Well hello again all! It’s me, Brian, returning to you as normal. It felt so nice to have a guest writer handle a portion of our blog duties, and what a wonderful job she did! Thanks again Alison, and cheers to you. Also, Cheers to Alison and Bryan as a pair for joining us in New Orleans. It was such a blast to see some old friendly faces and what faces they are! So now we resume the regularly scheduled blog!

When our friends departed us we were left to our own devices in New Orleans. However, we were feeling that we had gotten a really strong dose of what was to be offered in NOLA and we felt as though we might want to continue our adventures elsewhere on the road. We returned to where we had parked our car, which Alison had mentioned was nearby in her post but didn’t go into any details… We parked our car at the Tulane Medical Center as they had the cheapest daily rates for a parking space that would fit our criteria – we wanted a garage that wasn’t accessible street level and that had a high enough roof clearance that we didn’t scrape our cargo box right off the top! The hotel wanted to charge $40 every day for parking, the other public garages nearby averaged $30 per 24 hours. We settled on the hospital because they only wanted $20 for every 24 hours. When we got to the car though, we went inside the hospital to pay at the kiosk and were prompted for $66! For two days of parking!? Also, according to their own listed rates they were overcharging us. So we asked a nearby employee about it and she walked over to the machine to press the clearly labeled “call for help” button. A phone built into the pay-box called the parking company. When we explained to the disembodied voice on the other end that we had only parked for 2 days and 37 minutes, yet it was asking for over 3 days worth of payment the voice on the other end of the phone just told us to press the “lost ticket” button. We ended up paying $30 to replace our lost ticket and were able to leave the parking garage with the replacement. Bringing our total down to $15/day – best deal yet!

We hit the road and made our way across the state of Louisiana to Baton Rouge. We hadn’t quite made plans for anything to do there as we hadn’t planned on being there for another couple days still. So we settled into one of our more common night time activities, killing time at a coffee shop. Kate relaxed and watched some shows, I got some remote working handled. We looked up some nearby food and where our next place to sleep would be and departed after a couple of hours.

For dinner we ate at an Italian restaurant called Little Village. The atmosphere was nice, a bit upscale relative to what our internet research suggested it might be. The prices online were out of date it seemed though as it was also a little pricier than we were expecting. All good, we were already seated and hungry so we stuck around. For an appetizer we got some fresh bread served in a bed of herbs and oil and a whole roasted garlic bulb on the side. Picking apart the garlic bulb to get the sweet morsels out and spread them on the bread was delightful. We split an order of lasagna for our entree, it was equally as delectable. We had even saved a few of the roasted garlic cloves to mix into the lasagna. NOM NOM NOM TASTY!!!

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For the evening we retired to the Sherburn Wildlife Management Area for bed. Tucked back and away from the city a way, it seemed an idyllic little campground and when we arrived it was seemingly empty! A nearby stream, some spooky fog, and a stray cat guarding a trashcan. I was excited to see what it would look like in the daylight. But for now, we were both pretty tired. We’ve needed to be a bit cautious about how we set up the bed lately as it has been making a bit of a creaking noise near to the hinge that attaches to the front half that we fold down when going to sleep. Bed all prepped we nestled in and fell peacefully to sleep.

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BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG-BANG-BANG!!!

We awoke to the sound of GUNFIRE. Nearer to us than made us comfortable. Turns out the Sherburn WMA is also host to two gun ranges where people can come and fire off all their weapons as early as 8 in the morning. It was pretty hard to try to keep sleeping through that, yet somehow we persisted. At least for a little while, until more people with even louder guns showed up.

