Mardi Gras 12th night

    

                    We went to a Mardi Gras 12th night celebration last night.
A glittering entrance to the Mardi Gras season, the Twelfth Night celebration at the Lake Charles Civic Center draws thousands to see the grand promenade of the kings, queens, and captains of more than 50 krewes.
 
The Twelfth Night tradition parallels the three kings’ entry at the ancient nativity twelve days after Jesus’ birth.  The 2011royal court waved goodbye to all in preparation for the 2012 court. In the spirit of gift-bearing, everyone present at the Southwest Louisiana celebration was given a piece of king cake, and 12 grand prizes were given to visitors who found a surprise in the cake. They gave away a scooter, TV, I-pod, laptop, microwave lots more nice gifts.











It was dark in the center some of the pictures didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked. I forgot to bring my movie camera which would have been nice. Some of the costumes were over 10 feet tall setting on the shoulders on men and women and the average weight is 50 lbs.  

They are gorgeous and they use lots of feathers and bling. We plan to see a few of the Mardi Gras celebrations as we are here a while longer. More to come.     Ginny

Christmas In Louisiana

                           Happy New Year!!!!

   

Lake Charles

Happy New Year 2012 to all. We have had some wonderful times this past year some happy and some sad. We are  hoping this year will be a great year .



We are still in Louisiana where we spent the Holidays. Here in our park the owner had a potluck Christmas dinner a week before Christmas. He furnished a great deal of the meal with Turkey, Ham, brisket, dressing, yams. It was a great meal.

 

Glen and Charlie Christmas Dinner

We had a surprise when a fellow bus driver Glen and Helen from Bend emailed Charlie telling him they were coming to our park for a week at Christmas.  We got together and did a lot of visiting. They had us over for Christmas dinner  Glen cooked Turkey breast on the BBQ it was wonderful.

Glen and Helen Lake Charles

 The kids sent us all kinds of nice things for Christmas.

electric fry pan

We missed being with the kids for Christmas it is never the same when you are away at the holidays. Charlie tricked me into opening my presents Christmas Eve and he saved his for Christmas morning.

Christmas morning he brought his present to the bed and started  opening them it was quite a sight.We got more presents after Christmas.

Creole trail Calcasieu Lake

We stopped and watched some people crabbing with a small rope with a piece of turkey on the end. They throw it in the water and wait until the rope moves then you have to pull the rope in very slow and the other person nets the crab it is blue crab. You can catch any size or sex here.

Ladies crabbing for blue crabs

 A few days later we took Glen and Helen on the Creole Nature Trail. It is a trail that winds through the bayous, marshlands and shores along the gulf of Mexico. It was a beautiful drive.

We went to the Southwest Louisiana Natural Wildlife Refuge Complex Visitor center too.

National Wildlife Refuge  Visitor Center

wildlife refuge

We didn’t see any alligators the weather  had been cool and they weren’t around. We stopped at a small restaurant on our way back where we had some Louisiana cuisine. Charlie and Glen had chicken and sausage gumbo. Helen had gar sandwich I had a pulled pork poboy. It was very good.

Gulf channel

Then the New Year was upon us. The people in the south love there fireworks and they set a lot off. Although not as much as they did in Alamo Texas.
We had a New Year feed at the club house Jambalaya, cabbage and black eyed peas and the fixing. The traditional meal for new year. It was pretty good. The Mardi Gras is a big thing in Louisiana  so we have plans to see some. More to come.

Jambalaya

Ginny

Our Winter Home

Some of you that regularly visit Ginny’s face book page already know that we have settled in Southern Louisiana for the winter. We found a nice park on the East side of Lake Charles. The park is far enough out of downtown and off the main roads that it is very quiet. Most of the residents are local workers and we hardly ever see them.
We have started to learn the main roads and Ginny can now find her way to the thrift stores, fabric stores and JC Penny. So she is feeling good about the area now. Lake Charles, the lake, is a shipping port to the Gulf of Mexico. Even though the Calcasieu River runs into it, it is brackish water (salt and fresh). It is amazing to me that the salt water and tides would affect a lake this far away from the Gulf. Our elevation is only about 5 feet so that probably has some influence.
Hurricane season is over for now and the weather has been very mild. Eventually it will get to near freezing but we had that in New Mexico and Texas last winter too. In fact it was colder there than it was in Oregon several times.
Well unless we win a state lottery or catch a state record fish there probably won’t be much going on, on the blog. Keep up with Ginny’s adventures in shopping on her face book page if you want and we’ll let you know when we are back on the road.
Until then,     stay warm and healthy.

