Day 5: Walking with Zombies: Slidell, LA to Bayou Stegnette State Park, LA

Oh where to begin. Right, Cracker Barrel. Many journeys begin at Cracker Barrel. My morning walk was through the residential areas near our “campsite”. Some interesting homes. We had a short day of driving today (yay!) to the state park with a visit to NOLA on the way.

Wait. This contraption drove into Cracker Barrel parking lot late yesterday for an overnight. Engine was a pure metal on metal sound. Once it parked all of the coolant vacated the vehicle to the parking lot. I am not sure what the trailer contraption was but stuff was just thrown on the trailer. I guess that is ok if you can only go 3 miles an hour. The person / people? slept in the cab of the truck.

Drive to NOLA was uneventful and complete in 30 miniutes. We parked in the parking lot near the Basin Street visitor centre. Big lot, mostly empty. $5 for 12 hours if you can fit in one spot, otherwise it’s $50 for 24 hours for RVs. So, we backed up to a curb to overhang enough to fit into one spot. We met a couple of dudes from Quebec that were in the same Cracker Barrel parking lot as us last night.

From the parking lot it is a short walk to the French Half and twice as far to the French Quarter. We arrived at the parking lot at 0940 or so. Plan was to avoid the crowds as much as possible. We saw many of the places mostly without the drunk people. We did not get Daiquiris to consume while we meandered through the streets.

First minor inconvenience: Most of the shops don’t open until 1100. That gave us time to walk around and discover new ways to avoid people on the sidewalks. As we approached Cafe du Monde, there was much excitement. I thought my people were happy to see me. Perhaps I’m not the influencer I thought! Turns out the today show was filming and a Hoda and a Jenna were there snarling up access to the Cafe. No Beignets for us.

Second minor inconvenience: I could not decide which Voodoo shop had the stuff I needed. We had to sample a few of them to get things just right. Let’s see if it worked. You know who you are!

Amy was a trooper. We brought water and a bowl and she and I would crouch down and drink some when we got thirsty. I did not partake in the communal water bowls that some shop owners put out.

We did see one dude that looked like a Zombie. He was very out of it and probably still living the party from the night / day / days before.

By noon we had seen enough and crowds were building so we headed back to the van. Back at the parking lot we watch while the attendants put the wheel boot on Instragram dude Flight Risk Schoolie’s skoolie. He arrived just after the booting. The attendants came over to talk to us to ask us to move. Apparently they are shooting a movie in the parking lot and forgot to close off the required section. No worries, we were about to head out cause check in at Louisiana State parks is 1300. Spoiler alert, checkin is 1400.

We plotted a course for the campground with a side trip to see the levees and a pump. We observed these from as close as we could without trespassing. No, we did not name the levee, Eugene. Too obvious. Turns out, our campsite is a few hundred meters behind a levee. At least here we are 20 feet above see level!

We arrived at the campground just after 1300. They let us in even though we were an hour early. Thank you kind state worker! The guy just across from us is from Almonte, ON. That’s about 90 minutes from where we live. There is another rig here from Manitoba.

We did some cleanup projects. Took a short walk and the just relaxed for a while.

For dinner we fried up some good on the Blackstone Griddle. Mrs. Milddogs is kind enough to encourage me to be the griddle master. I suck at timing so she stands close by and gives me hints. Dinner was good. We did our best Owen Poteat style happy dance.

Our site is pretty good. There is a lot of wind damage here due to Hurricane Ida in August 2021. We have driven past a lot of fairly recent wind damage.

As we ate OUTSIDE Mrs. Milddogs (should that be MIss Milddogs as we are in the south now??) noticed an unusual animal. A bit later, this little fellow popped out to say hello. He created an armadillo jam the way moose create moose jams in Algonquin Park. No, moose jam is not something you eat. Moose Milk is something you can drink.

It’s really nice here to hear so much nature. We just heard a Barred Owl and made us think of the cottage in the summer. We saw a little snake on our walk. It did not kill us. We have yet to see a gator. Tomorrow we move onto another Louisiana state park towards the Texas border. We are going to stay at that one for two nights. On the way Miss Milddogs (see what I did there) hopes to find a genuine southern boil to eat.

Weather: Perfect: 24 C and mostly sunny!

This was a great day.

Out!