New Orleans

One of the two major multi-night stops that we were to make on this trip was New Orleans.  Being the foodies that we are, it was a goal to visit sometime in our life.  Having now been there, I can see us going back sometime in our travels.  In the coming days, I'll be concentrating on some of the specific places we went in New Orleans, but this post is about the city itself.  Andrea did her research on this one and had a lot of must-do's mapped out.  We also had the help of a fellow Airstreamer (that we contacted through Airforums.com) that lives locally.  He suggested the state park that we stayed at: Bayou Segnette State Park.   It was a great suggestion and he stopped by with his Airstream to say hello.  He also gave us some hints about where to get the best food.  We met another Airstream in the park.  Ironically, they ended up moving on to the same next stop as us (Gulf Shores, AL) on their way home to Georgia.

There were a lot of house like this "on the Bayou" along the interstate on the drive in.

Shrimpin' boats?

Me in my "work station"

Travelling in style, a bit bored maybe, though.

Bayou Segnette State Park is really nice and very clean. It's rather small but sites are still well spread out. There's not a lot of older and large trees for shade, but hey, you're camping on what once was and sometimes still is, a swamp. The drive from the ranger station to the campground is somewhat awkward, but in the end it's nice because it gets you far away from road noise and you get a nice view of the still ongoing levy construction. The only pain of the park was their newly constructed "speed tables" where my hitch dragged at every one. Stick to speed bumps, not "tables," please. The playgrounds are newer which was a bonus. You never know what you're going to get when you ask to be near the playground. It ranges from a basic bank of swings from 1960 to things like shown below. There are two bath houses at Bayou Segnette and both have laundry facilities. Amazingly, the laundry facilities are FREE. Yup. No quarters here and no half-dried clothes. They have the same home-type machines with all the fancy settings for wash cycle and drying time. Highly recommended campground.

The view from under our awning

The kids kinda just sleep where ever they stop.

As I took this picture of the moon over our campsite I knew that Hurricane Sandy was wreaking havoc back home, but hey, it's vacation.

We needed a pause in the middle of a downright hot day in downtown New Orleans.  There was an open-air bar with a live band so we stopped.

 

We were camped on the south side of the river so we had to take a ferry across to town.  This is a view of the french quarter from our ferry ride.

More french quarter

Downtown

Foodie stop #1

Foodie stop #2 - Mother's for a Po Boy, and a great one it was.

Whadda ya know, another National Park; in downtown New Orleans.  There really isn't much to it other than the visitors center, but the Jazz National Park was still neat and we scored 3 or 4 more cancellations for the passports.