Lafayette, LA to Conroe, TX

Since we were preparing to leave Lafayette this morning, we skipped breakfast, but spent extra time catching up on e-mail and a little FAA business by telephone. I also tried to catch up this travelogue as best I could, lest I forget what we've seen and done or, uh, eaten. This delayed our preparations for departure, and we weren't finally ready to launch until about 11:00 a.m. We've just got to do better than that.

We decided to pick up an early lunch at Fezzo's, a nearby steak/seafood restaurant, but found it to be dreadful and overpriced. Definitely a T.A.G.L. on that one.

We decided on our stay at Lake Conroe because we are looking for good lakeside RV parks and neither of us had spent any time in that area. We had passed through Conroe a few times and thought the Lake Conroe area was very picturesque. We hopped up on I-10 and called a couple of campgrounds about—yes, another late arrival. We finally settled on Havens Landing RV Park, which wasn't actually situated on Lake Conroe but not far away. We tried to get into Shady Shores, which is a gorgeous park right on the water, but they accepted only weekly or monthly rentals. Our next try was Lakeview Marina, which was also on the water, but they were closed on Tuesdays! This seemed very strange, but then, so do a lot of other things, I guess. (We dropped by later to look at the place, and it was pretty junky. We're glad they were closed on the day we called.)

Havens Landing was a very large park and, since we arrived—naturally—after the office closed, they had a little envelope ready for us with the necessary parking information. The office staff had made it very clear that we must stay no longer than two nights, as they were going to be full beginning on Friday. When we arrived, we were astonished to find no more than perhaps two dozen RVs among the 239 available spaces! We couldn't imagine how all these sites could possibly fill up in only one night—but they must have known something that we didn't. We still hadn't figured it out when we left.

After we got Homer all set up, we were starved, so we headed toward town, looking for a good food dive. We settled on Don Julio's Mexican Restaurant on highway 105, which fit the bill, visually. It appeared to be converted from an ancient Dairy Queen, and there were garish yellow florescent lights all around. There were several cars in the parking lot, even though it was after 8:00 p.m. And, oh yes, of great importance—a police car was one of them. The total staff in evidence was Don Julio, who was doing the cooking, and one teenaged boy, who was waiting tables and oh, so fervent in performing his duties. While we appreciated the attention, we were getting a little tired of being asked if everything was okay. Sandy had a combination plate and I had a couple of beef fajita tacos. Everything was good, but the fajita tacos were outstanding.