Our campground in Dickinson is located about 20 miles southeast of Houston. It is just about right in the middle between Houston and Galveston just a few miles away from Johnson Space Center. We intentionally found a spot there so we would be able to spend the day at the Space Center after we check out in a couple of days. Today, we are headed into Houston.
From New Iberia, Avery Island is just a few short miles away. Since our only purpose to come down here is to see Avery Island, we headed straight there as we got ready in the morning.
We wish we can stay longer here but because of the Super Bowl, this weekend is completely booked. Well, the fact that half of the campground was not open due to construction did contribute a bit to that I suppose. We talked to one of the grounds person here and he told us that 9 times out of ten, a request to dry camp there would not be a problem. We thought about it but decided to just push on. Even though we still have about a month left before we need to be back in CA, we like the idea of getting closer before slowing down.
Today the clouds dissipated and left us with pools of water once again in the low lying areas around the campground. Our stay here has been a little disappointing as many of the reasons why we liked this place last time were not quite the same. The facilities all seem a lot more run down than we remembered. Half of the campground was closed and slow internet has prevented me from getting a lot of work done.
It was a good thing we made a second trip into the city yesterday as today we woke up to rain. Actually, we have been hearing rain on the Airstream all night. We have been pretty lucky in the bad weather column of this trip in not seeing too much rain but it has finally caught up to us.
The forecast calls for some rain in our future so we decided to take the opportunity to get back into New Orleans to do some more sightseeing before it is too late. Once again, we are taking the bridge in and forgoing the Algiers Ferry. Maybe our next visit won’t land on the perfect storm of tourists in the crescent city and we will be able to get back on that boat across the Mississippi river.
Being back in New Orleans is a pretty big milestone for us. Since leaving Florida, we don’t have many plans to stay anywhere more than a couple of days. New Orleans is the only big city we planned to spend more than a couple of days at until we got back to the west coast. Once we leave Louisiana and head into Texas, there are going to be more transit days and for longer distances.
This morning we said good-bye to our ocean front Walmart parking space in Mississippi and headed west into the state of Louisiana. Our oldest kid, Ava, was super excited to finally cross into Louisiana. There are four places that she really wanted to visit during our current road trip adventure. First was to see our friend Carrie for Halloween (check!), then it was to go to Disney World (check!), then to see mermaids at Weeki Wachee (check!) and last, but not least, was to go to New Orleans… to eat beignets!
Last night we tried to eat dinner at the buffet of Biloxi’s Boomtown casino but we were unable to get in there with the kids. Since it is just a casino and not a hotel, no one under 18 is allowed inside. We actually didn’t care that much about it. We were just trying to patronize it for allowing us to park overnight.
We made up some arbitrary rules awhile ago that in order for us to count a state as one that we have visited, we needed to tick off some boxes on a checklist that we will create. I am sure there are lots of other travelers who subject themselves to stricter requirements but the ones we decided for ourselves are pretty easy.
Last night I dug through our photos from Cedar Key and found one that showed the back of the yellow Landrover and trailer we have been seeing along our route. I remembered that they kept a blog and I was going to send them an a message through it about how we kept seeing them outside of our window.
This morning we are taking things slow. We spent a lot of time lounging around the Mish before the girls and Luka decided to meander around the campground and park looking for creatures. The rumor has it that there are bald eagles living somewhere in the park. As I stayed back at the campsite, Marlene and the kids went out on a little adventure.
