Day 15 - New Orleans - San Houston Jones State Park

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I seemed a little down today as we were travelled to San Houston Jones State Park. I wasn't sure whether it was the fact that one of my blisters on my shoulder had burst, or that some weird rash had appeared on my nose. Either way I felt I couldn’t seem to catch a break. First it was the cold sore at the start of the trip, then the swollen feet, the numerous bites, which we’ve all suffered, the burns and blisters and now the nose thing. It made me think what could be possibly next - bubonic plague?
Another possibility could be that tomorrow was my birthday. It would be a significant one, as it will be my first one on my own. I know that the rest of the guys were planning a little something, which is nice. I just hoped my mood would improve before then.

On our way to the next site, we stopped off at Avery Island, the home of Tabasco sauce for a tour of the site after having our lunch. Sadly the tour of the factory isn't that long, and is made up mainly of a brief history video and a few samples of different Tabasco sauces handed out towards the end. In fact my 3 sample bottles stil sit in my camera case to this day!
After the tour, we have a quick look around the shop and get to try some more samples of the different varieties of sauces, and setting my mouth on fire in the process. I desperately ran to the toilets to take in water, but it didn't really help!
We left soon afterwards for our next site. Sadly our camp was right by a swamp, so there were hundreds of insects around, and the humidity was unbearable. Soon a male and female duck waddled their way onto our site, and came within feet of me, looking for a hand out. Once they realised there wasn’t one, they waddled off to other campers.
We had to be careful on sites like this one, the other campers think that as we were a Trek group, we were gonna be rowdy, noisy and disruptive. Any hint of trouble and we would be kicked off site with Trek being banned in the future, even if it wasn’t our fault.
Todd would keep explaining at every State and National Park that they don’t seem to like Trek, even if they seem to bring a lot of business their way!

Once camp is set up, everyone got in the van with Todd to head to the nearest store for some reinforcements of sugary goods and what such, leaving just G and I on site. I decided to head to the shower block, only feet away from us, and had a much needed shower. It was desperately needed for the heat and my burns. I also sensed that my body needed refreshing, and didn’t waste any time stripping off and jumping in the moderately cold water.
After finishing the shower, I sorted my hair, brushed my teeth and headed back out to the site, but very quickly, I was sweating and itching quite badly.
I found a spot to try and get some WiFi, but with no success, although G seemed to find some, and just enjoyed the peace until the others return.
When they do they told of how heroic Todd was, saving a turtle from certain death.

We made a unanimous decision to watch a film tonight, with Todd just going to pull the row of seats out of the van, and plug a laptop into the speakers to make our very own cinema. We got dinner out of the way, and as my group was cleaning the van tonight, Todd, Graham, Mark and I first removed all the seats, which made it quite easy in the end. This made cleaning the inside of the van so much easier as it was just one big open space. Already the gang has made quite a mess in the van in the short time we have been on the road!
Now the seats were set up by the side of the van, we moved a picnic table over as well as anyone’s camping chairs, and Todd and Neal began wiring Kylie’s laptop to the speakers, which turned out to be a bad move, because as soon as the laptop was plugged into the van, it blew the speakers. Todd greeted that with a “Shit!”
Todd and Neal frantically worked away at getting the speakers working again, whilst the rest of us started beginning to take our seats for the film – The Hangover.

In the end the guys got the speakers working, but we've lost the use of 2 of the 4 cigarette lighter adaptor sockets in the van, and also the use of playing any i-pod or mp3 player through the aux section of the radio. At first this was treated as bad news, until Zoe came to the rescue with a FM transmitter to play our tunes through the radio. Woop-woop! I was a little relieved as tomorrow would be my turn in the front seat and playing the tunes.

Finally everything was ready for the film. The sun had now gone down, and the whole site seemed to have gone to sleep, or at least into their RVs for the night. The bugs though had come out in force, so much so, that the constant noise drowned out the sound of the film. I didn’t know about the others, but I was scratching all over every few seconds or so, so much so I don’t know if I could survive the film.
Thankfully I did surive, and really enjoyed the film, even if most of the lines weren't picked up.
It got worse though, after the film and we headed to our tents, I noticed that my feet were really itchy, and turned out there were hundreds of bites on them. I had gone with the slightly cavalier approach to bites on the trip. I normally just carry on if bitten and don’t worry with any bite cream, but in this instance I covered my feet in something, then headed to bed. Tomorrow was a big day for me!

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Photos

Tabasco
Don't think it was filled up with Tabasco though!