Anyway, we woke up and not wanting to linger around a shooting range we opted to instead pack up the car and head back into town. As we were packing we were assaulted by insects. Not just mosquitos this time, though they were present, instead we were swarmed by …ladybugs! It was kind of adorable at first but after a minute or two it started to become annoying. There were so many of them. When we finally packed the car and got a destination plugged into the GPS we started to drive away only to find a small handful of ladybugs were in the car with us. One by one we removed them as we continued to drive back into town. On the drive we tuned into the impeachment hearings to listen to testimony. It was pretty interesting and when we got into town we ended up sitting in a parking lot for half an hour or so just continuing to listen. Curse those NPR Driveway Moments™!

When we reached a good stopping point in our listening, we walked over to the Louisiana state capitol building. The tallest capitol building in any of the states at 34 stories, it looms over the rest of the neighboring city. 27 acres of parks and gardens surround its base. There is also a freely accessible observatory deck on the 27th floor of this art-deco beauty. When we entered we walked around the first floor for a little while, taking in the immaculate marble and brass work. A pair of 2-tonne brass chandeliers adorn the main hall, in the center sits a large circular brass relief map in the floor. The map depicts Louisiana’s 64 different parishes and symbols for their main exports and industries. At either end of the great hall are the chambers for the state senate and assembly. We arrived right as the decorations for the holidays were being finished up. We even got to see the finalized decorated chambers before the members of the state congress did! There is also a small display case covering the assassination of Huey P. Long, former governor and senator from Louisiana who was killed there in the capitol building. After all this, we took two elevators up to the public observation deck. From up there you could see the sprawling Exxon Mobil petrochemical plants just to the north, the governor’s mansion to the east, the LSU stadium to the south, and the Mississippi river to the west. Also to the west was lingering smoke from the recent burning of sugarcane fields. Kate remarked as to how flat everything was. Just flat land in all directions as far as the eye could see. There were some rather large and mean looking wasps living up there near the top of the building so we didn’t stick around too long.

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We descended back down to ground level and eventually made our way back out into daylight after stopping by a vending machine for some Barq’s Red Cream flavored soda. We walked the grounds a while, checking out the replica Liberty Bell and the Indian Mound that had been preserved there. Once we reached a point where we felt ready to move onto our next activity for the evening we walked back over to the building and sat at the base to use the free wifi to do some research. Eventually we made our way back over to the car for a moment, nibbled some chocolate snack, and then headed over to a grocery store called Matherne’s to pick up a few essentials for our depleted grocery stocks. After, we returned to the car and relaxed. We had a hummus and pita-chip snack while listening to a chapter of our audiobook (ASOIAF: A Feast For Crows).

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When it was time for a proper dinner we drove down toward LSU a ways and found this great little ‘locals-only’ type area with a few different bars and restaurants all tucked away under a freeway overpass. We popped into a hole in the wall Thai place called Rama Thai. We got some spring rolls and thinking we were pretty hungry both ordered an entree as they were decently cheap. What a mistake. Rookie mistake. They brought us two mountains of food. So much veggie and noodle that we kind of just sat there for a moment looking at each other in disbelief. No spring rolls and just one of these plates would have left us with extra food probably. We ate what we could and then got a couple of to-go boxes.

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Our last activity for the night had us off to Bengal Tap Room for trivia! Being able to return to a night of pub trivia so recently was great, so we figured why not try again? This time the game ran a little differently to both our home games at Bad Beat and to the night of trivia last week at the Wormhole in Savanah. In this version you’re given the categories for each round at the start of the round and have the option of betting 2, 4, or 6 points of the answer you write for each question. Don’t know much about sports? Only bet 2. Know a lot about movies? Bet 6. After all of the rounds we were in First place going into the final round! We missed some questions but being able to score the answers we felt really confident in with higher point values was great to keep our overall score high. However, we did not get the final question correct and had wagered enough points to drop us down into second place. The question had you rank the numbers associated with certain terms – for example, the number of the current US president (45) and the number of famed baseball player Jackie Robinson (42), there were 5 total numbers to rank and unfortunately we didn’t know the Saints last winning super bowl number. We guessed and got it wrong. Oh well. Can’t win ’em all I suppose. We left and drove over the Hollywood Casino, which allows overnight parking. Got the bed ready and got in to go to sleep. The bed creaking like an old door in a horror film.

