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Published: November 29th 2012
We decided to head further west on the Florida panhandle and beyond. Our destination was Gulf State Park near Gulf Shores, Alabama. We drove this route 20 years ago and the landscape has changed a lot. The entire Gulf Coast is developed between Panama City and Gulf Shores, about 120 miles, with many resorts, large hotels and amusement parks.
This campground has over 400 paved camp sites, a pool, tennis courts, gulf course, waterpark and is close to the white sand beaches on the Gulf. We got a very nice camp site next to a small river. We hope the alligators stay in the river. This area was decimated in 2004 by Hurricane Ivan. There are very few trees left in the campground, but lots of other vegetation has grown back. We are giving Gulf State Park a ***** star rating. This is another place we would like to return to.
We celebrated Thanksgiving by making an almost traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was only a small turkey breast, the potatoes were instant and the pie came from Winn-Dixie. It tasted great and was easy to fix so we had plenty of time to watch football. We are sad
that we had to miss the new tradition of pumpkin bowling at the Gjersvig house.
We made a day trip to Fairhope. This was our destination when Rick and I took our boat trip down Kentucky Lake and Tennessee/Tombigbee Rivers in 2009. I wish we had time to look up some of our friends we made in this friendly community.
On Saturday, Nov. 24
th we drove the 200 miles to New Orleans and stayed in a KOA campground (***) in Kenner, LA. We met our friends Larry and Carl on Sunday. We spent the afternoon on Larry’s 36 ft. Irwin sailboat on Lake Pontchartrain. We were fortunate to have good wind to fill the sails since the engine was not operational. Larry is a great sailor and sailed out and back into the marina slip without a problem. Who needs an engine on a sailboat?
We hit the road again on Monday morning in the rain. We stopped to visit Laura Plantation, an old Creole plantation on the Mississippi River about 30 miles from New Orleans.
http://www.lauraplantation.com/ This plantation isn’t as pleasing to the eye as some of the other plantations along the river, but it has
a very interesting history and we enjoyed the tour very much.
Now it is on to Texas and the long drive through the Lone Star State.
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Bonnie
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Happy Thanksgiving to you . . .
a bit late. Paul's family and Brian were here so it was an enjoyable couple of days. The 22 pound bird fed us for 2 meals, plus there is still some in the freezer. We're enjoying your blogs and look forward to the next one. And Texas lasts forever. We've had a dusting of snow and Fri. may bring freezing drizzle. We will head to Minneapolis sometime that day headed for Linnea's reception. Safe travels and may you find plenty of ***** campgrounds.