. We found a place called Cypress Lake RV Resort, a resort with its own lake, own rental boats and the most amazing bathrooms and laundry room we have ever seen. Those may not seem like very important things but they are so important when you depend on them several times a day. If it were possible, I would like to take them with me everywhere we go – or at least a picture to hang up at the bathrooms to come.

All the buildings here are practically new looking, cabin style, with unpainted red wood, painted concrete floors and cushy rubber mats everywhere. Clean showers with closing frosted doors, rather than the usual nasty plastic shower curtain that touches you while you shower ( in an attempt to make you barf) – and even a separate door to give you privacy and space to change (some seriously make you change inside the shower or out in the open bathroom). Lots of toilet paper and paper towels, rather than hand dryers that don’t work or nothing at all to dry your hands on (let alone soap to wash your hands with). The laundry room has nice new machines that don’t smell like pee, a big HDTV with Satellite, a DVD machine (currently unplugged for some reason), a soap dispenser and a change machine. Best of all, we are practically the only ones using the bathrooms as usual so there’s no awkward bathroom moments with strangers.

There are about 20 trailers here, ours the oldest I think (as usual) and we haven’t really seen anyone except this one horrible man who leaves his dog outside in a kennel, rain or shine.The lady who works here is nice and there’s lots of stuff to walk to nearby, a Casino with a restaurant, a Gas station for snacks, every fast food chain you don’t want to eat at, one Mexican restaurant, a Rite Aid, a movie theater and a few mechanics and parts stores.

On top of being superior to any place we’ve stayed so far, It’s also one of the cheapest places we’ve stayed at only $135 a week. They also have a heated pool (when its not as cold as it is) and rent peddle boats, canoes and golf carts on an hourly or daily rate and even though its a little too cold to use them, the option is pretty nice. If we ever get a chance before we leave, we hope to get out on the water at least once.

Therefore, even though it’s nearly Mardi Gras, we are staying another week because this we will miss places like this dearly when we leave because most of the places to come are going to be pieces of crap.

Baton Rouge and back to the Bayou

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Katya Posted in RV life | Leave a comment

The have bike lanes in Baton Rouge!

After the fiasco in the swamp, we ended up staying in Baton Rouge for just a few days. Friday was my Birthday, which I’m comfortable with saying now that its finally over, though you’ll have to guess my age because I haven’t settled with that yet. Ross did a little research during the day Friday, looking into places to take me for the festive event. He found a Lebanese restaurant that was pretty nice and reasonably priced. They had excellent soft falafel and flavorful hummus but soon after leaving and feeling stuffed we were hungry again. Just a side-note, if you can go inside it and eat or drink – and its not fast food, it will have a TV or 10 with sports on it.

I know this seems rude but isnt that a famous actor/director?

We left with the intention of heading for either an Irish pub, British pub or a pirate bar and just as we exited the restaurant we noticed we were next door to The Cove, the “pirate” bar. It wasn’t at all what I expected but it was pretty cool anyway. They had hundreds of beers from around the world – pillaging all ports, but their only real attempt at a pirate theme was about 20 pirate flags hanging from the ceiling. The bar was also in a strip mall, which seemed odd but my cream stout was good and the patrons weren’t too annoying. When we moved onto the next bar, also in a strip mall just a mile away, we started to wonder about the chances the third bar had in the “impressing” department.

The second was the English bar, The Fox and the Hound was more like an Applebee’s than an English anything. We shared a Dead Mans Ale, a Portland beer that we were surprised to see there, and headed 10 more miles on the freeway to downtown in search of Happy’s Irish Pub. After searching for parking for about 20 mins and being the only RV driving through the crowded drunken filled streets of downtown, we ended up parking about 4 blocks away (luckily). There were cops on every corner and beads on every girl and boy. I don’t know if that’s normal or just a “Mardi Gras month” thing but we’ve seen enough beads on the street and on people to consider them as common as missing roofs in these parts.

Happy's Irish Pub, Baton Rouge

Saturday we got up early, for us, and got a few things done before heading out of town. Our neighbour, Butch, who had invited us to his Superbowl party the next day, hoped that we’d come back for the game, but directed us to the nearby Bluebonnet Swamp anyway. Bluebonnet was probably about as close to the Swamp as we’ve really gotten so far because the man-made path goes completely in and over the outer edges of the swamp. To get that deep in the wild we’d need some galoshes or a boat, and I’m seriously considering the galoshes. We didn’t see anything but a small lizard while walking through the swamp and on the trails but I took lots of photos. Back at the visitor center, they had about 50 cages filled with native poisonous snakes, some turtles and 3 baby alligators.

We then started our drive south towards… well, marshy looking land according to our google maps, seeing a great abandoned looking graveyard next to a trailer graveyard, and the White House Plantation (by complete accident) as we drove the road that swerves along the Mississippi. It was a monstrous mansion with fountains and multiple servants buildings; big enough that we got a pretty good look without having to even stop. It was almost dark and we found out later they charge about $20 a person for a tour at many of the plantations.

That night we stayed at Walmart in Donaldsonville, a non 24 hour one (no bathrooms!), ran the generator and loosely planned our next days travels and destination. After watching Reno 911 till 3 in the morning of course.

