April 8 - 9, 2011 We “join” the Cajun Caravan...

John and Shirley from NorCal are on the Cajun Caravan, and we are now in their territory, camped at the Lakeview RV Park in Eunice, Louisiana. Shirley and Marcia coordinate a get-together so late in the evening a gray Dodge pulls into our campsite and John and Shirley emerge, along with Roy and Linda, also from NorCal. It is hot so we sit outside, our guests on their tailgate, sipping wine and swatting mosquitoes, talking about their and our caravan experiences.

Inside the Savoy Music Center, Saturday morning - Eunice, LA.

On their suggestion and with the very generous cooperation of their caravan leaders, Richard and Marilyn Solera, we join them the next day at the Savoy Music Center in Eunice, a nondescript music store where at least eight musicians are playing and singing Cajun music. Richard motions us to the back of the store, where Marc Savoy is talking to the group about Cajun music and the Cajun accordion. He plays them, makes them, and sells them; the cheapest for about $2000. There are probably 60 accordion makers in Louisiana. Marc and his four adult children all play in Cajun bands, including his daughter living in Paris. We leave with two CDs, one a joint album put out by Marc’s wife and Linda Ronstadt.

After visiting the Savoy Music Center we join the Cajun Caravan for a Cajun meal at Nick’s in Eunice, opening especially for the group. The meal of pulled pork, dirty rice, and deep fried sweet potato is excellent. Everyone seems very pleased with the caravan, which is of two weeks duration, complaining only that there is “too much food”.

After lunch we dash to the neighboring community of Mamou, on the recommendation of the crowd, hoping to find a hole-in-the-wall bar that is open only twice weekly featuring Cajun music. Unfortunately they have just locked up on our arrival but we hear we missed quite an experience.

Again taking advantage of our caravan connections, we buy tickets to the evening’s performance at the Eunice Liberty Center, but don’t get what we expected; this turns out to be a “Classic Country Music Show” although the performers are Cajuns. I can’t judge country but we had a good time.

John digs in to his Cajun pancake breakfast.

Roy can't pass up a BBQ place, even at 9 am.

The next morning we join John and Shirley, along with Roy and Linda, for breakfast at Ronnie’s, the only place (besides McDonalds) open for breakfast on a Sunday. Afterwards we return with them to their caravan camp in the fairgrounds, finding two or three couples we know from other caravans. But the Cajun is moving out today, and so must we.

April 8, 2011 Biloxi, Jeff Davis, and Katrina...

After Mobile we return to I-10 then cut south to the waterfront to take a look at Biloxi, Mississippi.

Our first stop is a gigantic casino on the water where we have lunch. There is no obvious RV parking so we park across the street in an area of city blocks and slab foundations but no buildings, except for our casino and another one of recent construction. We go for the 2-for-1 special buffet but find nothing very good and leave full but unsatisfied.

Marcia's passenger-side visitor in Biloxi.

Typical block in coastal Biloxi five years after Katrina.

On leaving we realize these vacant blocks must be the aftermath of Katrina. We continue along the waterfront and for uncounted miles see nothing but derelict piers and half-completed (or half-surviving?) casino construction on the coast, and next-to-nothing landward but old foundations and porch steps. New Orleans got the network coverage but this is where the hurricane really hit.

Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis' last home, in the late 1800s.

Eventually we come to Beauvoir, the last home of Jefferson Davis. Davis lost most of his wealth in the Civil War and could hardly afford Beauvoir but was making payments when the owner died; she did not believe Davis would accept charity but knowing herself to be in poor health she wrote her will so Davis received full title at her death. This was his home for the last twelve years of his life.

The white dates from when this served as a Confederate veterans home. 

Cedar, carefully painted to look like oak.

The home is interesting for what it isn’t: a fancy mansion. Only one story, it is built on piers 23 feet off the ground. The interior woodwork is mostly pine and cedar; the latter painted to look like oak. Trompe-l'œil techniques are used to give the interior walls an appearance of elegance and fine craftsmanship.

Hours after Katrina in 2005 and a 24 foot storm surge.

Katrina damaged silver from the Davis home.

The home, built partly with slave labor, has been here since 1852. It survived 140+ hurricanes but Katrina about did it in. The storm surge reached 24 feet so the steps and porches washed away and the interior flooded a foot deep, the furniture pushed to the back walls. Most of the damage has been repaired and work is underway on the neighboring “presidential library”.

Beauvoir remained in the Davis family until 1903, when it and the surrounding property were converted for use as a home for Confederate soldiers and their families.

