Trip04

Wednesday.

It took twelve hours of sleep to recover from that long day.

The first couple days we drove in mild weather. Not too cold. No significant wind. Yesterday we drove in gusty wind and the second half of the day in pouring rain. Woke up to clear blue skies, mild temperature, and no wind this morning. It sure is wet down here. Of course there are swamps all around, but even plowed fields are underwater now. No sign of any drought here. They had sixty inches of rain. Some places had twenty inches from one storm alone. Not from the storm we just went through. Twenty inches from the last tropical storm through. Twenty inches in two days! Try to imagine!

Anyway, we got up and walked around a little bit and saw some Eurasian collared doves, a yellow bellied sapsucker, and a red squirrel pretending he was a whole flock of birds emptying the bird feeder.

The motorhome has suffered a significant change in handling. A couple trips back, I discovered that, for some reason, there are air bags in the front suspension that need to be inflated to ninety pounds per square inch. I checked them a couple times, and each time, they needed air. So this last trip to the repair shop, they got replaced. Now, Shamu feels much steadier on the road. The gusty wind we drove in yesterday does require a little more steering, but it was never difficult. I think we’ve made a significant improvement.

We visited with a guy in the park with us this morning who is full-timing. He is forty-one years old and is still working. He and his wife and five kids, all in a fifth wheel. Kids from seventeen months to ten years old. He is a carpenter/welder/plumber with all his own gear. He can work anywhere he wants, so he stays in one place for awhile, then just relocates somewhere else, and goes back to work.

We have passed hundreds of fireworks stands on the drive down, all gearing up for a big New Year’s celebration. It was way too windy and rainy last night for fireworks, so it was nice and quiet for us. We didn’t get woken up at midnight at all.

Tonight: a different story. Now they’re all being blown off in frenetic pyrotechnic excess.

Driving from Lafayette to Baton Rouge didn’t take long. Twenty miles of it was on a road entirely up on concrete stilts. We drove straight across the Atchafalaya swamp (picture). We knew we wanted to go to the Bluebonnet Swamp in Baton Rouge, but before that, we wanted to find the campground and set up and unhook. We had really good directions to the swamp. We were left to guess our way to the campground we had picked out. We explored for awhile, but couldn’t find it. It happens to be New Year’s Day. Nothing is open, and no one is answering their phone. We couldn’t get any help. Finally, Judy called the Baton Rouge KOA, and they answered their phone, so we went there. Since then, we’ve unhooked, fired up the car, and explored. We’ve found the Bluebonnet Swamp. We found the campground we meant to find in the first place. We found the Mississippi. We found the Sam’s Club. We found Local Color. The Waffle House. The Waffle House is big here. It’s everywhere. We had dinner just before dark. It’s like a fifties diner, but with waffles. I think we had one of the original waitresses. We had a great time, and made it home to the alka-seltzer without a single emergency stop.

A one hundred mile day.