Charlie

Louisiana

Five acres we stayed on in Louisiana

We pulled in to our friends house in Homer Louisiana  on Monday October 3rd. Our jacks for the fifth wheel beat us there . Charlie got started putting them on. We found the brackets were a little different so had to buy a small grinder to help with the installation. We finally got them on and working and boy did it feel good to get unhooked from the truck. We were able to go to the store and look around to see what we could see. Our friends Maryland and Gilbert we met last year in Deming New Mexico and they spent part of the winter in Alamo too. They had bought a home on 5 acres and were working on fixing it up. They had electric , sewer, and water hookup for us so it was nice. Gilbert had a critter working over his lawn thinking it was armadillo. He got a trap and the next day he found a opossum in it .He sprayed it with a little green paint  to see if it would come back .It didn’t come back but another one came to his trap. It was fun to see what was going to be there next.



There neighbor had some goats and they were so cute. They had collars on and bells on there collars .

Lake Claiborne

Lake Claiborne

We went to lake Claiborne it was about 8 miles down the road from them. The water was pretty low they were draining the lake to fix the walls. There are a lot of homes on the lake it is a pretty lake. Northern  Louisiana  is pretty dry. We were there for a week our internet roamed on another tower and was very slow. We had a nice visit and headed to find a park for the winter. We are now in Beaumont Texas looked at a few here. We think we found one in Lake Charles Louisiana headed there tomorrow. Our grandson and future daughter-in-law got their first deer and our boys got theirs too. So proud of them all.


More to come Ginny

On our way south

Lake Arkabutla

We went into Mississippi .Stayed at Hernando point . We were on Arkabutla Lake. While I was checking us in Charlie was unhooking the 5th wheel and one of our front jacks fell. Charlie got it back up on the truck . But we had already paid for 5 days so we stayed hooked up and relaxed. So we remained hooked up. Charlie took the jack off to find we had broken threads on the jack it would not go up high enough to take the truck out and hold. We called the Rv store 25 miles away and they were going to call us back but never did. We found some jacks online and ordered them. We had them sent to our friends  house in Louisiana.  About 300 miles away. That worked out for us as we were headed that way. We just had to keep hooked up. So the parking lot had to be good size for us to come in. Walmart or large grocery store shopping center. We needed a few things washed no sewer in this park. We couldn’t run our washer. They had a big sink at the bathrooms outside for people to wash there dishes in so I got water there and washed some things and hung them on my rack. I even got a blister from wringing the clothes out. Hope I don’t have to do that very often. But it worked in a pinch. I walked around  lake shore it is very pretty.

sunset on Lake Arkabutla

lake Arkabutla

  You can see where the water was when the flood came in earlier this year the ground is still soft in some places. You can see the prints of the deer , raccoons and other critters around the  water. I could see the turtles in the water .They were climbing on a log, sticking out of the water.

Turtles in the lake

     
This is a very popular campground and they have a lot of sights reserved. I talked to a couple fishermen they said they set lines out for catfish and do real good. 
When we left there we went to Greenville Mississippi. We drove to one casino on the river we couldn’t park in the parking lot was on a slant all the way to the Mississippi river .I wouldn’t have wanted to even park my car on that hill.

Casino on the Mississippi river

We stayed in the parking lot of a casino on the Mississippi river called Harlow. It was a small casino but a big parking lot worked good for us. We left there and went over a large bridge connecting Mississippi to Arkansas.  While traveling through Arkansas  into Louisiana  we saw a lot of cotton fields. They were harvesting the cotton and they had big bales of cotton all over the place. It was very interesting to watch them cutting it.

cotton bales

Harvesting cotton

We came across a truck hauling scrap medal that ran off the road blocking traffic for hours. We watched them set his truck up and haul it away. He went through the windshield they said he was just shook up. I was glad he wasn’t hurt worse than that .

wreck on the road

We got behind on our blog as these places didn’t have internet service very little phone too.

We went by some bayou's the water was green.

We made it to our friends house in Louisiana more to come . Ginny

Tennessee

When we left Kentucky we went down The Trace (Land between the Lakes). It was a very nice drive we might have seen a couple cars on the road all the way down. You go into Tennessee before you get to the end.  

 

 We went buy a large prairie full of Bison just laying around in the field. We are in western Tennessee area. We have friends here we met in Arizona, Don and Jan. They were our good neighbors for 4 months we enjoyed their friendship very much.