April 6 – 7, 2011 Ft Pickens gets a 2nd look…

We reluctantly leave the Low-Key Hideaway on a beautiful morning, returning to Hwy 19 and driving north to where we intersect with I-10, and begin our westward trip home. We pull in to the Fort Pickens campground near Pensacola after taking a “shortcut” that inadvertently costs us over $12 in tolls. I have great difficulty with backing the trailer into our spot without going off the road, after such a beautiful job at Cedar Keys. But that is life.

Battery Langdon.

Grass as artist.

The view from Battery Langdon.

It is still daylight so we walk on the beach in a nice 72 degrees, Marcia collecting seashells and I gathering tar-balls, both happy in our choice of souvenirs. I go on ahead and explore the Fort Langdon Battery, started in WWI but completed after hostilities ended; it was again used in WWII and could fire a projectile 17 miles seaward. I don’t believe it ever did any damage to an enemy, but a number of American soldiers suffered bleeding from the eardrums and mouth and lifetime tinnitus whenever it fired. (We stayed here in January on our trip eastward, when the morning temperature was 32 degrees and BP contractors were cleaning the beach. No sign of that today, and the temperature is certainly much pleasanter.)

The Dew Drop Inn - Mobil

The next morning we return to I-10 and our drive west, admiring once again the green corridor of trees through Florida (although a peek to the side shows much logging just out of sight). In Alabama we pull into Meaher State Park, on Mobile Bay, very pleasant with full hookups. We notice several Airstreams with numbers, meaning they are members of our WBCCI club. Hungry, we drive to the Dew Drop Inn, a Mobile hot dog and hamburger place since the 1920s, and since the 1960s at its current location. Nothing surely has changed – worn Formica tabletops, very simple menu, still popular with young and old. We pass on the famous dogs and order hamburgers with chili, the cheeseburger of course with American cheese. The onion rings are mild and great and the burgers are very good and with the chili are much like sloppy joes.

Battleship Alabama - Mobile.

After lunch we take an historical driving tour of the Mobile downtown, seeing a variety of well cared for small and large wood frame homes from long ago. There is little activity or traffic downtown, hard to tell if it has always been this way or Mobile is in a major downturn.

Rebel redoubt.

Yankee rifle line.

We then go to Blakeley State Park, where the last major battle of the Civil War was fought, ending on the same day but hours after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee in Virginia. There are only three cars here, our paths crossing as we wander about on mostly dirt roads trying with great difficulty to understand this not well documented site. The Yankees won the battle capturing over 3000 Rebels, but lost more soldiers dead or wounded in the process than the Rebels

Big Bend Florida unit at Blakeley State Park.

Back at our camp, we see there are now five other Airstreams and soon we are invited over for appetizers and conversation. They are from the Big Bend Florida unit and are having a rally at this park. All have deep southern pleasant drawls and soon I begin to understand how cousin Gail fell in to these speech and language patterns after less than a year in Texas. In conversation I try it a little bit and it rapidly becomes quite comfortable.

April 5, 2011 What a Californian thinks of Florida after 50+ days

In the Whale, returning to camp from the dinner, tomorrow's lunch on the dashl.

We remember when California was California and Florida was a California pretender.

Florida did a great job, eventually winning the citrus wars (even if many of their oranges come from Brazil), a fair amount of movie and television production, a larger version of Disneyland, popularity as a tourist destination, and a significant part of the space technology business. You could argue in the early years there was California envy - many California city names are duplicated in Florida - Hollywood, Pasadena, Venice (well, okay, so we copied Venice from Venice), and Orange County.   Both states have done great damage to exactly the things that made them attractive in the first place with hasty real estate development. 

Florida seems to be doing amazingly well for a state with no income tax and a sales tax less than California’s; California seems to be doing very poorly with a high income tax and high sales tax.  Don't know anything about Florida property taxes but expect they are high.

As Californians in Florida, we have had a great time and have learned and experienced much. We like this state.  I understand why Canadians, people from the mid-west, and those from the northeast come each winter, even retire here. But the summers must be unbearable and I like my mountains.  We're staying in California.

April 4 – 5, 2011 A Low-Key Hideaway on Cedar Keys…

Bill shoots us an e-mail touting Cedar Keys (sometimes Cedar Key) and a place called the Low-Key Hideaway campground and motel and tiki-bar, and we haven’t gone wrong yet with his recommendations so off we go.

