Trip Down to Louisiana

After a lot of effort with Dell, I finally received my two lenses and flash for the camera befre we left. I was anxious to use the new wide-angle lens for the desert.

We left Oregon Tuesday morning, with a rental SUV completely jammed packed full of new boat gear and new hobbies. We drove down to Chico the first day, about 6 hours from Eugene. It went well and we had absolutely no problems with the Siskiou Pass that we'd anticipated. There was almost no snow, really.We arrived in Chico around 530 and checked into our hotel. After Brett's daughter, Melody, got out of class, we visited with her at a Chinese (Mongolian-style) grill called Hula Hula. We had great fun with her and were so happy we'd been able to stop and see her on our way back to the boat.

We got up in the morning and headed South. It took awhile to get through L.A. and we settled for a hotel in Blythe which was on the border of Arizona and California. The next morning, we left early and came upon Quartzite, AZ which is famous for it's massive RV Rock and Gem Show in January- Well lol' and behold, it was January. We stopped to paruse treasures, but we were going through too early and no one was open. It was like torture. We heard all about the gathering of RVers at Quartzite selling rocks and gems for a month. And we were finally here and it was closed for the early morning.We contemplated staying the night in Quartzite to spend the day looking but decided not to spend the money and continued on. We also passed through Tuscon which was holding massive Gem shows.

We drove through Arizona quickly, and before I knew it, we were away from the cactus. I had made such a big deal to have the new camera and lenses when we went through Arizona so I could take pictuers and I didn't take one picture. We really didn't stop other than to refuel. We thought that we could make it to San Antonio, TX that night but traffic in El Paso was terrible and by night we had only barely reached Fort Stockton. We made the decision to drive through the night so we could get to the boat in the daylight.

We got to Houston in the morning and had breakfast at Denny's near It was a rough night but we succeeded and by 230, we were passing the Mandeville Exit sign. Earlier that night, Brett had thrown out Benny's cat litter and so we had to go into Covington to get cat litter before we made the last two miles to our boat.

Louisiana on-ramp painting of frogs

Our exit!

Thought this was a funny sign

for you Oregonians- This sign was a few miles before Mandeville, LA exit.

Parasailor went over our marina!