 
They took us out for lunch it was sure nice to see them again. They drove us around took us to some of their  lakes. Jan and I went into a store and we bought a few things. We have a lot of the same interest we sure enjoyed them. 
  

Tennessee has a lot of cotton fields here in this area. They have a lot of cotton on them right now. We would have liked to seen them harvest some to see how it is done.
 

Cotton field

 I am not sure when they harvest the cotton. 
 

old homestead in the of a soy bean field

  They have soy bean fields and some corn fields too. They also have a lot of vines growing called kudzu. It grows on the ground and up into the trees .
 

Kudzu vines

 It is kind of pretty to look at but I can see where it could get out of control if not monitored. It is still strange to us a lot of states have large grass lawns that seem to go on for ever but they don’t have to water them with all the humidity just mow them. They get enough rain and humidity  for their crops too .Not like us we have to water  in central Oregon. The tree are starting to turn the fall colors. You can tell we are starting the fall season in these areas. Farmers are putting pumpkins and mums out for sale by the road sides We put out our  humming bird feeder in our camp sight.  We have two humming birds fighting over the feeder. They seem to be smaller birds than some we have come across. They sure are beautiful.  We are in a nice  park called Natchez Trace State park. It is a very big campground it has 4 lakes in the park and has 4 campgrounds and a group lodge, and 2  other lodges. They have a store ,restaurant, stables, cabins, etc .
 

Pin Oak Lake

 Natchez Trace State Park is named for the famous “Natchez to Nashville”  highway , an important wilderness road during the early 18th century. Western spur of The Trace ran through a portion of what is now the park. This State park is not like any other state park we have been to with its size and  amenities . It has a lot of kudzu vines growing along the road a couple look like elephants.  This park is a first -come basis. The group lodge takes reservations and this park is open all year around. We are in the campground called Pin Oak. It is on the Pin Oak Lake. The lake is very pretty.

Pin Oak Lake

I have seen a couple people fishing but didn’t see them catch anything. We are headed to Mississippi. More to come .

Ginny

Kentucky

We are in Kentucky and enjoying the beautiful state. Charlie took me into Paducah so I could go to the National Quilt Museum. They wouldn’t let you take pictures in there I only wish you could. I don’t know if pictures would capture detail work that these beautiful quilts show.

A few of the quilts got them off their sight as we couldn't take pictures

  It was a fantastic quilt display. I saw things done I had no idea people would even do on a quilt.

Metropolis Illinois where we saw superman

  Then we went back over the border to Illinois as it was close and we went to Metropolis "Hometown of Superman," celebrating its local hero every possible way it can. The local bank is "home of super financial services." The town newspaper calls itself The Planet. A sign in the grocery store informs customers: "Just as Superman stands for truth, justice and the American Way, Food World stands for quality, convenience and friendly service." It was a lot of fun there. We were getting ready to take a picture of each other behind the superman and women cut outs when a women from the TV station offered to take the picture. It was a friendly town. Lots of fun .

Brookport Bridge over the Ohio river

 We went over the Brookport bridge on us 45. It goes over the Ohio river and it is painted beautiful blue color. Lots of locals will not use the bridge as it makes a noise and is very narrow. It has been hit many times by large boats going down the Ohio river. It was closed down for a while in May 2011 when the flood went through the area. We went to the trace (land between the lakes). Kentucky lake on one side and Lake Barkley on the other side. Land down the middle.

 

Some of the Elk we saw

  We went to the Elk and Bison prairie where we saw one bison and lots of elk. We saw a couple of bulls ,lots of cows. The drive is very pretty and it has all kinds of roads off the main road that takes you to campgrounds, bays, lake access etc. We drove into a lighthouse landing , marina and resort. It had hundreds of sail boats in the docks.Beautiful access to the Kentucky lake.  

Sail boats on the landing

Lighthouse on Kentucky Lake

one of the bays we drove in

We also went down to one of the roads to a bay were a couple men were getting ready to fish. It was really a nice bay for fishing. We are camped right on lake Barkley it is a very popular lake and books up fast as they reserve the sights.

 

Lake Barkley

 We have see a couple deer in the campground. I walked around the lake in the campground to where the canal connects both the lakes. It was a very pretty area

The canal between the lakes

Egret on the beach at Lake Barkley

 They catch all kinds of fish in this lake. When coming back from the laundry I was asked by a couple are you the lady from Oregon? They had seen us come in and it is a state they hadn’t seen in there park before. When we leave here we will be headed for Tennessee. We have some good friends that live there Don and Jan. More to come .Ginny

Lake Barkley