Castaways RV Park, Willis TX 3/12/13 - 3/19/13

Our first campground in Texas was an ROD campground called Castaways.  We were scheduled to stay there for two weeks, and then go 8 miles to a Thousand Trails campground for two weeks. 

 

Castaways had a nice lodge, but no activities were scheduled except for Texas Hold,em three nights a week.

The park is right on Lake Conroe, a huge man-made lake about 40 miles north of Houston TX.  There was a little boat dock and they had canoes to use.  There were a few nice cement slab sites down by the lake, but they were only available to the members of the park, which we are not.

 

Most of the rest of the park is really old and the sites are very haphazard.  We found a pretty good one, but when we tried to figure out where to plug into electricity, we would have had to go under another RV and hook up to a plug in on the other side of them.  There were already splitters hooked up to the water and all were taken!  When we registered at the office, they told us it was a little hard to tell which site was which in some areas because the wind and trees had knocked down some of the electrical pedestals!  No kidding!

 

Well, we ended up finding a pretty good site on what they called, "Cadillac Row."  I think we  lucked out and got the last site available.

 

The back of our site had some really nice trees.  We sat back there a lot in the afternoon, because even with our awning out, we had no shade except in the back, which was fine.

We got to watch all of the comings and goings of the park because the entrance road was along the back side of our site and the exit road was along the front of our site.  It was okay, except the exit road was gravel and very dusty.

The water slides at the pool were pretty cool.  I really wanted to slide down them but the water was just too cold.  Some of the kids in the park braved it, but they didn't stay in too long at a time.

 

 There was a small plastic hot tub that we did get in a couple of times.

 

One day we went to a little town called Cut & Shoot (real name) to a flea market.  It was a really big flea market.  I found this wiggle car.  Lorrie has a couple of these at our house and the kids have so much fun on them.  This one is actually big enough for an adult--it holds 250 pounds!  For $4 I could not pass it up--they are usually $40-$60 new.  Now . . . where do we put it until we get home!

 

There was a family camped across from us for their spring break at school.  The 11-year-old twin girls came over one day and made beaded necklaces and bracelets.  They were really cute girls.  I kind of got my "grandma fix" for a while.

You can really tell that Spring has arrived in Texas.  This tree behind us was getting all bloomed out.

 

One day we decided to drive the 8 miles to our TT park to see what it was like and get their activity schedule.  What a nice park!  And, they had a craft sale scheduled for that Saturday, and lots of other activities during the week and weekend.  Well, we took Scentsy to the craft sale and sold 7 warmers!  We decided to cut our stay short at Castaways and go to Lake Conroe for three weeks instead of two.

Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park, Robert LA 3/6/2013 - 3/12/2013

About a week before we left Styx River RV Park in Alabama, our next scheduled park, Abita Springs RV Park in Louisiana, called and said we couldn't stay in that park back-to-back from Styx River because they were in the same system.  I tried to talk them into letting us stay because we had had the reservation for a couple of months.  Well, they still wouldn't let us stay so we had to really scramble to find another park.  We found we had a Coast to Coast park about 15 miles from Abita Springs, so we got in there.  We were pretty relieved, even though we had to pay $10 per night to stay there.  That doesn't sound like much, and it really isn't, unless you are used to paying $0!

 

The park we found was really pretty cool.  It was Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park in Robert, Louisiana.  

The whole park was based on the Yogi Bear characters.

 

There was a nice pool (although too cold to swim in) and a mini-golf course, with the cartoon characters splashed all over the place.

Every building had a character name--Boo Boo's Video Arcade.

There was a hayride trailer that was kept pretty busy on the weekend.

The park was actually divided in several completely different sections.  This one was called Condo Village.  The sites were all permanent and all of the ones on the left side of the road were right on the little lake.  There was another section that was for members only.  They had their own pool and clubhouse and didn't have much to do with the Jellystone theme.  Then there were three different clusters of rental cabins, each with their own swimming pools. 

 

We were put in a site over in a separate RV section, but we got a nice spot on a corner and right on a little lake.  There were lots of little turtles in the lake, but I couldn't ever get close enough to get a picture of one.

