Driving to New Orleans...

Tuesday, April 2. Three Oaks and Pine RV Park, New Orleans, Louisiana

Our shortest trailer trip of the journey so far; It’s only 120 km further west on Highway 90 from the Cajun RV Park to the 3 Oaks and Pine RV park in New Orleans — more or less across the street!   We could have walked in honour of Fats Domino but pulling the trailer would have been too much.

We continue to have beautiful but cool sunny weather — high of 19C today in New Orleans; Lorraine had me put the heat on again when we woke up this morning.

We dawdled and read a little at the park in Biloxi as, again, we didn’t want to leave too early — the RV park in NOLA wasn’t allowing check-ins until 12:30.  Although if we’d been in a hurry they would have found a temporary place to park us so we could head out and do some site-seeing. When we did pack up it was quick and easy with no apparent mishaps. Although, I’ve not quite done it perfectly yet. This time, I discovered when we got to New Orleans that the little carpenter’s level I use to balance the trailer was left sitting on the back bumper. Magnet on the side of the level worked well — despite the bumpiness of the very rural portions of highway 90 the level was still right where I left it next to the spare tire.

The fastest route, theoretically, would have had us run north to the Interstate and west through Slidell and across Lake Pontchartrain into New Orleans but when you go from one park on Highway 90 and to another, and highway 90 runs along the coast it seems unnecessarily complicated as a route. Also, driving a trailer on the interstate doesn’t give you the same time benefits as in a car. The maximum speed rating on the trailer tires is only 104 kilometres or 65 miles per hour and that’s about as fast as I’m comfortable driving; maybe less if there’s a wind or the road is rough.  So highway 90 straight from Biloxi into NOLA was an Easy choice.

Highway 90 from Biloxi through Gulfport passes condos and restaurants and a few casinos. There are still a number of empty lots more than a decade after Katrina; This leaves a beautiful view of the Gulf and the islands twelve miles offshore. The Casinos give way to huge gulfview mansions, most now up on stilts or set up on berms out of the way of the next big hurricane. The big raised houses and the broad beach are beautiful but there is the 4 lanes of highway 90 between the two. Lorraine and I have decided that this is not where we’ll live if we win the lottery or I write the next great Canadian Novel ( ok, may need to be great American novel if I want to have that kind of money...). But it is a very pretty drive; Long Beach has some massive and beautiful homes — how big does someone’s house really need to be. 

Pass Christian, is a little more middle class and from there you cross a large bridge into Bay St. Louis which seems a very typical gulf-coast town and this is remarkable considering that Katrina covered both towns in about 25 feet of water only a decade ago. There are casinos scattered through the area as well but the flavour seems more Orillia than Vegas and the country turns from Pine Flatlands to bayou country gradually through this corner of southwest Mississippi — surprisingly rural given that we were only about 35 miles away from New Orleans at that point.

At Pearlington the highway becomes very rural with old iron lift bridges across the branches of the Pearl River that makes up the border between Mississippi and Louisiana. As soon as you cross the Pearl the country changes to full coastal bayou with gorgeous raised houses lining the estuarine lakes and bayous on both sides of the road. The view here is of open water, saltwater marsh, and distant salt islands. The highway is only barely raised out of the bayous and salt marshes, through Bayou Sauvage and into the eastern suburbs of New Orleans. The raised houses here all have folksy hand-painted signs with quaint names like “Reel Therapy” or Great exSPECKtations, and Poor Woman’s Paradise or Someday Finally came; Dream vacation homes. Lorraine and I had debate on whether we’d rather live here or on the beach near Pensacola. Both would be acceptable — I guess I’d better win two lotteries.

The trailer park is in the eastern suburbs of New Orleans — you know you’re there when you pass a huge walled dike and controlled walled gate on the highway. I’d hate to be stuck out in one of those homes on the lakes to the east — I have a sense that once they lift that gate there’s no getting in at all until the water’s receded. The eastern suburbs are very industrial and not all that prosperous looking and the trailer park is sandwiched between another park and small dive hotel and a machine shop of some kind. But for about 70$ less a night than the park we stayed in last year I’m ok to be a little down market and miles away from I-10. The park is small — only about 40 wide spots on a gravel lot that means we’re really only next to one trailer — it’s a quiet spot to spend an afternoon typing while Lorraine has a nap.

Well, this is New Orleans and a nap can only mean one thing — preparation for Bourbon Street. At 8 we grabbed an Uber and headed straight to Canal and Bourbon. Lorraine’s favourite Bouron Milk Punch is made at Brennan’s Bourbon Bar so we headed directly there.  I’d considered we might just have a drink and snack but we both were much hungrier than I’d thought...  Lorraine had a milk-punch, I had a fancy barrel aged old-fashioned ( disappointing). We split a half-dozen big, messy peel and eat shrimp  and then moved on to Steaks with a bottle of Decoy California Cab — probably our blow-out dinner and the first dinner we’ve eaten out since the Italian meal with John and Nancy. Service was oddly sporadic — the steaks arrive and were delicious but Lorraine’s had sat too long at the pass and was almost cold — including the potatoes underneath. Steak that isn’t hot is always a risk when the cook is very rare and they get it right.   She was done eating before anyone could complain — she was hungry, the steak was good and neither of us wanted to wait for a re-cook anyway.  When we did complain they comped us on a dessert — a really nice bread pudding with cherries and bourbon sauce ( what else).

Then it was time to “party” — we worked our way up Bourbon watching the drunks and Lorraine stopped to pat all the police horses she could. We poked our heads into a few bars in an attempt to find some good music — generally it was better than last year and renewed my hope for the quarter. Last year it seemed to be strip joints blaring hip-hop and rap and bad bands pumping out top 40 at excessive volumes.  We listened to one band do good covers of Queen and AC/DC before moving on to an ok Jass Quintet where bar service was slow so when they hit an un-rehearsed rendition of “my way” we escaped to the next stop.

Like Goldilocks, the third bar was just right... A hot R&B band with a good brass section and two good singers covering 70’s R&B — Celebration! Uh-Huh.  I ordered us a couple of bourbon rocks — that rather promisingly came out of a Maker’s Mark bottle that took a little of the sting out of the $25 price-tag.  ( Sadly, the bourbon was just regular bar stock and the Maker’s bottle a come on — you gotta love The Street. That trick was old when my grandparents were younger than my kids are now... )  Anyway — the music was running hot and the bourbon running cold. We watched a bunch of kids less than half the age of the songs dance the night away.  We had fun here until almost midnight nursing our drinks and watching the kids until the bad snuck into the 80’s Loggins and Messina and R&B versions of Toto drove home that the volume was making my ears bleed it was time to Uber back home and hit the sack.