Safely in Mesa

After two days of wind and sometimes rain, we have safely arrived in Mesa.  The driving was pretty stressful for Dalton.

It is cool here for this time of year but no snow!!

I had a wonderful time on our tour but I am glad to be getting settled here.

Nearly There

The drive out of New Orleans was frantic.  They are the worst drivers - very rude. Houston was pretty busy too but the the drivers were not quite as bad.  We stayed there for the night.  Right next to a  freeway, of course.

We were off to Brownsville the next day for a visit with Ron and Arlie and Carol and Garry.  It was raining when we arrived and it was cool - in the 40sF. 

We went out for dinner and had wonderful steaks. We had a good visit.

The next day it was still really cool so we went to the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art to see an exhibit called Celebrating Space. There was an excellent film on space.  I particularly liked the photos of Venus that had been coloured.  Wouldn't they make good quilts?

We enjoyed hamburger night at Winterhaven (their park)with Arlie and Ron and their son and daughter-in-law and then visited with Garry and Carol later in the evening.


From Brownsville we went to Junction, Texas.  The RV park was really nice and each of the deluxe sites had a fire pit, BBQ and area to sit.

Pretty fancy!





Today we drove to Las Cruces.  The countryside was pretty boring at first but then we got into a little more mountainous scenery.

The motorhome ran hot for some of the day.  We had a fierce head wind as well as outdoor temperatures in the 70s.  Our son has helped Dalton to develop a  plan to keep it running cooler.  I hope this works.  We will see tomorrow.  I am hoping that it will get warmer as we approach Mesa. 

It has been a long, but interesting trip but we are ready to get to Mesa.

New Orleans

Monday, November 10.

We had the Readers' Digest version of seeing New Orleans today.  We signed up for a tour and then arrived in the French Quarter with enough time to have a good walk around before we took the city tour.

We walked along quite a good length of Bourbon Street.  From where we started, it was a residential area that moved in to the bar/drinking area that you associate with New Orleans partying.it is narrow and old and the sidewalks are very uneven (says me who kept tripping).

We also looked at the main square and walked through the French Market.  The market is an orgy of tourist tempting.  Want a wine cup from Pakistan?  So much for New Orleans goods.

We had a short walk around the park in the French Quarter centre that has a large Catholic church at one end and a statue of Andrew Jackson.

Once we got on the bus we drove around a lot of the city.  We got off twice; once at a cemetery and once at a park.  The cemeteries are interesting, above ground.  They wait at least a year and a day and then workers scrape the remains into the base of the family vault. The vaults on the left are temporary vaults while the ones on the right are family tombs.

 We also stopped at a city park where we had beignets.  They are yeast bread, deep fried and then rolled in icing sugar and served while hot. Yummy!  (Forget the diet.)

Across the street there is a park with statutes of various things.  Interesting modern art. There were oak trees too.  Many old ones were lost around the city during Hurricane Katrina but some newer ones are still there.

We drove through the area with the big old houses.  A lot of lovely homes.

The colours of these homes are quite typical of New Orleans homes.

Some of the trees along one main boulevard still had strings of beads from Mardi Gras hanging from the branches.  They break and fall off in time to get more the following year.  

There were a lot of homes being renovated both in the upscale neighbourhood and along Bourbon Street. There must be quite an industry here doing the renovations.  I think the poorer neighbourhoods are still suffering from the effects of the hurricane though.  The news had a story about weeds and garbage in one neighbourhood that had not been rehabilitated.

Tomorrow we stop in Houston for the night and then we are moving on to Brownsville to see our Saskatoon friends.  Internet service may be sketchy for a few days.

Sun and Palm Trees

Monday, November 3

We have moved on, through Georgia to Florida.  It has been quite cool all the way.  This is the first day we have had  warm weather.

The traffic outside Atlanta was frantic.  It was that sort of freeway traffic where people are jockeying for position.  Some people are just crazy in their attempts to get one car length ahead.

We stayed at Macon (hard c) for the night.  The people were very nice, with real Southern accents.

As soon as we crossed the border into Florida, we saw Spanish moss and palm trees.  At last, warm weather!! Tonight we are in Wildwood, Florida.  I cannot tell you how nice it is to be in short sleeves.

We saw cotton growing at a Rest Stop so I took a picture through the barb wire fence.  It looked like cotton balls stuck to a branch. I have never seen it up close before - only at a distance. We saw many fields of cotton as we traveled.  Much of it has already been harvested.

Sunday, November 9

We were in Naples, Florida for four days - without good internet and then again last night we were in northern Florida and still no internet to do anything with.  Now we are in New Orleans and voila! we have internet. So I thought I would catch up on our adventures.

Naples is a really nice community - but really upscale.  When our friends took us shopping, we saw two Rolls Royces so you get the idea.  There were many little shops.  I found a cute little bell that you use to ask for more wine.  Lis liked the shoe stores.  They did have the cutest polka dot sandals...

The following day, we went on an airboat tour of the Everglades.  Dalton made a new friend before we even got on the boat.(I mean the baby alligator, not the girl!)  Her family has been in the alligator business for four generations in that area.  Her father was an alligator wrestler.  The alligator had an elastic band around his snout so he couldn't bite.

