Sunday, May 17, 2009

New Orleans - or at least we are pretty close....

We stayed last night in Robertsdale, AL. - a small campground called Hilltop. It was not the easiest place to get The Beast out of- but Bruce (the driver that he is) seemed to be able to make anything work. We left late for us (9:30AM CDT) and drove the short 4 hours to Fontainebleau State Park in Mandeville, LA. We are 5 miles from the causeway that zips directly over Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans. The campground is OK, not a COE park by any means, but still nice. The sites are pretty secluded if you get one of the pull-throughs, but the water and electricity access must have been designed by a blind man, at least in site 4. To use the site as laid out you would need a 50 foot electric cord as well as water line. We are parked half on the pavement and half on the grass- seems that has happened many times based on the condition of this site. Bruce was touring the sites on a walk with Hazel (Wonderdog for short) and one of the other campers indicated they were just going home to get a long extension cord. Guess they really weren't that familiar with the loss of power you get with a longer cord. We need all of our 30 amps to run the camping necessities I can't do without (air conditioning, microwave/convection oven, fan, electric water heater, and last but not least- my computer) so we opted to move The Beast closer.

Once parked, leveled, electrified and watered, we immediately broke out the grill and decided to have standard camping fare (hamburgers) for lunch. We haven't had much success in the past few weeks with real camping type activities and again, because we are wimps and it too hot to eat outside, we ate our gourmet meal in the AC. After the inevitable afternoon rain Bruce finished setting up the site- chairs, rug, awning, and of course- the innovative outside thermometer stand.

We are now sitting outside (yes it is much cooler since the front is going over) sipping mango slushes made with the defrosting mango fruit (remember cleaning out the freezer?) and our ever ready SoCo and ginger ale. Stick blenders come in very handy. I am blogging and Bruce is reading- Wonderdog of course, is napping on her blanket. That dog is way too spoiled. The only real impediment to staying outside right now are the 2 yellow flies (one now dead) that decided we all need (including bothering Hazel) to experience all of the "pleasures" of camping in a swamp. Let's all remember, Louisiana is America"s Wetlands. Tomorrow should bring nicer weather and we are off to our first visit to The Big Easy!

1 comment:

  1. Be glad you got out of here before the rain. We have had 3 days straight.

    Bruce looks happy to be photographed -- as usual.

    Have fun!

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