Houston and Acadiana Visits

We had a great time in Houston visiting with all four of Ellyn's cousins from her Father's side of the family and her Uncle Lou plus "new" cousin, Abbey, and her family ("new" = recent connection through family genealogist, Fred). Many thanks to all of them for all the food and laughter and good times during our visits. In addition to family, we visited the beaches on the Gulf two times, had a great bike ride, visited the beer can house, and bought cowboys boots & hat. Plus we did do some just plain relaxing and paperwork including finalizing the refinancing of our RV.

On Sunday, we resumed our eastward travel. Our first stop was in the beautiful little Sam Houston Jones State Park in Lake Charles, LA. It was great to be camped right near a swamp including water fowl, Spanish Moss, and Cyprus tree knees. It's amusing to see the ducks on the Gulf because there are white ones with red faces and other which have cow-like black and white coloring.

Our next stop was Jennings, LA where we went straight to Boudin King for boudin, a Louisiana sausage stuffed with spicy pork, onions, rice and herbs. The woman at the counter could tell we were visitors (our accents?) and offered us two inch samples of our choice of mild or spicy boudin (we chose mild). It was great tasting but there was so much else good on the menu that we decided to take one pound of boudin for dinner and to eat something else for lunch. Geoff had rice & beans with sausage and Ellyn had fried giblets and okra. Yummy.

We next went next door and visited the W. H. Tupper museum. What a wonderful time capsule of a rural store from the late 40's plus a telephone museum! And an extra treat was that the woman who showed us around was the Great-Granddaughter of the first mayor of Jennings so she knew a lot about the town history and people. Third stop was the Visitors center which had three big alligators and a baby alligator that we could hold. We remember us stopping to see the alligators with Logan and Brian, in '93, when we four drove around the US in four weeks.

Our next destination was Abbeville, LA, where we are currently parked in Betty's RV Park which is only 17 spots. A funny  thing is that our friends, Norm and Shelley, also camped here but we didn't even know that until after we had made plans to come here. Betty is the owner and there's a BYO happy hour each evening. Today, Betty provide home backed banana bread that was fantastic.

Today wasn't one of our better RVing days. First off, it is cold and rainy. Second, our car started making a loud clacking noise when we heading out for Avery Island, this morning. We were hesitant to continue driving it so we called a tow truck and then the car stayed in the shop the rest of the day but they couldn't find the problem. So, Geoff retrieved the car and when we drove it to dinner, tonight, it stopped making the noise. We had a great dinner at Shucks! I really liked the vinaigrette which had a nice sweet and tart taste. When I saw bottles of the Shucks Cane Sugar Vinaigrette at the cashiers and asked how much they were, she said I could just take one. A fun end to a day that started pretty gloomy.

So, we'll head for Avery Island, again, tomorrow. Hope the drive goes better than today's did.