March 27,2007
We are now on the road again heading toward Louisiana. We spent the night at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Beaumont TX. This is the first time we have stayed at a Cracker Barrel. The manager welcomed us to stay and seemed quite pleased. Of course we did eat there. As it turned out there was another rv there and at least one big truck.
As we leave in the morning it is our plan to make it to Mandeville which is across the lake north of New Orleans. We hope to stay at the Fontaine Blue State Park there and have stayed there several before. It is a very nice campground right on the lake. However it did sustain a great deal of damage from the hurricane. At that time their web sight said it would be closed for 18 months. We checked recently and now it says they are open and does not mention the hurricane. When we arrived there we were told they would have a spot for 2 nights but otherwise they were booked up. We took the 2 nights, drove in and found most of the campground is still closed due to the damage. There are many huge hundreds of years old, Live Oak trees on these grounds. They did survive but have been stripped of most all foliage and lots of branches. They are working to get the campground completely open but still have lots of work to do. We could not find any campgrounds around here that had open spots. So we will head on east into Mississippi. Gene called and found an RV park in Waveland. This is one of the hardest hit towns in Mississippi. We are amazed that there is an RV park open there. I-10 in Mississippi is about 5 miles from the gulf shore. As we turn off and head south towards the shore we immediately see effects of the hurricane. In the towns of Waveland and Bay Saint Louis which is just adjacent to it, many businesses have never recovered. Complete strip malls sit completely vacant with no signs of recovery. Some houses have been rebuilt but definitely not a majority. There is storm damage clean up everywhere. There are many areas with FEMA trailers, some with just a few and others with many. The small campground we are staying at, only 14 spaces, has a few long term local people and a few who seem to be here doing rebuilding. Along the coast there are 11 cities, from Waveland on the west to Pascagoula on the east. They are all connected together and all were heavily damaged by the hurricane. One day we took a drive along the coast to Gulf Port. It is amazing to us how little rebuilding has been done. Much of the litter from the hurricane has been removed but most of the lots along the coast are vacant with little sign of rebuilding. As we get to Gulf Port the businesses there seem to have recovered better than anywhere else. Of course the casinos are open and that could have something to do with the rest of the business community. Another day we drove into New Orleans from Slidell. Even the bridges across Lake Ponchatrain are damaged from the storm however they have made temporary repairs to it. We begin immediately seeing the devastating damage for Katrina. The majority of the damaged houses are still sitting just as they were after the storms. Many businesses are still closed. It appears that mostly national chain businesses have repaired and are open for business. We have seen many, many large apartment complexes unoccupied. We had a nice dinner with our niece and family who live in New Orleans and had a chance to visit with them about the recovery of New Orleans and the gulf area. Jenny’s husband John explained to us the reason the apartment complexes and commercial businesses have not rebuilt and probably won’t. The required flood insurance is now so high it is not feasible to rebuild due to very high monthly premiums and even higher deductibles. Seems no wonder that people are not coming back as so few apartments are available. The French Quarter and River Walk are pretty much as we saw them last. There are not near as many tourists as there were before Katrina but the traffic on the street seems to be quite heavy. On our way out of town we drove along Lake Shore Drive which is on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The houses along here are more expensive homes. They all had many feet of flood waters in them however many of these homes have been rebuilt and look very nice. We took Highway 90 on the way back and on our way out of New Orleans we saw several boats along side of the road where they landed when the waters receded. It seems to us that only around ¼ of the damaged homes have been rebuilt. That was kind of depressing to us. We decided to not take any more pictures as we would like to remember how it was before the hurricane and not dwell on the present condition

March 18, 2007
Our next stop is in Castroville, a small town about 25 miles west of San Antonio. We have stayed here 2 other times. It is a city park and nice campground. We are staying here for a week. We went to San Antonio and the River Walk and will do some shopping. We did not enjoy the River Walk nearly as much as other times but guess that is because we have been there several times by now.

This campground has a very nice walking trail with a beautiful river flowing alongside. One of our favorite pictures of all we have taken was taken here in Castroville and I am sure we have shared it before but it is so pretty that I am posting it here again. We used this on our computer as a desktop for a long time. It was cloudy when we first arrived here and remained that way the entire time we were here. We got no rain until the last afternoon before we left. Late afternoon the sirens began to blow and we all headed for shelter in the restrooms. It rained very hard and seemed like forever but there was no wind and no hail. We are very thankful.