When we hunted for another park to stay in, we wanted to get one close enough to New Orleans to visit.  We were only about 40 miles away so we spent a day there.  There are several definite areas in New Orleans.  We drove to the French Quarters, which is probably the most touristy, and parked there.  It is right on the Mississippi River.  This is Jackson Square, with a statue of General Jackson on his rearing horse, with the large three building in the picture being a 1879 Spanish government building, the St. Louis Cathedral which is the oldest cathedral in the United Stated and built in 1849, and a 1853 Spanish building now part of the Louisiana State Museum.  There is lots of history in this area.

Horse drawn carriage tours are available all along the main street in French Quarters.

 

On most corners there are street musicians and entertainers.  They all have their cans, pots, or hats out for donations.

This mime was very entertaining.  He looked like a statue until he started moving.  This little girl had taken some money to put in his bucket and all of a sudden he "came alive" and handed her a sucker.

As we walked by this ventriloquist, his "dummy" hollered at Terry and told him that he looked just like James Bond!

This musician's music was so good that a couple stopped and danced to it!

 

An amphitheater was right along the street, across from Jackson Square, and there was always some group performing--usually getting people from the audience down on stage to help out.  It was very entertaining.

 

We saw two of these decorated floats coming through and they stopped near the amphitheater.  Soon the whole area was filled with people in green shirts and all wearing beads and drinking beer.  We stopped and asked what was going on.  They told us that it was just a "practice run" to get ready for St. Patrick's Day the next week!  The said that they always have several "practice runs" to get ready for any holiday.  This is very much a party town!

 

You can see a lot of French influence in the buildings that were all built before Texas became part of the United States.

 

 These were buildings right on the main street.

 The roads were very narrow, even for one-way roads.  So, we opted to get tickets so we could ride the trolleys for the day.

 

There was no tour guide on the trolleys, but we got to see a lot of New Orleans just by riding them around.  Their cemeteries were very unique and we noticed that there were a lot of the horse-drawn buggy tours to them.



We went through the Garden District where all of the really big French homes are.  This was only a couple of weeks after their big mardi gras week.  There were trees that were totally covered by strings of beads.  The best picture I got of one was out of the trolley windows.

The light poles also had remnants of mardi gras still on them

The homes in this area were very pretty, but close together.

 We even spotted an LDS church building right in the middle of the older homes, which is kind of unusual to find there.   Usually, they are Baptist or Methodist churches.

 

We went on the riverwalk and saw a tug boat pushing a large barge down the Mississippi River.

Along the riverwalk there were some very unique shops.  This one had everything you would need to celebrate mardi gras--except the beer!

These are stands of some very unusual hats. 

They were unloading some very large shrimp--probably prawns.  Later that evening, we saw on the news that they had a huge spaghetti feed, topped with shrimp, at French Quarters that night.  It was a lot of fun walking and riding around New Orleans.  I am sure it is even more fascinating during the nightlife--a little too exciting for us, so we left before it got dark!

 

 We only stayed at Jellystone Park one week.  Here is our last look at the mighty Mississippi as we crossed over it, heading for Texas.

Styx River Resort, Robertsdale AL 2/19/2013 - 3/5/2013



We had two days to get to our next park, 700 miles away in Alabama, when we left Lazydays.  We had planned on staying in a Walmart along the way.  But, I should have known that I couldn't get Terry to stop once he was on the road.  We headed out and 9 hours later we were in Robertsdale Alabama!  Terry says that driving while sitting in your living room recliner doesn't make you as tired as driving a regular vehicle!

 

We called the Styx River Resort to make sure they had room for us to come in a day early and got there about 5:00pm.  Styx River is a park in our ROD system and we stayed there for two weeks.  It kind of sits on a bit of a slope toward the Styx River, which is a good thing because is rained five of the days we were there and it had really good drainage so we were not flooded. 

There is a beautiful outdoor pool, but the water was very chilly.

The indoor pool was really nice, with a nice hot tub, which we used.

The facilities were really nice.  We went to two potluck dinners there and some activities.  For one of the dinners I made whoopie pies--a recipe from the Amish people in Pennsylvania.  They were a big hit.  I can't wait to make them for our kids when we get home!

One day we were looking out our window at our neighbor's place and Terry saw this HUGE spider.  Of course, he sent me over to check it out.  It was a joke on us because it was a plastic spider--good thing because we were about ready to move!