The Marshy Road to Somewhere

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Katya Posted in travel | Leave a comment

destructohouse

Louisiana has been one of my main goals of this trip and we finally made it late Saturday night. Of course this was after a surprise mechanical failure or two. We only drove the RV twice during our stay. Prior to our new u-joints in El Cajon we had a similar vibration so we called a couple Sears in town to see if they would check and maybe guarantee their work. Both places ultimately refused to check out the RV because it wouldn’t fit in their garage, so they claimed, even though the garages are probably the same at every Sears and we fit fine into the El Cajon one. Either way, we ended up having to go to Firestone instead who agreed to check it out while we went to get some food. When we came back they said the problem was most likely related to the rear differential, and/or our transmission. While Ross was talking to someone about the risks of driving with a bad differential, I checked the tranny fluid to find out that it was about a full 3 quarts low. This was a surprise since we didn’t need to check it till California last time – for the first time since we bought it in August. It had suddenly started going through tranny fluid really fast. We put in a partial bottle and made it to a nearby auto parts store for some tranny stop leak and several more quarts.

We didn’t get out of town till after 4 and still had many many hours of driving left. Luckily.. our Alternator stopped working before we even got out of Texas. It wasnt quite dark yet which was good because our headlights didnt have enough power. When the engine started to sputter as the spark plugs lost power, we tried to pull into a gas station but instead of a safe place to park we stalled in the entrance and had to roll back into the emergency lane of the highway. We parked there for an hour while we charged the battery with the generator and watched some saturday night live on the gas stations internet. After a charge we moved to a real parking spot and took off the engine cover to check out the alternator. A large black wire was completely detached so we found our problem easily enough, at least we didn’t have to wait all night for a mechanic or worse – several days like we did in Tonopah Nevada the last time we have Alternator problems.

We got into Louisiana about midnight – I think – and headed south as per the GPS to the town of Creole. Now.. we made a bit of a mistake, as per our random and hopeful nature, in heading south from the main freeway 40 miles in search of a place whose number was disconnected and had no reviews online. I wanted so bad for there to be an RV park in a tiny little “town” called Creole in the Louisiana Bayou. Once we arrived to some supposed location and found only houses on stilts (which was awesome), we looked again at the maps and found another possible RV park in the next town to the west. While driving that direction, a 27 mile drive, I noticed something odd about the road. It stopped as soon as it got to a river that connected a lake to the Gulf of Mexico. GPS was telling us a ferry was up ahead, something we didn’t at all expect. I looked it up on my iphone and it turned out that it runs 24 hours a day and connects southern Louisiana commuters to Texas. We then had the worry of whether or not they would take a vehicle our size but we imagined they probably would and continued on. The alternative was a 110 miles drive completely about the lake so we took our chances.

When we arrived at Holly Beach, we drove in circles in the 3 street town looking for any signs of an RV park. A good number of people in the area lived in trailers and 5th wheels, their property set up like a personal RV park with hookups and a driveway for their truck. I imagine they all work on the ships and factories in the area as there certainly weren’t any other business around. Some lots were abandoned with things strewn about as if they’d left in a rush. When hurricanes are an almost yearly thing, having a motor home or trailer is probably the smartest thing you can do. Weather gets bad – take your home and family to Baton Rouge – your land will still be there when you get back and much less of a mess to clean up if you don’t have a building to pick up. It was already 6am by the time we stopped looking for the park and we were both getting fairly sick. Our colds started in Austin, but driving and a change of climate did us no favors and I went to bed with a sinus benadryl. We parked at the end of a dead end road next to a fire hydrant hoping to get a few hours of sleep.

The area really reminded me of Salton Sea. In Holly beach especially, there were lots for sale on the few roads – one directly on the beach. It looked pretty much like Salton City minus the desert. But in Holly beach there is no motel and not even a proper store. One trailer had a coke machine outside and a sign, it vaguely looked like it might be a store but not enough to go check.

We woke up at 11am with a vehicle directly outside our door. I pulled back the curtain to see a work truck – I hoped not a tow truck – running with no one inside it. While we scrambled to figure out what to do and who it was they started to leave. It was a fireman, although not really a fire truck, who may have been checking to see we weren’t blocking the hydrant or possibly if the RV was abandoned. Really odd since the hydrant wasn’t even anywhere near any buildings and it was muddy and wet out so a brush fire was unlikely. Either way, no ticket, so we were glad.

On the drive east towards prospective RV parks – along the coast/marshes, other towns had brick buildings that looked fairly stable although I saw a highschool in Cameron with bricks pulled straight out of the wall – just holes where they were. Minimal damage compared to what probably happens to the people who have built in a week style houses and buildings, some even not on stilts. The towns looked more like giant construction sites with their office trailer buildings except some with boats and 3 flights of stairs to the front door. The houses themselves were giant car ports for boats and trucks. I still wondered what people did with all their cars when the flooding came. Their house might be safe but what about all the stuff under their house? I guess they just move it all early enough. One lot was particularly depressing because everything left outside was fairly valuable – a nice weight set, kids bike, basketball hoop and huge generator. They obviously left in a hurry. There was a tire swing on the tree that survived the storm and must have been an interesting thing to see flapping in the wind. Graveyards seemed about every 2 miles at times, some with the concrete grave boxes sticking half out of the ground and disheveled. Of course branches and logs everywhere you looked, making the already cluttered swamp even more of a beautiful disaster area. Having a dog is a great reason to take photos as a dog chenas age pees pretty often – digital photos here and film coming soon!

We got into Baton Rouge at 1am the next evening, stopping at an Equestrian park that happened to have RV hookups but was no RV park. Early morning we moved to Night RV park and so far its been a genuine Baton Rouge experience with a neighbour named Butch and an invitation to a Super Bowl party.