March 14, 2007
We left Desert Trails RV Park on our way to Beaudry RV Dealer to have some warranty work done on our motor home. The first day they did nothing…bummer. During the day we did lots of Mall walking and spent some time sitting in our car reading. While there a group of Blue Angels were practicing and it was fun watching their air show. The next day we went to a movie in the afternoon. The second day they did complete the job and we got on the road about 5:30 pm and drove to Benson, about an hour away. We had planned to stay at Walmart for the night but they do not allow overnight parking so we stayed at the Red Barn RV Park for the night. We are just really glad to be out of Tucson. The next day we traveled back to Deming and stayed 2 nights there. By now we are back in the swing of preparing the rv for travel. We will travel on I-10 all the way to Florida but plan to stop along the way from time to time to see some sights.

Feb 16 to Mar 16, 2007
While we were here at Desert Trails RV Park we found many activities and different kinds of entertainment. Also lots of food…breakfasts, lunches and dinners. We want to begin back when we first got here in December, all the way up till we left March 16 to let you know about some of the fun things we saw and did here at the campground. We arrived here on December 16 and were here for one month. Then we returned again after our trip to Mexico, on February 14 and stayed another month. During that time two months time there were 15 evenings of entertainment, all good but some were excellent.

On the day after Christmas the owner of the RV park furnished all-you-can-eat pizza for everyone. The pizzas were made to order and cooked in toaster ovens as we watched. Along with that was a Band Wagon One Man Band who entertained us in the campground. He sang mostly songs from the 50’s and 60’s. It was a fun afternoon. And you can see the weather was great for the day after Christmas. One evening Jorge Vasco played hand-made Peruvian flutes of all kinds. Most of them he had made himself. These were all made of reeds and had such a mellow sound. Some were one single reed and others were multiple reeds attached together in a very decorative way. Some were a very high octave and others low. He definitely was an artist. A group of 13 accordion players entertained us one evening. Now you might be thinking how boring but I tell you some of these people were very talented. One lady was from the Ukraine. She had been playing since a very young child and had several masters degrees in music. Not only that but she sang while she played almost in an operatic voice. They all were very good and just a group from Tucson who love to play their accordions. We were also entertained by a Barber Shop Chorus. They too were a local group who just love to sing and they were very good.

Two of our very favorite groups were both school kids. The Pueblo High Magnate School has a Mariachi Band. Fourteen of these students came to entertain us both men and women. They were dressed in very beautiful Mexican outfits with silver buttons up the sides of their pants and skirts and adorning their jackets. They were very professional in the way they played and dressed. We were told by their sponsor that they are all planning to attend college and all have scholarships. In May they are travelling to Disney World to take part in a Mariachi Band Contest with some of the best bands in the USA. We were delighted with the evenings entertainment.

The La Cholla High Magnate School Folklorica Dancers performed for us also. These young people, all girls except for one handsome young man were so very good. They had very colorful costumes some in bright reds, greens and blues and beautiful hair decorations. They performed several different dances demonstrating the style of different Mexican tribes. We truly enjoyed watching and listening to these talented young people.

One other group that was quite good was The Bost Family Traditions. This was a lively group with 6 children ranging in ages from about 3 to 17 and Mom and Dad. The littlest girls fell asleep on the stage but got up when it was time for them to perform and then hurried back to their spot and went back to sleep. We enjoyed this family show very much

While there we also went to a Christmas Dance held in the club house and also a New Years Eve party complete with a very fine dinner including our choice of BBQ ribs, shrimp or steak. It was a great evening with a white elephant gift exchange and prizes. Besides this lovely meal furnished by the owner we had six other meals, mostly pot luck.

The only site seeing we did was to the Sonoran Desert Museum where we saw even more unusual cactus and learned about the desert setting. This picture was taken at the museum which is mostly outside. Well what do you expect…it is a desert museum? You can see we did not long for something to do. It is a great place for Snow Birds to spend the winter. We had a great time in Tucson but we are ready to leave and see some other places now that Spring is here.