We stayed on 90W all along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, through small towns of rolling hills and rich, black earth. I’ve been discussing with my permaculture group how surprising it is that so few people use their yards to grow food. How much healthier and happier Americans could be if they didn’t rely on food companies to feed them… Millions of acres of lawn that does nothing but guzzle water, time and fertilizer could be stitched together to build corridors for wildlife, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for transport and fertilizer, cool our cities and provide homegrown, nutrient dense healthy food to people, regardless of how much land they own or rent. There is so much potential here and I have great hope that wherever Honey & I decide to put down roots I can grow something beautiful and inspire people to create a better relationship with the natural world.
Once we crossed into Louisiana, the road and surrounding landscape became very rough. Piles of tires, dead boats, and trash of all kind litter the woods and marsh all the way into New Orleans. We passed abandoned buildings and one group of people preparing to drag race along this desolate stretch of pavement. Evidence of the havoc hurricanes have wrecked since Katrina in 2005 followed us through the city to Bayou Segnette State Park on the south side of New Orleans where we had booked our campsite. Blue tarped roofs, litter, and poverty contrast heavily with the affluence of New Orleans’ “better” neighborhoods. Around our campsite and throughout the park, uprooted trees overlayed their dissonant lines on the woods. It was terribly disheartening but I did find great joy in a luminously yellow flower that peppered the landscape around our campsite. I have no idea what the flower is called, but it offered its bright ode to the resilience of Life to this disturbed ecosystem.
I have only very vague memories of my last time in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when I volunteered during a short break in college with some friends. I remember the destruction of the 9th Ward, and also spending some time in St Bernard Parish, but nothing very specific except for the greasy taste of alligator meat. On this trip, Honey & I took advantage of breaks in the stormy March weather to spend one day wandering around the French Quarter, and another walking down Magazine Street through the Garden and Touro Districts. Both areas are full of charming historical buildings, which we both love, and the Garden District is full of fun local shops and tasty food joints.
It would be a sacrilege to visit New Orleans and not indulge in the richness of Creole and Cajun cuisine. The food there is hands-down some of the best I’ve had anywhere in the US and our lunch at Curio after our long walk around the French Quarter did not disappoint. We both got the Taste of New Orleans trio just so we could sample as many things as possible. From crawfish étouffée (they’re in season right now), to hammy, smoky red beans & rice, duck andouille and black-eyed pea gumbo, to their deeply flavorful creole jambalaya, we found that every dish warmed us to the core and satisfied our deep and abiding love for food, and the cocktails were on point. Later on we sampled beignets from a couple of different places (I cheated—how could I not?) and agreed to the superiority of the ones from Café du Monde (much as it pains my contrary spirit to agree with the masses!). We also made sure to grab boiled crawfish to go from a local seafood joint on our last night and had a great time cracking those little suckers open.
As we were packing up Chérie! to leave on our last day, I noticed that the water inlets to our kitchen sink were leaking badly so we tried to tighten things up to see if that would help. Our “fix” made the problem much much worse. If we turned on the pump, water spewed everywhere—even without opening the faucets. As per our experience in Florida, trying to find a repair person or shop last minute is impossible in big cities. The places I called in the area were all booked solid until April, but we did find someone in our direction of travel who could see us that day if we could get there before nightfall. With his confirmation, we abandoned our no highway rule and booked it to DeRidder, LA, about 4.5 hours away.
Bruce and Mary, make up Cajun RV Guy, a husband and wife team of mobile RV repair and maintenance experts. They do upkeep, repairs, and have done several renovations including a vintage airstream and a camper-to-tiny-house conversion for their oldest daughter. They arrived just as we were pulling into our spot at the Trout Creek RV Park on the outskirts of town. After a quick diagnostic look, Bruce changed the gaskets on the connectors, ran the water, and declared us leak-free. When he was done, Mary went over the whole Casita with me, offering up some good advice on upkeep and maintenance. On my follow-up call to Bruce later that evening (after finding that the gaskets hadn’t been the entire kitchen plumbing problem) he provided some basic, over-the-phone plumbing instruction, which, once applied, seems to have mostly done the trick. (Pro tip: if you don’t have Vaseline, Vick’s Vaporub works just as well to lubricate a joint).
This little adventure pulled us off of the route we had planned on taking along the Louisiana coast. With a low that night of -1ºC, it was probably best for us to be that far inland. Getting out of bed in the morning was brutal and seeing our breath hang out inside the Casita convinced me that cold weather camping is not for me!