 

There was a crafts activity at the Club House one day so I went over. They were making "stitched cards." I made an angel and a cross during the class.  I get a little ambitious when I learn something new, so now I have a little tote filled with cards, embroidery floss, and other various supplies to make stitched cards.  I got some free patterns off of the Internet and had fun making these.  I try to talk Terry into being crafty with me, but he doesn't ever seem to be interested.  At least he lets me find room for another box of supplies!

One of the nice days in between the rain, we drove to the Gulf Shores.  They are some of the prettiest beaches we have been on.  The sand is very white and so soft it feels almost like you are walking on powder.  The water wasn't quite as blue as ocean water and was quite cold.

We met another couple who took our picture for us, and I took theirs for them.

The water was quite cold, but never cold enough to keep me from wading in it.  I ended up getting caught by a surprise wave and got wet up past my knees.  Along with my usual sound effects when it happened, Terry thought it was pretty funny!

There were a couple of men fishing off the beach.  They had caught several fish--some of them kind of odd-looking compared to Idaho fish!

There were some beautiful homes built right off of the beach--all on stilts.

I told Terry he could buy this one for me and we could finish it and use it as our winter retreat!  In this picture you can see an oil drilling platforms out in the water.  They were everywhere.  I guess one of these is where the oil spill in the Gulf came from several years ago.

We followed the Gulf Shore around and then took a ferry to Dauphin Island.  We just missed the ferry that had left so we had to wait for almost an hour for the next one.  There were several other cars there waiting so we had a good time getting to know the people there.  The ferry holds up to 26 cars, but we only had about 12 on when we crossed.

The gulls followed us the whole way over (it took about a half hour to cross.)  They left little gifts on some of the cars--but not ours!  At least none of us riding outside our vehicles got hit!

There was a big oil drilling platform close to the loading area of the ferry.  There was a fishing boat out by it, so you can see how big it is.  There were some that were smaller and some that were bigger.  I think this is maybe like the oil drillers that my brother, Ron, worked on before he went on his mission back in the 1970's.  I will have to ask him.

 

From Dauphin Island, we drove over a long bridge to get to Mobile, Alabama.  Part of it was really high to let the large ships under it.

It amazes me how much of the highway system is above water in this area--both bodies of water and also swamp land.

 

As we traveled through Mobile on the way home, we passed the port where the Carnival Triumph was dry docked, starting it's two-year repair after getting stranded out in the Gulf of Mexico. We were glad that we had taken the Carnival Valor on our cruise just a few weeks before!

I didn't get a picture of the Styx River before it flooded, but when it did flood, the water came all the way up into the picnic area and almost covered this large garbage can!  When it rains in Alabama--it really rains.  I think we got about six inches in the few days it rained.  Travis spent 2 years on an LDS mission in northern Alabama and he told stories about getting caught in rainstorms and having to stand in the bathtub to take his wet clothes off.  He talked about the "empty" canals and wondered why they were not filled with irrigation water.  Well, after it rained once, he realized they were drainage canals!

We were only about 30 miles from Pensacola, Florida, so one day we went to the Naval Aviation Museum. 

We didn't realize that the Navy had so many airplanes, but all of the plains on the aircraft carries are Navy planes.  This is one of the first ones that the Navy bought.

The Blue Angels are also Navy planes.  Terry tried out one of them and said the seat was a little tight!  I told him that it had to be tight to feel like you are part of the plane and didn't fall out when they do all of their loops and fancy flying!  I went on a Blue Angel simulator ride.  It made you take a gasp as you dive towards the ground and then go straight up just before you hit the ground!  Terry said that even simulating that was too much for him.

The Navy has a  U S One helicopter.  If you look closely in the window on the right, you can see that I am going on a ride with President Nixon!

They had a POW display.  Look behind the glass and you can see Terry perusing all of John McClain's medals.  He was a prisoner of war for six years during the Viet Nam War.  Terry has always admired him and thought he would make a good President.

Two weeks went by fast at Styx River Park.  We met some really nice people and saw a lot of things.  But, the night before we left, Terry got a little antsy and had to hook the car up so we could get an early start on our next adventure.