Happy New Year 2022

1/11/2022

Site 53 @ Huntsville State Park, Waverly, Texas

A good afternoon and Happy New Year to all from our spot for a few days in Huntsville State Park in Waverly, Texas. The park is north of Houston, Texas and a place Melanie and I camped in December of 2019.

I'd planned on posting a kind of retrospective of our travels and began curating photos from our three years as nomads back in December 2021. When I opened our Travel Journal this afternoon, I saw I'd only progressed through a few months beginning when we began living in Miranda on October 27, 2018 and then began traveling full time on January 6, 2019.

Today posting highlights from three years of traveling the country strikes me as too time consuming and isn't something I want to spend time doing. At least not at this juncture in our travels.

Instead, as we move into our 4th year of full time travel, I give you links to our Instagram and Missingpersonsrv websites. Peruse if you've time, skim at will.

While we are both vaccinated and boosted and the new variant of the COVID virus has us taking all precautions we feel are necessary to avoid becoming infected, we continue to enjoy traveling the country. At the moment we have no plans to find permanent bricks and mortar housing. We love this life.

Our New Year's plans were changed when our dear friends from Birmingham who were to meet us at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park texted bad news that one of them tested positive with COVID.

We missed catching up and spending time with them, but found ourselves battling ants we'd picked up at a campsite along the Alabama River just prior to our arrival at Topsail where we'd met and camped with friends from Florence, Alabama. While I found a few more in a storage bay recently, we think the ants are well under control now.

The past years have found us heading west after being at Topsail during New Year's, but this year we traveled to Atlanta for the funeral service of one of our extended family's father who passed away during December 2021. While we were saddened by his loss, the service enabled us to see family again before we are hopefully able to see them once again in the Fall.

After Topsail, we stayed in Pine Mountain Valley, Georgia a couple of nights before the funeral camping at F. D. Roosevelt State Park. We made a trip into Warm Springs and visited Roosevelt's Little White House one day.

I grew up in Columbus, Georgia and made many trips to Callaway Gardens nearby. I'm also sure we visited the Little White House, but I had no recollection of the museum or the buildings there. The museum is worth a visit as are the grounds.

Our intention then was to travel back through Birmingham, Alabama, after the funeral, stay a few days, see a few more people we know and love, and then make our way towards the southwest.

We received news the day of funeral from Birmingham more extended family members had tested positive for COVID and we quickly made the decision to pick up mail forwarded there and move along. I would say after almost two years this feels almost normal, but while it may indeed be the new normal, it still doesn't feel good to miss spending time with people we now so rarely get to see.

Moving through Birmingham, we stayed in a travel park in Tuscaloosa, Alabama overnight, moved relatively early the next morning and got Miranda washed at a nearby truck wash before traveling south to Spanish Fort, Alabama just outside Mobile, Alabama.

In Spanish Fort, we stayed in Meaher State Park. Meaher is the nicest Alabama State Park at which we've stayed. It offers concrete pads and full hook ups for RV'ers. Meaher also has several nice piers and walking paths. It's very convenient to I-10 and Mobile.

One of the highlights of staying at Meaher was spotting a newly rehabilitated and released Bald Eagle that kept flying around the area.

We missed out on dining at Southern National. We received a voice mail from Chef Reginald Washington giving us the bad news. While the message didn't elaborate, we surmised their closing and cancellation was most likely COVID related.

Next up was our annual pass through New Orleans, Louisiana. The past few years we've come from the beach at Topsail to NOLA, staying one night in the Basin Street Visitor Center parking lot.

The French Quarter is about a half block from where we park and a police precinct is just across the street from the parking area. The parking this year cost us $20.35 for a 24 hour period.

The past few years we've made a reservation in NOLA to eat dinner at Bayona, but because we weren't sure when we'd be traveling through NOLA, we had to wait and could not get a reservation this time.

We arrived in NOLA mid-morning, made a stop for groceries at Whole Foods Market, traveled to our parking spot and began an afternoon trek into the Quarter. We quickly decided to find lunch first. Melanie spotted Antoine's a restaurant I'd not visited in many years.

Lunch was quite good. Melanie had gumbo that was honestly the best I've tasted in recent memory. I chose their 3 course winter lunch consisting of Soup du jour, Soft Shell Crab and Bread Pudding. Very nice.

Afterwards, we walked around the Quarter and took in the scene for a time before walking back to Miranda for an afternoon nap.

I found a dinner reservation at La Petite Grocery. Chef Justin Devillier was the James Beard Best Chef South in 2016. Dinner there did not disappoint. Recommended.

We were up early the next morning and after coffee was made and a few cups consumed, we headed west to Sulfur, Louisiana. Sulfur is just beyond Lake Charles, Louisiana where a number of refineries are located.

We stayed a night at A+ Motel and RV Park in Sulfur. A heavy rain was falling as we arrived, but was soon gone and we parked temporarily near their laundry facilities. I did our laundry while Melanie worked.

Not too far off of I-10, A+ is one of the nicer parks we've stayed in recently. I'm not sure what one does in Sulfur, but the park made for a nice evening's rest.

We got a pretty early start yesterday, traveling first to Costco in Conroe, Texas for a few items we needed and then on to our current location in Huntsville State Park. We'll be here another day before traveling on the San Antonio, Texas, another of our favorite spots.

Cheers, y'all.