Our first night in Florida was spent in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Navarre, FL. We had to back track about 15 miles since the first one we went to in the middle of the night did not allow overnight parking. No big deal. We expected to spend a lot of time here in Florida and Navarre is as good of a place to start as any.
Before you get the feeling, let me just tell you that you are going to get a major case of the deja vous. That’s because today, we did the same thing as yesterday. The only difference is that we actually got to go inside and check out all of the places. Since we got a good lay of the land yesterday while riding around in the street cars, we knew that we could just drive into town instead of relying on public transportation. The 4 miles we walked yesterday really wore us out.
First stop, Lafayette Cemetery #1.
When we drove out of the Los Angeles area 31 days ago, we were glad to see that the rest of the country had smooth and beautiful roads. No need to worry about those darn potholes, bumping our heads on the roof of the van or having the Airstream bounce right off of the hitch… until we got to New Orleans. Oh man, the roads are crap here! I think the entire state may have crappy roads. And the turning lanes and layout of the roads suck. And I am not even the driver! So when Dan said he wanted to drive into the center of town instead of hopping onto the ferry today, he got a little more than one raised eyebrow from me.
We boondocked at a Walmart last night after pulling into town just after midnight. The first Walmart that we planned to stay at had a sign with a silhouette of an RV and a big red X over it. I took it as them not really welcoming us into their parking lot. I hate coming in to town at night only to see that. We had to hunt another one down in the middle of the night thanks to our GPS and Google Maps, we found one just a few miles away. Fortunately for us, it was RV friendly.
That’s more than I can say for this little fella we saw the next morning while checking into the Bayou Segnette State Park in Westwego, Louisiana.
We got into Corpus Christi, TX pretty late the night before and found a Walmart to boondock at for the night. It was our first night of boondocking since replacing the house batteries in Tucson. I wanted to make sure it was working properly and it would handle our power load when we are not plugged in. The last time we boondocked in Tempe, Arizona, we woke up in the morning with not enough electricity to even run the fridge on propane mode. Our new batteries on the other hand performed like rock stars all night. They provide enough juice to let us even run our TV in the morning for Ava to watch PBS kids before we left for Padre Island with power to spare.
When we woke up today, we had an agenda. We were determined to get on the first tour into the caves so we can hit the road early to get to Austin. That means we had to get our tour tickets as the doors open at 9 am.
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We arrived at our first Texas destination, Balmorhea State Park, in the dark. So we really didn’t have any idea how this place looked in the daytime. This campground is actually set-up pretty cool. Every site is surrounded by a picnic area (many are covered by these white adobe shelters) and a tiny island that houses the electric and water hook-ups… and you get to pull through to your own section of the paved road.
We have now finally left our comfort zone. Treading on new grounds with every rotation of the tires as we head east with Mali Mish in tow is more thrilling than we have imagined. And it is only getting better by the minute.
Our first morning in Bisbee started out just as any other, Ava trying to drink her warm milk from the sippy cup that Mila is trying to grab while I am trying to stay asleep with Marlene using the camera to document it all.
So here we are on a cross-country road trip. A road trip that will take us to new places to see new things. And where was our next stop? A place that we have been to twice in the past five years. Because we love it so. Hello again, Shady Dell. We’ve missed the hell out of ya!
On our way to Tucson, we stopped at Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch. We stopped here last year for the first time when we visited here and we remember Ava having a good time so we wanted to stop again. We try to instill our love of animals onto our girls and places like these are great places for them to interact and learn about these beautiful creatures first hand.
Here are some photos we took during our visit. The cost is $5 for adults and kids under 7 are free. The $5 entry fee gets you a bucket of feed and a little cup of nectar for the birds.
Guess who is in charge of babysitting today.
Hi. I’m Ava. Today we are at Organ Stop Pizza out here in good ol’ Mesa, Arizona. We thought we would grab a late lunch but you know what, they are not open until 4pm. No wonder the parking lot is empty! It’s a good thing, I guess, because we needed 7 parking spots for our van and Airstream.