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No gunfire this time, but we did wake several times to trains which run immediately adjacent to the casino parking lot. When we eventually awoke completely we ate some of our leftover thai food before deciding it was probably better to not finish all of it as even though it was probably safe to eat, it had definitely lost some of its appeal overnight. We prepped some PB+J sandwiches to supplement and then headed off to Bluebonnet swamp.

The BREC Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center is located seemingly in the middle of the suburbs. It is a small nature preserve hidden behind housing communities and not too far down the road from a mall. As we parked we noticed a small pond out front of the main entrance. When we got out of the car we noticed the pond was teeming with turtles! Cute little turtles propped up on logs and along the banks. This gave us some high hopes for what lay inside the entrance! However, when we got inside, we paid our entrance fee and started walking around the lobby. To be frank, it was a little disappointing. There were lots of cages and aquarium tanks around the room but none of them seemed to be the right size for the animals enclosed in them. Some were great. Spacious and decorated lushly – surely an inviting place to live out your days as a snake. Others though, left something to be desired. A mostly barren cage with a single bird in it, another cage with a sugar glider with a little too little room to move around in. The building was well constructed and looked as though it would offer some pretty high quality exhibits, but what was offered didn’t live up to the expectation. It looked as though the building opened to the public and they hadn’t finished building the interior exhibits yet – but were just showing the animals in whatever cages or tanks were available.

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We left the exhibit hall and began walking the paths through the swamp, hoping to have this part of the preserve hit the spot in the way the animal displays had not. We wandered through the half-mile of paths and found a couple of little areas which were definitely cool. The cypress trees were a highlight for sure. The base of the trunks on these trees span outward from the center into fins – widening the base and giving them the very stereotypical ‘swampy’ look. That was about it though. It just wasn’t all that swampy. I suppose this is mostly attributable to it being November. Most of the water that makes this swamp comes during the spring and summer rains. We walked through the paths and over the bridges but only one part was in any way “swampy.” Kind of a bummer.

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Having had our fill on off-season swamp, we left. The plan for the afternoon was the RRAAM, the Rail Road African American Museum!

We drove down to Donaldsonville, LA where the museum is located. When we arrived we felt we had finally found a glimpse into real life in Louisiana. This town was so pleasant and has such a storied history as a hub for jazz music. The museum itself is pretty small. When we parked out front of the converted house we were a little concerned we had driven so far to see a three room house-turned museum after the let down that was the morning swamp adventure and that we’d be done inside after 20 minutes. How wrong we were. What we didn’t know was that inside was Melanie. Upon entering there was one other couple inside touring the exhibits, an Australian couple if we overheard correctly. We stood around in the front room and heard this woman, Melanie, talking to them. A lot. Way more than any other museum tour guide would. She was the only employee working and if I had to harbor a guess, she doesn’t have a lot to do most days. After half-listening to her talk to them for about 10-15 minutes she said hello to us and in the brief moment she broke the conversation she was having with them, they snuck out the door. Nearly left an Australian-tourist-shaped-hole in the door.

What followed was nearly 3 hours in a tiny 3 room house with this woman who spoke nonstop for about 2 and a half hours. Just talking, constantly. Going over the exhibits in each room, sharing the history of the town, talking through any subject that came to mind. As I would wander off to a different room to look at some exhibits (and actually read things for myself) I could hear Kate giving noncommittal acknowledgements as Mel droned on and on. I don’t want to paint her in too bad of a light. She was very, very sweet and obviously passionate about the museum and her job there. She just LOVED to talk. From time to time she would talk to me and Kate would use the respite to read for herself the various plaques and info-blobs on the exhibits. This was a great museum. It is admittedly very small but it is rather densely packed with all kind of great articles and items. We were able to learn about the slave-trade and its impact there in Donaldsonville. We learned about famous musicians, doctors, politicians, and business-peoples. There was a small kitchen room which housed a full exhibit on life in slave houses and the life of recently freed people of color during the reconstruction era. The unfortunate part was that as well intentioned as Melanie was, her continuous stream of information paired with reading from time to time led to a bit of information overload. Near to closing time we were doing our best to wrap up the conversation and make our way toward the door when she started talking about her previous career as an adjustor for medical malpractice suits. YEAH… She was defending her previous job, wherein she tried to limit the payouts of the medical malpractice suits being brought against hospitals. After a few minutes on this subject we finally reached what seemed like an end to the conversation.

