In New Orleans

We decided to have a down day in New Orleans today. One of the things I was desperate to do was to clean up Homer and the Hornet. They were filthy from the road. We had not only run through a few rain showers but, on the way to Florida, we ran through multiple swarms of "love bugs," you know, the little black ones that fly around coupled up? (It was always amazing to me how they do that, but I digress again.) The broad front face of Homer was splattered with hundreds of these little creatures, about whom the best you could say is that they died happy! Both vehicles were a mess, but after a couple of hours with an extendable wash mop and bug brush and a bucket of soapy water, both rigs looked like new. I had the presence of mind earlier to purchase these handy washing devices during one of our incessant trips to Wal-Mart, and they really came in handy. Without the extendable poles, I couldn't possibly have reached the upper areas of Homer. While I'm on the subject of Wal-Mart, I have been utterly amazed at the number of trips we have made to Wal-Marts back home and all over the south, buying stuff for Homer that we found we needed (or wanted) while en route. Stocking this trailer has been a much bigger undertaking than we anticipated, requiring a great deal of thought (and money), and we're still discovering things we need from time to time. And, while most of the stuff works fine, there have been some that don't work out so well. For example, we bought two small trash cans, thinking we would place one in the kitchen area and one in the front bedroom. We quickly found that we needed only one—a 13-gallon size that uses tall kitchen bags. The smaller version that we placed in the kitchen was too small, and the one in the bedroom went unused. Another thing that bombed was an upgrade to a larger electric skillet. We bought one that had a Teflon coating for a cheap price, but when we tried it out in Homer, we found that it tripped the circuit breaker. We looked at the wattage of the old skillet (900) versus the wattage of the new skillet (1200), and it became evident that we could not use the new skillet and the air conditioner at the same time. We have since reverted to the smaller skillet, to avoid getting perspiration in our food.

After washing Homer and the Hornet, we were famished. While Sandy took a shower, I cooked up a batch of tacos for breakfast, which we wolfed down with glee. They were wonderful. Food just tastes better when you're away from home, doesn't it?

After we ate, we piled into the Hornet and went downtown, where we drove around for a while then walked to Jackson Square, where we had some of the obligatory beignets at Café Du Monde. Since it was Saturday night, the French Quarter was getting really crowded, and it was quite hot outside, even in May! Since we had visited here several times, we decided to cut our visit short and head back toward the campground.

Sandy at Cafe du Monde














Sandy and Ol' Man River

On the way, I stopped at a T-Mobile Wireless phone store. As I said earlier, I had given up on choosing RV parks based on their wi-fi connections, and I wanted to see what T-Mobile had to offer for wireless internet service. To my amazement, they offered unlimited service with a wireless modem for $29.95 a month! I signed up on the spot, and now my internet problem is solved (unless, of course, I am in the boondocks were T-Mobile doesn't have any service). I'm still going to look into satellite internet in the future, because I think that is the way to go with internet and TV for RVs. For now, however, I am happy—back on the net and e-mail ready.

By this time, it was near dinnertime, so we stopped into a little dive we spotted earlier on Jefferson Highway, called Charles Seafood. It was certainly nothing to look at, but it turned out to be one of the best meals we had on the trip so far. I had boiled shrimp—huge critters that had been cooked in a spicy seasoning—and Sandy had a fried shrimp and catfish platter that was just splendid.