"Audemus Jura Nostra Defendere" & Other Southern Oddities

Your incurable nomads are back on the road.  We are off to Florida for the winter, taking Thanksgiving week to get there.  Stops thus far have included Shreveport and Livingston, LA, for one night each, and, then, four nights in Elberta, AL.  Thus begins our travel blog for another four month segment.

The drive across the piney woods of East Texas on Monday was interesting in that there was a distinct change in color amongst the various deciduous trees.  Efforts to capture images through the motor home windows proved fruitless and there were no convenient stopping places that afforded a decent view.  Hence, you will have to take our word for it.

After an uneventful night in Shreveport, we took I49 south to I-10.  This route passes through only a couple of towns and leaves the traveler feeling as though he/she has spent the entire day in the central Louisiana boonies.  Traffic was not bad until we hit I-10 and then it got fairly thick…particularly as we passed through Red Stick (Baton Rouge).  The highway through LA’s capitol has been under perpetual construction/repair for at least 10 years that we have firsthand knowledge about and, perhaps, since early settlement days.  The sad part is that it is apparently a futile effort as the highway remains choked with traffic all the time.

Between Lafayette and Baton Rouge lies a fascinating stretch of geography.  The Atchafalaya Basin is an enduring drainage system that dates back more than 10,000 years.  Covering almost a million acres, it stretches about 100 miles from north to south.  Although we just drove through it this time (yes, there is a bridge some 20 miles long that passes through it), we have taken small-boat tours through the swamp on previous visits here and have been amazed by it.

 

Just East of Baton Rouge, Livingston is a pretty good place to spend the night if, as we have, one decides to break the travel day into 250 miles or so increments.  Since we are on a bit of a time crunch (brought on by ourselves), we have had to travel on interstate highways, those vast ribbons of concrete crisscrossing the country east and west, north and south.  They are a boon to those who need to make good time from one point to another, but as we have observed elsewhere, the trip is the same no matter where you go.  The gas stations are the same, the fast food joints and the same, and all of the stores—big and little box—that line the interstates are all the same.  To find any flavor other that plain vanilla, one must abandon the interstate highways and find small roads that pass through the heart of small towns.

An interesting observation (well, it’s interesting to me) is that the major truck stops such as Pilot, Flying J, Love’s, TA, and one or two that I can’t think of are running a rip-off.  The cost of fuel is always many cents higher at these truck stops than is true off the beaten path.  They also price fuel differently for cash or credit…always more for credit, of course.  Even their cash prices are higher than at other stations just a few blocks off the interstates who apparently can’t afford to differentiate because they lack the volume of the big stores.  It is kind of the reverse of Wal-Mart and other big box retail stores' tactics who price little folk out of the market by having lower prices that the mom and pop shops can afford to offer.

Back on the road:  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is among the busiest travel days of the year and our experience on I-10 from Livingston through Mobile, AL, where we left it to head south, reflected those statistics.  While traffic never came to a halt, it did run heavily for the entire time.  Some folks were crazy, and some were not, but we all managed to get somewhere safely.

Lake Osprey RV Country Club

Our four night stop in Elberta included Thanksgiving Day as well as my birthday on Saturday.  We had dinner with the other homeless folks here in the Lake Osprey RV Country Club.  The park management provided turkey and ham and the rest of us brought a plate to fill out the menu.  There were lots of traditional things, but some unusual stuff as well.  For example, we brought pecan pie ice cream from Trader Joe’s.  We all ate too much, drank a lot of wine, and bragged a lot about our adventures on the road.  Sometimes you walk away from experiences like that with newly minted life-long friends, other times you just walk away. 

We have fond memories of meeting Brad and Nancy Robb nine years ago in San Diego, and we have been friends ever since.  Brad and I have birthdays two days apart (he’s the old one).  That first year we had a satisfactorily good Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant at a marina in Chula Vista.  That meal pretty well sealed the deal for the four of us.  We’ve been running into one another all over the country as well as keeping in touch via email.

You never know what you are going to find when you get off the beaten path.  Just south of our RV Resort, a fellow has built a new marina and along with places to park the boats, he has added a marble fountain and a number of prehistoric sculptures.  It sounded odd to us, but when we explored it, we found it was indeed true.

 

 

Sixty-nine is a milestone for many people and I’m no exception.  To celebrate the occasion we ventured out to one of our favorite haunts in Gulf Shores, Lulu’s.  The restaurant is owned and operated by Lucy Buffett, the “crazy sista” of Jimmy Buffett of Margarita fame.  Our previous experiences there have been fun, but on Saturday Alabama and Auburn were playing for football bragging rights in Alabama.  True to their Southern roots, they had the sound up excruciatingly loud on the many, many large-screen TVs located throughout the store.  Needless to say, those of us with background noise discrimination issues found it more than annoying.  The food was good, however, and in spite of the racket we had a good time.  We’ll just avoid the place on football game day in the future.

We had two more days to Sarasota, our first week-long stop.  We took a back roads round-about way from Lake Osprey to I-10 through the red-dirted Alabama countryside to avoid going through Pensacola.  The stretch across the Panhandle was uneventful, though traffic was very heavy.  About 10 miles outside of Lake City, our intended overnight stop, we decided we were making outstanding progress and would, therefore, go 60 miles further down the road Sunday afternoon.  Subsequently, we changed reservations and then about five miles further traffic came to a full stop.  This was 4-5 miles west of the intersection of I-10 & I-75.  We eventually got to I-75 and turned south to find the three lanes of traffic almost completely stopped.  It chugged along for the next 2 ½ hours until we got to our over-night stop some 60 miles down the road.  What a nightmare!  We traveled on the same days last year in Arizona and had no experiences like this.  Apparently, everyone in south Florida who knew anyone north of Lake City went there for Thanksgiving and were consequently trying to get home on Sunday.

The next day we had an easy drive into Sarasota without incident and almost no traffic. There will be a short family reunion of the Henderson siblings (the first in 10 years) and we will report on that if it proves appropriate to do so.

Siesta  Key, Sarasota