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She then offered to open up an extra room in the building adjacent to the main museum specially for us. We took her up on the offer and walked next door to a small classroom area which also displayed some info and artifacts about the slave trade, including some manacles and a spiked collar. We eventually left when we stepped back out of the classroom and some locals who knew Mel said hello to her and beckoned her over to talk. After this, we were craving some fast and filling food. Which takes us to Popeyes.

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If you’re in Louisiana you might as well get some food from a chain that was founded there. And if you’re gonna go to Popeyes you might as well get the chicken sandwich worth stabbing a man to death over. Yes, THAT chicken sandwich. How was it? Was there a long line? Was it complete bedlam in the restaurant? To answer: It was pretty good. That’s all. Pretty good. No mayhem, no death, no lines. Just a sandwich.

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After eating, we drove back up to Baton Rouge. We had made potential plans to go to an open mic comedy night, or possibly more trivia, or maybe karaoke – all this fell aside. We just needed a night to zone out. It may have had something to do with the bombardment of info that hit us hours before, or the fast food we were digesting. Whatever it was, the only thing we were in the mood for was relaxing and watching tv. Sometimes that is just the most appealing thing to do with the evening and I suspect many of our readers would agree. Which means we returned to a Starbucks to use the free wifi. Around closing time, we packed up and drove about an hour out of town to reach a rest area on the way to where we were headed next.

Happy Birthday to Kate, Happy Birthday to Kate, Happy Birthday dear Kate, Happy Birthday to Kate! Yes, Friday was Kate’s birthday. She awoke to lots and lots of well wishes from family and friends and was so grateful for them all. She had a couple of missed calls, to Alison and her Dad she wants to say: Sorry! We have normally been keeping our phones on airplane mode to save on battery and data costs. This has led to us having an increase in missed or delayed messages and calls. After checking messages we went into the welcome center we had stayed at for the free coffee they offered only to discover it was super fun inside! There were animatronic animals and a movie theatre, it was great! We walked around a bit and scoped out the statues before refilling our coffees and departing.

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We headed to Waffle House for breakfast, we might have an addiction to hash browns. A few more hours of driving and then we were off to Planet Fitness for some exercise and a shower to freshen up. A quick stop at a Starbucks (we definitely have an addiction here) for a free birthday beverage. When we got to the coffee shop, however, I reached into the car to grab out our laptops and I noticed what had caused our bed to be so very creaky over the past few days… it broke. Like, hanging on by a thread. Or in this case, the wiring for the electrical system I installed.

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At some point recently the board that is raised and lowered most often when we set up the bed became detached from the hinge. I suppose I didn’t design a sturdy enough system to handle 6 months of consistent use. Couple that with the bumps and vibrations of road travel and you’ve got a recipe for, well, not disaster… just a detached hinge. The electrical system was at risk of damage as those wires were not meant to be holding any weight. I fear some light damage may have happened as the batteries had stopped getting charged and when we adjusted the board to try and get it off the wiring a small spark sprang forth. I am confident that repairing all this will not be too difficult, the real issue is having the space to work on it in. It isn’t a very inviting idea to strew all of our possessions onto the ground while we’re at some rest area or in a parking lot. This does however put a damper onto some of our plans and that includes where we will be sleeping. We didn’t really feel comfortable getting back onto the bed with the hinge detached as it may slip and damage the electrical system further. But as we’d be staying at my mom’s house in just a few days we figured we could grab a motel room for a night or two and change up our schedule a bit to get to my mom’s early and work on the bed platform there (room unknowingly sponsored by Dave! Thanks, Dave!) Plus it was Kate’s birthday so a room with plumbing was the kind of luxury that was calling to us!

