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Leaving the Coast & Winterizing the Scamp

 On Tuesday morning when we started out, we were deep in Louisiana Cajun country—and I found out later we were only a few miles from Avery Island, where they make Tabasco sauce, but we missed that stop. Still, I must have know we were near good food, because when lunchtime rolled around, Mike suggested we stop at an ubiquitous Waffle House. My eyes rolled around as I suggested we might find something a bit more in keeping with the area, and about five minutes later we came across a roadside stand with a sign that said Cajun Fresh Market. Fortunately, I was driving, so we pulled off and had delicious shrimp po’ boys (fully dressed, of course) and beignets at a picnic table on the side of the road. And they were PERFECT.

Purveyors of po' boys and beignets in Raceland, Louisiana

They were also a good way to steel ourselves for the next stage of the trip—driving through New Orleans during Super Bowl week. Not sure what we were thinking. Actually, we forgot all about the fact that there was a football game happening on Sunday. Traffic was pretty crazy, and once I saw about twenty motorcycle cops escorting one limousine. Was it the governor of Louisiana? Was it Trevor Kelce’s girlfriend? It’s still a mystery.

They are having some kind of a big football game here this week

We managed to get out of town and across a corner of Lake Pontchartrain just before rush hour, and we were in Waveland, Mississippi, again in no time at all. Waveland is either 8 miles or 15 miles from the Pearl River delta on the Louisiana/Mississippi border, depending on which sign you believe. We’ve discovered that mileage signs in the south are whimsical at best and flat-out wrong at worst. But we arrived at Buccaneer State Park and arranged to stay for two nights to recover our bearings. We made a quick trip to town for fresh shrimp and I made a fairly good rendition of Pompilio’s Pasta Rinaldo, although I was trying to work fast since it was late and maybe I might have gotten a little frustrated and acted like a crazy chef. Still, dinner was tasty.

It was a fairly nice day the next day, so we enjoyed a bit more warmth in the park, then decided to go out to dinner in Bay St. Louis down the beach boulevard. We went to the Thorny Oyster on a foggy night and had a delicious fancy dinner in that pretty little town. The next day we drove along the coast, through Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, and Ocean Springs, where we stopped at the Davis Bayou section of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and saw the islands from the shore, while I sat in the sun and got over a migraine. We made it to Gautier, which is a small town between Biloxi/Ocean Springs and Pascagoula, and got a campsite at Shepard Park, which says it is a state park, but it is actually a city-run park, we were informed. A nice park, with a fellow Scamp owner staying there who gave us some tips about the camper. And another dinner out, because why not?

The fishing pier at Davis Bayou in Ocean Springs

Then on to Alabama’s coast, briefly, before we turned north. The weather was still warm, but the campground angels were not looking over us. We made it to Demopolis, north of Mobile, where there were supposed to be a number of parks. Well, several of them were Army Corps of Engineers parks, and—short rant—you can’t just drive up to their campgrounds, you MUST make a reservation online at a terrible website that barely works on the best days. So we checked out a couple of private RV parks that were fairly sketchy. So we stayed at a Best Western with kitchenettes and had some tasty Texas chili that I actually cooked in the camper in the parking lot, just like something out of a John Steinbeck novel. Hey, whatever works. The chili was great, as was the guacamole I whipped up in about two minutes.

Later we checked the weather report and found that although we were perfectly comfortable in shorts and t-shirts, overnight the temperatures the next night were going to drop about 30 degrees and it would be in the 40s day after that. To deal with the change in the weather, we made a pit stop at a Wal-Mart parking lot and Mike winterized the camper. We’ll be staying indoors for the next couple of nights as we finish driving back to Cincinnati, where we’ll stay in an Air BnB for a couple of weeks. With the winterizing procedure completed and the bikes more securely attached to the carrier, we had some lunch and proceeded to drive to Russellville, Alabama, where another nice Best Western awaited us. We dared to cross a busy highway to walk over to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, including more delicious guacamole along with burritos and other treats.

Finally, as we leave our Gulf Coast adventures, my friend Lisa suggested it would be good to occasionally include maps to show where we’ve been. So I spent part of this evening making a map and labeling all the places we’ve been in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas since November. I’ll try to remember to make more maps as we continue on!




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