Louisiana – The Wandering RVer

I know, I know. We’ve been missing in action as far as updating the blog, but I am going to try to re-motivate myself. We’ve been lots of fantastic places and I’ve struggled with where do I pick back up. Do I go back to where we have been? Or do I just start with what’s been happening recently? The “plan” I’ve come up with is to get you all up to speed on where we are, what’s going on and what’s coming up first, then, throw in random places from the past. So with that in mind, here goes…

2024

We had a major change at the end of 2023, we opted to stop selling Christmas trees for Hayes Farms. It was a tough decision. It was a huge part of our lives for the last 5 years. We had gone to Florida in October with the plan of selling trees, but, things change. We still sell fireworks for New Years so we started 2024 in Florida. We spent our first night back on the road at our favorite Harvest Host, Southern Grace Lavender Farm. It is always a pleasure to stay there and it breaks up the long drive out of Florida. Then we headed west to Blakeley State Park in Spanish Fort, AL. From here, it was an easy drive into Mobile. We missed their Mardi Gras celebration by 1 day, which was kind of OK with me. I’m not a fan of big crowds or impossible to find parking. After doing a Google search, we found The Oyster City Brewing Company…

This is Dane, our bartender. Apparently taking a selfie, before taking our picture sounded fun. It’s not the first time it has happened and I’m actually a bit disappointed now when it doesn’t happen.

We walked the boardwalk trail passed the “hiding tree”. It is said that it was a hiding place for Confederate soliders trying to escape capture after loosing the battle of Fort Blakeley….

Next, we headed to Palmetto Island State Park in Abbeville, LA. In case you don’t know, all Louisiana state parks offer a camping discount for people 62 and over! Score! It pays to have an old man for a husband, hehehe. My main reason for stopping there is they have 3 ponds/lakes that are connected by a kayak trail, but the weather had no plans to cooperated with me. Don’t let the patches of blue sky fool you, it was cold!

Instead we decided to check out the local, come on! you know what’s coming…brewery. Adopted Dog Brewery in Lafayette did not disappoint!

There are many impressive live oak trees in the area, but this one really stood out to me. It definitely has a desire to live!

Up next, 17 Days to Cross Texas

Almost all of the bloggers I know do a special post to mark the end of the year. I always enjoy reading them. Inevitably, it makes me reflect on our own travels, trials and triumphs.

2018 held lots of promise for us as we began our first full year of RV living and working. We knew we’d be starting in Florida, but had no way of knowing for sure December 2018 would find us back there. Hell, there were times when we were broken down, I didn’t think we’d ever make it back to Florida. But we did. We met so many wonderful people along the way. People who changed our lives, possibly without ever knowing so.

I count us a dang lucky…our adventures have been many and our trials have been relatively few, given our lifestyle.

I thought long and hard about how I was going to commemorate 2018. Usually I end up trying to pick a favorite picture from each month – a top 12, if you will. 12? Who was I kidding? We took pictures in at least 13 states, visited 15 national parks/monuments/preserves and drove through western Canada. I couldn’t possibly narrow it down to 12!

My solution was a collage made from every state we spent any real time in (and Canada will just have to forgive my exclusion of them in this post). The following collages are in alphabetical order, not the order we visited. So without further ado, here is 2018 in review…