Speaking of birthdays, Kate is a huge fan of Joe’s Crab Shack. A love she developed when she was an employee at the now-closed location in Henderson. There is a location that is open in Beaumont, Texas … and we were also in Beaumont! How convenient! (It was planned) So we headed over to the crab shack and gorged ourselves beyond stuffed. Our lovely friend Juliana also knows what a crab fiend Kate is, so she sponsored this birthday feast. TOO KIND! Thank you, friend. The room we were staying in even had a fridge so we were able to take home some leftovers. We ordered Crab Nachos, Great Balls of Fire, and a Joe’s Classic Steampot which has Dungeness and snow crab, shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes all covered in Old Bay® seasoning. We took about half of everything with us to the motel room where we found a Friends marathon on TV and also The Shining, we switched back and forth between those for a bit but gave up on The Shining before giving up on TV and then fell asleep.

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Saturday morning we crawled out of bed early for the meager breakfast offering the motel had before returning to bed and to sleep. When we actually woke up what was on tv this time but Forrest Gump! One of Kate’s favorite movies. A love she developed as an employee at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant. We ate some leftovers in bed and relaxed most of the day watching Tom Hanks movies. After Forrest Gump, Castaway came on. I spent some time communicating with Alison about how to set up stuff on the blog for her post. Our evening was reserved for a visit with a friend of ours named Jada, who lives in Beaumont. We spent the evening amongst her and the 8 cats living in the house, eating pizza and catching up, watching movies, painting nails, putting scrunchies into our beards. A fun night. When we came back to the motel, Castaway was being rerun and we watched the ending before falling asleep.

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This morning, we woke up and checked out of the motel. We had our eyes set on Round Rock, Texas where my mom lives. It was about 4 hours away. Texas is big. Like, really big. Here is a map with Texas laid over Europe to give you an idea. Along the way we stopped into a Buc-ee’s at Jada’s insistence, which is a gas station and convenience store done the Texas way, which is to say – absurdly large. If I had to guess, 50 gas pumps and a convenience store the size of a full grocery store. Aisles of any kind of snack you could want, in addition to clothes and a fast-food restaurant inside to boot. We grabbed one item, Beaver Nuggets, and refilled our water bottles before leaving. They charged us for the water refills. Kate really wanted one more Popeyes chicken sandwich, this time the spicy one, so we added that to our drive. It proved too spicy for Kate. She ate it anyway. After a few more hours drive we made it to Round Rock.

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We arrived at my mom’s to hugs and hellos. Sat around for a bit catching up and waiting for June, my mom’s wife, to return from Home Depot with none other than my brother Tyler! Surprise! When we were back in Rochester I had suggested that he come down to see my moms for Thanksgiving at the same time we were. It has been a long time since we’ve collectively seen my mom and this was a good opportunity. Too bad my other siblings are still in Vegas – but they’ve got their own respective families and Thanksgivings to attend. After June and Tyler returned from the hardware store we unloaded some stuff from the car and demonstrated to everyone how we’ve been setting up the car for sleeping in. It was also the best time to remove everything so that I can fix the detached hinge, which I won’t actually do until tomorrow. Tonight we would be heading as a party of five to a Mexican restaurant called Serrano’s for some food and drinks. Tasty food! Tasty Drinks! We returned to the house after and relaxed. Here is where I will end this week’s post. Special thanks to our dear friend Alison for writing up the events of the first few days and joining us in New Orleans. The next blog post will return to Kate as typical and it should cover our time exploring Round Rock, Austin and anything else we may get up to in South Central Texas.