On The Road Again

We spent the last couple of weeks preparing to hit the road again after 5 months in the Orlando area. Our plans are to head out west again this summer visiting some of the national parks we didn’t see last year, and revisiting a few that we did.

Of course before we left town, we had to include a couple more trips to Disney World. At Animal Kingdom we walked along the Pangani Forest Trail and were lucky enough to see the new baby gorilla. She’s only 8 weeks old and was under the watchful eye of her mama. We were told that normally by that time of day, they are out in the open brush but this morning they were still right close to the observation window…lucky us! On the safari ride we were also fortunate to see the most colorful Mandrill monkey. Though we’ve seen them before on this ride, never had we seen one this colorful. Those blue areas are below his eyes and are more pronounced in the older males. We caught all our favorite shows…Lion King, Finding Nemo, It’s Tough To Be A Bug, and Flights of Wonder. Another evening we went to Magic Kingdom to watch the Spectromagic Parade and the fireworks spectacular, Wishes, but not before enjoying a Dole Whip Float….yummmm! The parks were packed both days we were there, and we kept saying “there’s a recession, right??” Couldn't prove it by the crowds! We also visited the Cast Connection with our neighbor, Bob, one day and got some great bargains. This is where they send last season’s merchandise, and you can only get in with a cast member.










We left Clermont, FL, on Sat., April 24, to begin our trek west, spending the night in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Live Oak, FL, and Sun. night in Mobile, AL, which would constitute The Folly’s first official overnight stay in AL. On our way there, we made a stop at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park (http://www.ussalabama.com/) located at Mobile Bay. We’ve passed it several times before but decided to make a point of stopping this time. Though we didn’t pay to go inside the museum or on this WWII era battleship, we were able to walk the dogs around the beautiful grounds surrounding it. Located within the park are quite a number of planes, tanks, and military guns from various wars as well as a Korean War Memorial and a Vietnam War Memorial.

Mon. we were making our way towards the Camping World in Hammond, LA, and in no particular hurry so Russ decided to get off I-10 and take the more scenic route of Hwy. 90 along the Gulf Coast which took us through several small towns whose names became well known after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One such town was Pass Christian, MS, (pronounced kris-chee-ANN) which was nearly destroyed in the hurricane. We’ve read that of approximately 8,000 homes in Pass Christian, all but 500 were damaged or destroyed. Russ actually drove this road a few months after Katrina when he was being transferred to Baton Rouge and well remembers the devastation. There has been a lot of rebuilding but foundation slabs still dot the landscape. A lot of this property is still available for sale but insurance is outrageous so the land sits idle. However, miles and miles of beautiful white sandy public beaches line the shore. We spotted a place where we could park, walked on the beach with the dogs (before we found out dogs weren’t allowed on the beach…oops!), and spent the next few hours just relaxing on a beautiful day. We had hoped we could perhaps spend the night here but decided not to chance a knock on the door at 2 in the morning telling us to move along.

We had made plans to meet our friend, Ron, for lunch on Tues. at Greystone Country Club in Denham Springs, LA (http://www.greystonecountryclub.com/) and had a great, albeit short visit. We were going to continue west after lunch, but Russ decided to book a night at the KOA instead so we could recharge our house batteries. So what else could I do but surprise my former chorus at their rehearsal! Thank goodness Russ suggested I contact someone to verify that the time and location was still the same because as it turned out they were performing at an assisted living facility followed by rehearsal there. I swore Emily to secrecy and genuinely surprised everyone when I walked in the room beforehand! Baton Rouge Chorus (http://www.batonrougechorus.org/) did such a nice job bringing some joy to those people’s lives, and I had a great time seeing everyone and participating in the rehearsal afterwards.

The next morning we hit the road for our trek across Texas…all 880 miles of it along I-10!!