June 6th

June 6^th

We said goodbye to Louisiana today. I was a little sad – I really liked it, it is definitely my favorite state so far. We left our state park campground around 9:30 and headed toward the ferry station. I would suggest google maps have an option for RV safe roads. We went through tiny little neighborhoods with one way streets and cars parked on both sides of the street –our huge old beast of an Rv barely fit through most of it. In fact it didn’t fit through one corner which reminded us what a blessing it is we have insurance otherwise it would be us and not Liberty Mutual who will be buying someone else a new car – or at least the front half of one. But we did make it to the ferry terminal found a spot to park and rode over the Mississippi to New Orleans. The Mississippi still amazes me – it is just so huge. Anyway we took the trolley to the French Quarter and walked around the markets and streets. It was really interesting to see the kind of stuff they sale. It would have been a lot less nerve racking if the majority of junk they sale wasn’t so breakable and my children weren’t so intent on touching everything they saw. They didn’t just touch they begged to buy – begged and pleaded and cried. I guess one of life’s great lessons is you don’t have to buy something just because they have it for sale and you have a dollar in your pocket. They all wanted everything they saw. Rick had a really tough time deciding on what souvenirs he should buy for his office friends. We had lunch, or a little snack as the kids called it, at the Gazebo café, a little open air café in the French Market. It was really fun, they had a band playing jazz music and Rachel had a great time chasing the pigeons. I really wanted to try some authentic Cajun food and wanted the kids to experience it too. So we ordered some Jambalaya, Gumbo, red beans and rice and some fried alligator. We just ordered one serving of each so we could all just try it. I wasn’t expecting any of the kids to really like it. I thought I would be lucky if I could even talk them into tasting it. Turns out for the most part I was right. Everyone did take a bite of all of it, but Taylor is the only one who took 2 bites of anything. He liked the red beans of rice. I like the Jambalaya and I thought the red beans and rice was ok and the gumbo was not my favorite. Everyone liked the alligator a lot. Maybe because it was fried, but it was delicious. We also went to a Cathedral. The kids had never been into a Catholic church before so that was an interesting experience for them. They were a bit jealous of the kneeling benches and the candles. Ryan really wanted to blow out the candles, he even asked if it was ok to blow them out if we paid the $3 to light one. The stained glass windows and the ceiling were really pretty. We tried to take a picture of the organ but it was hard to get. It was big organ. We managed to get back across the river, to the Rv and out of New Orleans without incident. The drive across Mississippi was quite pretty. We stopped in Biloxi for dinner. We tried to go to a casino for their buffet but the price was a bit steep for us so we drove around looking for somewhere. We had a hard time finding something Rick and I wanted and the kids didn’t cry about. We knew if we wanted good food we would have to listen to a whole lot of whining and complaining, and if we wanted happy children we would have to either shell out the big bucks to go to a casino buffet or put up with fast food. We opted for the happy kids. We went to little Caesars. We also went to the grocery store next door and got a box of Blue Bell ice cream. It was pretty good – the ice cream not Little Caesars. We made it into Mobile around 7:00, we had chosen out a rv park to stay at. The website looked really nice but apparently we should have called earlier because they were booked. And so were 5 other parks we checked. I called Mom who helped us find one. Who knew Rv parks were so popular in Mobile. Maybe because a lot of people actually live in them and not just camp for a night or two. The one we stayed at had a lot of permanent residents with a few sites for overnight guests. After driving around town searching for a spot to stay I was sure relieved to finally find one – even though our spot is not more than 10 feet from someone’s house. The man who owns it is really nice he was even standing out in the road welcoming us when we pulled in. It was late enough when we pulled in we just got everything plugged in went to bed.