DeRidder is very close to the Texas state line and only a couple of hours from the coast so we took a leisurly drive through Big Thicket National Preserve and stopped for a hike around midday. Perhaps there’s a time of year when Big Thicket offers more in terms of sight-seeing, but in early March, it’s pretty bare. Flooding damage had taken out one of the bridges on the longer loop, so we walked for about an hour and then resumed our drive south to a lovely county park in Anahuac, TX.
The Fort Anahuac Park offers three nights of free camping without hookups, provided you call ahead to get a permit. Since it was Saturday, the county offices were closed but we decided to go and camp anyway, reasoning that if the Sheriff came knocking we would tell our story and either be allowed to stay, or be asked to camp elsewhere. That first night we parked in the upper section of the park, but the next day we moved to the lower section near the boat launch. In the morning we walked to a local grocery store to buy Cajun boudain1 and spent the rest of the day reading and enjoying the sunshine. The sheriff drove by several times and never bothered us, so we stayed a second night.
Since the weather had warmed over the weekend, we decided to head to the beaches. We drove along the Bolivar Peninsula and took the ferry to Galveston where we started to see the infamous oil refineries of the Texas coast. Massive doesn’t even begin to cover the vastness and intricacies of their sprawl. When you look at the many miles of interconnected pipes bending and turning in all directions, it’s impossible, as a layperson, to make any sense of them. The industrial engineers who design these systems must be the same kinds of geniuses who do well in those pipe-building games that I find both tantalizing and infuriating to play.
From Florida through Louisiana and Texas the coastal roadways are lined with houses and housing developments on stilts. They’re all fairly similar. Mostly one level on stilts about one story tall, lots of bright colors, decks facing the ocean, and spaced fairly close together. From Bolivar to Freeport, TX they go on for miles. We didn’t see many businesses besides bait shops—very few restaurants, shops or grocery stores—so I wonder if most people who vacation there don’t just drive down with all of their supplies for the week, the way my family used to do when we rented cabins together on Burt Lake in Michigan each summer. Honey & I did a big Trader Joe’s run before leaving New Orleans since we knew we’d be free camping for a week before getting to Austin, so we were set, but I thought it odd that groceries, or even a salty dog type of bar were so few and far between.
The beaches along this stretch of coast are unlike any we’d ever seen before. The Freeport and Surfside beaches are very wide, sometimes backed by dunes, sometimes backed by housing developments (on stilts!). The sand is very fine and packed down hard, so you can drive on the beach even with a normal car, which is what everyone does. You’re supposed to get a $10 beach parking permit which is good for a year, and you can camp for 14 consecutive days at a time, but each county seems to have their own permit and since we bought one for Bolivar beach, we didn’t want to buy another for Freeport. Nobody came and checked, so this didn’t end up being a problem for us.
The first night we met a Canadian couple who kindly loaned us their wine opener (we have since bought one—such an embarrassing oversight for two Frenchies!) and chatted with them around their fire for an hour. As much as Honey & I enjoy each other’s company, it’s also reeeeeeally nice to talk to OTHER PEOPLE! In the campgrounds we’ve been to so far, our neighbors have said, “Hello,” but they’ve otherwise kept to themselves, and we haven’t found ways to initiate conversation. I hope we remember how to make friends at some point!
We only stayed two nights at the beach, but if we hadn’t had reservations to honor, we would gladly have stayed longer. I was nervous about this leg of the trip for a few reasons. Firstly, there were some storms on the radar, and I was concerned about being so exposed in potentially inclement weather. Secondly, I didn’t want to be as cold as our night in DeRidder. Thirdly, the SAND!!! And the way sand has of getting everywhere… I have vivid memories of trying to rid my bedsheets of every single grain of sand when I was a child and that sensation of sand in the bed makes my skin crawl.
The first night we had such a bad thunder storm that Honey watched the lightning show as Chérie! rocked like a boat for hours. It was a surprisingly comforting feeling for me, a reminder of nights spent on a friend’s sailboat when I was younger. As for the sand, well… We did our best. I swept approximately every five minutes and we kept a bucket of water at the door to wash our feet before coming inside. Since the grains were fine enough, and we kept everything open, they blew in through the window screens and I am still finding them underfoot, as I feared, though thankfully, not in the bed!
So so delicious! Unlike Creole boudin which is very spicy and made with bread and either seafood or pork blood; or French boudin which is made with either apples or onions, pork blood or milk (but no starch); Cajun boudain is made with spices, rice, liver and pork, so it’s technically gluten free. We found it sold loose or in casings and we bought a second package on our way out because we enjoyed it so much the first time (and it was incredibly cheap and filling!).