We drive north from St. Pete on Hwy 19, which in the early part is three lanes each way, lots of strip malls and stop lights. Probably half the billboards are for personal injury lawyers, their smiling faces promising skillsets that all but guarantee huge and rightly deserved settlements. Of the remaining billboards, probably half are for medical services – hospitals, urgent care clinics, medical centers, eye centers, dental, plastic surgery, weight loss by a variety of means (none, surprisingly, the lap belt technique so prominent on Hwy 99 billboards in California). Not uncommonly, hospital and urgent care billboards include large electronic clocks displaying the current waiting time for emergency care and less-urgent care. None of these billboards seems to make much sense for the citizens: heavy advertising for services already incredibly costly and inefficient. This road must generate a lot of accidents leading to medical treatment and lawsuits.

Eventually Hwy 19 becomes rural and forested and the signs cease, a welcome relief. We spot our turn at Hwy 24 and proceed 20 miles west to the Cedar Keys, again through forests. We break into bayou territory as we approach the Gulf of Mexico and soon spot the Low-Key Hideaway, a 1950’s brightly painted motel and an adjacent five-RV campground with full hook-ups. On Bill’s advise we drive beyond, make a U-turn when possible, and pull to the shoulder. We soon see why.

Low-key Hideaway motel and campground.

We register with Cindy and are joined by Pat who points out our site, requiring us to back the trailer across the highway, maneuver between neighboring RVs, trucks, and palm trees, and land next to the hook-ups. He offers to back-me-in, and I think he means he would drive my truck; perhaps he only means he will give me guidance signals. I pretend he means the latter, and get in my truck. Cindy blocks traffic coming toward us, and Pat blocks it from the other direction. Nervously I drive forward, angle to the right, stop, check my mirrors, and begin to back. I nail it, on the button, to Pat’s under-his-breath “wow—a professional!” and likely Marcia’s look of pride (and surprise). I get out of the truck, calmly, as if it is always this easy; when Pat moves on, Marcia and I high-five. (My Oregon cousin Scott drives and dispatches for GTI, a large northwest trucking company. I think he would be proud of me for this one.)

Our campground is indeed low-key and the weather is wonderful, so we relax in the bright sun and gentle breeze, more appealing and comfortable (today, anyway) than my memory of Hawaii.

After a while we venture to the Tiki Bar where Pat is tending and have beers, sitting on stools in a rustic open wooden structure decorated with license plates from around the country, old flip-flops and boots, and signs. We learn Pat and Cindy’s story: They travel as much as possible, full-timing the previous four years. They previously operated a restaurant, and on travels to Baja bought some land way down the peninsula are considering turning it into an RV park and restaurant. They came to the Cedar Keys just a year or two ago and manage this site for an owner that previously had little success. The place is beautiful, in the promised low-key way, with the Gulf not more than 30 feet away (in either direction), a comfortable hammock slung between two palms, a raised deck with comfortable deck furniture. And then there is the Tiki Bar. For legal reasons the owner wanted nothing to do with this, so it is set up as a separate business entity and Cindy and Pat own it.

We stick around for a fabulous sunset and go to Tony’s, on one of the three downtown business streets, for great clam chowder and a grouper sandwich. When we turn in the sky is full of stars but the forecast is for a dramatic weather change.

We awake around 5:30 feeling the trailer being buffeted by a strong wind. Rains come and then lightening, with distant thunder. The big winds continues for a long time, and at daybreak I peer out the back window and see the hammock looking more like a spinnaker, wind-filled and pulling on its stays; if an end breaks loose, I wonder if it would smash into the trailer.

Around 8 AM things settle down and by 10 AM we are ready to venture out for a hot breakfast at Annie’s, a rustic café down the road. Bumper sticker on the wall: “For a Small Town, There Sure Are a Lot of Assholes Here”. We overhear the locals talking about last night’s “big blow”. One remarks that this was the third time recently they’ve dodged the bullet. Pat hasn’t been here a long time but he volunteers that it is the closest he has come to a hurricane. Having recently read accounts of the hurricane of 1935 I know this was nothing, but nevertheless it was impressive.

Work must go on, even at the Low-key Hideaway.

A bald eagle next in the Cedar Key cemetery.

Two horned owls, if you look carefully.

Funk for sale - if we had come here prior to St Pete, we might have gone to the other festival.

Downtown Cedar Key, Tony's restaurant on the left.

We spend the day shelling, walking in the cemetery, birding, and of course having a fine dinner – at the Islands Dining Room at the ironically named Yacht Club.