TOUR AMERICA, 2020: MADISONVILLE, LOUISIANA, THE BAYOU STATE

Places We Have Called Home In 2020

Home Is Where We Park It:  Fairview Riverside State Park, Louisiana

August 12, 2020

Temperature 87 Degrees 

Travel Day

I Fought The Tree, And The Tree Won

Our New Home

It was so nice not to have to get up at the crack of dawn this morning.  Our trip today would be an easy 3 plus hours so we were not planning on leaving until around 10 am.

Actually, we were up and ready to go by 9:30 am so we decided time to get rolling.

Like yesterday the trip was a little bit of this and that.  We had several sections of really horrible road, we had some construction backups, a few miles of Jersey Barriers right on the shoulder line, and we had heavy traffic in some spots.  It is obvious just by the increasing volume of traffic that we are definitely back East.  Yet, overall the trip was an easy one.

Last night I did catch one thing that made the trip easier.  Last night I previewed the route for today and was a bit nervous about the last section.  I didn’t like the looks of it.  Well, I happened to be going thru reviews on Campground Reviews and one reviewer said in essence if you are coming from the West, and you have a large rig, this is the way you want to go.  Directions were included.  I pulled the route up on the map and sure enough that was the way to go and that was the way we came in today.  It was so much easier than the route the GPS wanted us to take.

In due time we saw the entrance sign for the park.  A few twists and turns and we were at the park office.

This is absolute gem of a state park.  It is clean, well taken care of, the roads are easy to navigate and the sites offer good spacing between.

This is our new home.  It is a back in, reasonably level, paved, a bit short, but only offers water and electric.  However, we are having a deuce of a time getting any satellite reception so we hope to move tomorrow.  Time will tell.  Now for you eagle eyed followers you might have noticed that something is missing from the right front of Elvira.

While backing in to the site – to paraphrase an old song – I fought the tree and

the tree won.  I sheared the arm that attaches the mirror to the front cap completely off.  Believe it or not, I wish I had taken the mirror off instead.  The mirror costs a lot less than the arm.  Point of fact, I’m now looking for a part time job to pay for the arm!

Barbara called Newmar and we’ll have a new arm by Monday.  The fun is going to come in trying to reattach the wiring through the arm to the mirror.  I’m going to have to cut and splice.  Thankfully, the wires are color coded.

So what does one do when they really screw up?

If they love seafood you go to one of the best seafood market/restaurants in the area.  Actually, this is where Barbara took me.  She thought I could really use something special to sort of pick my spirits back up.

The one side of the store is the market with all kinds of tasty seafood for sale.

The other half of the store is the restaurant.

No concerns about social distancing since we had the whole place to ourselves.

You order at the window and when ready they bring your food to you.

Lunch is served!  Barbara had pot roast and I had a catfish platter with a bowl of seafood gumbo on the side.  The first few spoon fulls of the soup and I had already forgotten about the busted arm.  Well, almost.  The soup was so good I got a pint of it to go.

Back at the Park we rode over to section two to scout out other possible sites we could move to tomorrow.  We found three possible sites that would give us great satellite reception.  Tomorrow, we’ll see if we can move.

This is the Tchefuncte River (say that fast three times) that borders the park in section two.

That was our day on The Road of Retirement. I do hope you had a better day than I did.  I’m so ready for 2020 to be over.  I really need to get back to my A Game if we’re going to continue to travel far and wide for the next so many years.  Let’s see, so far I’ve almost pulled out of a site with the electric still hooked up.  I almost left my best water regulator behind.  Now, this really major screw up.  This is just not me and I’m not a happy traveler right about now.

  Thanks for your company.  We always appreciate when you stop by and we so enjoy your comments.  Catch you tomorrow.

These are the voyages of  Elvira and her two intrepid travelers.  Our continuing mission: to explore as many new states as possible, to seek out new acquaintances and make new friends, to boldly go where we have never been before.

See you on down the road!