The ride itself was somewhat educational but mostly a thrill ride.  Fun though.  Luckily for me, I took the back seat with our friends (two rows of 3 people) and let Dalton sit in the front.  He got wet!  The guide did lots of fancy turns to churn the water up.

We drove through the canopy of plants and looked for alligators.

In a more open area, the guide spotted one.  He (the alligator, that is) was pretty patient and let our boat go all around him.  Finally he got fed up and submerged.

 We also saw raccoons in the trees near the water and the guide thought the alligator might be waiting for one of them to fall in.

Here are the tourists extraordinaire:

Later, we went to a restaurant in Naples called Fred's.  Fred was a dog so dogs can go on the patio.  Casey was happy to sit under our table and didn't even freak out when a big dog went by.  There was live music in the no dog part but it was quieter in our part so we could talk easier - even with the poker game going on at a nearby table.

 Now that we are in New Orleans, we hope to get a tour tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

Nashville Country

We have moved on to Nashville.  The countryside changed as we drove.  Less corn and more trees.  Also hillier county.  Loads of traffic near Nashville and construction led to a good snarl.  We heard on the news that Nashville has grown very rapidly and the roads have not kept up.

We are at a RV park in Goodlettsville, just to the north of Nashville.  The park is nice but the internet is painfully slow.  We are going to try to get a tour of the city but will have to go to the Hermitage on our own because the tour is all day and Casey's bladder would not hold that long.

Friday, Halloween.  Boo!

We took a tour of Nashville today.   It was nice and easy.  They picked us up at the park and drove us to a central station where we met our tour.  The first major stop was the Ryman, which is the location of the original Grand Ole Opry.  The Ryman began as a church, built in 1892 for $100,000.  The acoustics are amazing.  From 1904, it has been used as the venue for a variety of events, both religious and secular.  The Grand Ole Opry moved in in 1943.  It remained there until 1973.  For a time the building was allowed to deteriorate.  When there was talk of razing it, there was a public outcry.  Subsequently there was a major renovation and the Ryman reopened in 1994.  In 2001 it was named a National historic Landmark.

From the Ryman, we drove around the downtown area and looked at the university, a large memorial park,  the state capitol and the music studios, among other things.

State Capitol in the distance.

Decorations in the music district.

The last stop was the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.  There were artifacts of musicians from Minnie Pearl to modern artists such as Taylor Swift.  I especially enjoyed looking at the costumes.  The sewer in me could not help but notice how they were put together and the embellishments attached. 
 Amazing!

 We saw Elvis' gold Cadillac and a car all decorated with guns. (I forget who it belonged to.)  There were three floors to look at so it was a good thing we had an hour and a half.

 There was also Elvis' gold piano.

We ran into a Riders fan dressed for Halloween.  They are everywhere!

A couple of very large walls were covered with gold and platinum records, both new and old.

Saturday

Today we went to  Mansker's Station ín Goodlettsville.  Unfortunately, the Visitors' Center was closed so we couldn't get tickets to see the inside of the fort-like structure and the house.  I stuck the camera through the fence and got a picture of the inside of the fort.  The fort was first built in 1780.  The Indians kept attacking the fort, so they abandoned it and it was burnt to the ground.  The second fort was built in 1783.  The structure now there is a reconstruction.

The Bowen house was built by Captain William Bowen in 1787.  He had been awarded the land for services during the Revolutionary War. the family owned the house until 1835.  It was occupied until the 1960s when it had fallen into disrepair.  In 1975 a restoration was begun , completed in 1980.

Both the fort and the house are located in a large park which seemed to be a favourite of  joggers.  There were also playing fields and a dog park.

In the afternoon, we went to the plantation of President Andrew Jackson.  Jackson purchased the Hermitage in 1804, after  a financial reversal forced him to sell the family land next door.  The family lived there from 1804 to 1821, first in a modest two storey house and then in the larger house built in 1819-1821. Jackson was inaugurated president in 1829.  He served in that role until 1837.  He died at the Hermitage in 1845. The plantation was a working farm with slaves as the workers.

This is the front of the Hermitage.

This is the back.  It was suggested that they sat on these balconies to keep an eye on the slaves.

The house was not as large as I would have imagined with four family bedrooms and two guest bedrooms.  If you are thinking about a house as in Gone With the Wind, it wasn't even close. Although quite opulent at the time, it is modest by British great house standards.  However, wallpaper came from Paris and the furniture and drapes were quite fancy. We were not allowed to take photos of the inside of the house.  The grounds are large, presumably because they were once cotton fields.  One small section appeared to have had a crop on it even today. 



We followed a map with an audio recorder to see the out buildings and grounds.  The inner part was narrated by guides in period costumes.  They were very knowledgeable and pleasant while keeping each tour group of about 12 moving along.

 This is a slave quarters.

Tomorrow we will be in Georgia and then we are moving on to Florida.  A cold front has "come down from Canada" and the temperature is supposed to go below freezing tonight.  The locals are freezing already!  There was snow in the mountains.  One place had 22 inches.  Maybe  we brought the weather.  Remember the snow in Texas?