Home at last!

Back home in Virginia after 7,595 miles, just under 10 weeks traveling, 18 states visited and four intensely CO-UT-AZ-NM, 26 campsites of which 9 were one nighters in transit, the rest from 2 to 7 day stays, 91 hours of driving split equally and about $1,100 of diesel fuel. What an adventure!!

Nice camp site for the night!

On the border between Alabama and Georgia we booked in to a Corps of Engineers site on West Point Lake. The sun is sinking down behind the pines and some deciduous trees that are just starting to change color with fall. Geese are honking as they migrate around the lake and decide where to spend the night. The grill is burning down so we have embers to grill dinner with! Shame we have to go home!

Last night in NOLA

Made our reservation to Bayona's quiet courtyard on FQ Dauphine Street to sample executive chef Susan Spicer twist on Korean oysters, grilled duck breast and mango sorbet! Nice way to leave town and remember the best of NOLA.

RR - Restaurant Research

The Mecca of fine dining and not such good dining! Beware!!! My first pass is to list all NOLA restaurants that have outdoor patio or courtyard dining! Then ask Margaret to review menus, then check Trip Advisor for positive and negative comments, check with friends recommendations, check Open Table and check availability! Lots of work but it is rewarding when you can experience New Orleans at its best and have enjoyed every tasty treat for a whole week!

Commander's Palace

No visit to New Orleans is satiated until one has passed through the portals of Commander's Palace for lunch or dinner especially their garden view room on the second floor. Thompson, Seth, Jessica, Bea, Phyllis, Margaret and JT enjoying 25 cent lunch Martinis! As noted in the menu, a maximum of three martinis each!  I'm in the mirror taking the shot!

FQRV

Luckily there is a RV park just 5 minutes walk from the French Quarter - just fine in the daytime but take a cab at night! The site is a bit expensive but well worth it for location and excellent services including hot tub, swimming pool, laundry, brick paved sites, all utilities connections and a helpful front office!

Old friends and good memories

Visiting NOLA means catching up with dear friends from way back and having a lot to talk about! Ashley (SMS '86) teaches art in a local private school and moved here recently from Boston cold winters! Nice long lunch in the patio garden at Cafe Amelie in the French Quarter!

Wonderful wedding!

Ben and Bri Eberline at the end of the exhilarating second line New Orleans street procession from their wedding reception at the Terrell House to the after party pub Barrel Proof in the Garden district - a thrilling and memorable moment to share as they begin their new life together ... Felicitations!

Starting the second line!

The second line brass band appeared at Terrell House to escort us four blocks to Barrel Proof complete with NOPD motorcycle escort to block roads and make sure we got there safely! Second line parades originated from Jazz funeral processions and all the fifty or more well imbibed participants dance and wave handkerchiefs as we prance down the streets of the Garden District! What an thrilling and unique life experience it was!

The Wedding Cake

Anticipating the delight of two wedding cakes! Chocolate and rum version not in the photo! Phyllis and groom Ben in the foreground with JT and myself relaxing in the armchairs at the Terrell House! Taken by Margaret!

NOLA Botanical Gardens

Beautiful lilies and lily pads in the botanical gardens a couple miles north of the French Quarter

Botanical Gardens

Taking photos of the beautiful lilies in the New Orleans Botanical Gardens....

Rehearsal dinner

Margaret and Jen (SMS '98) at the rehearsal dinner at the Mid-City Yacht Club on Friday evening - two tables heaped with boiled shrimp New Orleans style and lots of golden refreshments!

Café Amelie

Nice elegant and relaxing courtyard dining on Royal Street in the New Orleans French Quarter with soothing fountains and gas torchieres - enjoying our last week of our 10 week caravan that took us to 17 states! Tomorrow is rehearsal dinner for Ben and Bri who will be married Saturday!

Bayou exploration

Thirty minutes south of New Orleans in the Mississippi delta the Jean Lafitte National park has a boardwalk out into the swamp where what else would you expect are alligators basking in the sun! The boardwalk barely averages 12 to 18 inches above the waterlogged basin so how much confidence do you have in the height difference and a hungry alligator?

From mountains to swamp

Come a long way in four days of constantly watching and waiting for catalyst error messages - fortunately I think the six software updates since the RAM was built last year may have fixed the sensitivity issue with the exhaust sensors and we are relieved to arrive in alligator country. You never really believe Texas is big until you spend two entire day's driving across it from the arid high plains New Mexico borderlands in the west to the lush bayou at the Louisiana border.

Airstream Tweaks

Created a FaceBook page to showcase each Airstream improvement project to help and enable other campers to modify their rigs! www.facebook.com/airstreamtweaks

The making of the Atom Bomb

In a requisitioned boys school on top of a New Mexico mesa, Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Gtoves assembled the team of atomic experts and built and tested the three devices - one tested at the Trinity site and two dropped over Japan - in a remarkable 28 months! A self guided walk takes you around the key buildings that were the center of the secret life of Los Alamos from 1943 to 1945.

Macabre pottery

Unusual collection of China figurines in the gift store at Los Alamos featuring Fat Man atom bomb, tanks, ghouls with AK47's, missiles and other oddities!

Check out the latest low cost housing!

Bandolier National Park near Los Alamos was home to thousands of Pueblo Indians both in house rock homes in the natural caves and lean to adobe structures with roofs. One advantage was the stream running through the valley close at hand which allowed life to develop here!

Hurricane Matthew

In my eagerness and relief at the change of track and the likelyhood that Matthew would not be visiting Virginia I completely overlooked the tragedy about to befall at least six couples on the SW Adventure caravan whose homes are directly on track on the Floridian east coast. Friends with homes in Jupiter, Titusville, Fort Lauderdale and nearby have become fatalist to the outcome and at least they still have an Airstream home on wheels they can tow! Several couples are planning on leaving the caravan from our current location in Santa Fe immediately to start the 2,000 mile trek east to go back to what is left of home to pick up the inevitable pieces! Our relief at not being in the eye of this category 4 monster is tempered by the life changing drama unleashed on our traveling companions! Humbling moments....

Food Network stars!

We sat down for dinner at Joseph's Gastro Pub in Santa Fe and little did we know that we would all four soon be signing waivers to allow the Food Network to broadcast us enjoying our fine dining sausage cassoulet, chicken roulade, duck confit and miso broccoli along with a fine Oberon Cabernet. The chef interviewer host Hanna Hart is best known for her Drunk Kitchen cooking while intoxicated show! Maybe we should not as been so eager to sign?

Trouble ahoy!

RAM diesel is in danger of being disabled to a 5 mph speed thanks to an EPA ruling that mandates DEF being injected into the exhaust catalyst to minimize soot emissions! The vehicle software has detected a fault with the catalytic converter and the Dodge dealer says they are back ordered! The software is being "flashed" in the hope of making the error disappear but if it does reappear I only get 200 miles before we get automatically disabled to 5 mph limp mode! Update to follow...

Up up and away !

Hundreds of balloons drift over the airstream encampment and some even come down by accident close to our trailer campers! One incident the balloonist just used up all his propane!

Glow time!

After the early morning launch, the balloons return to the field for an evening session to light up their static balloons as darkness falls. The ceremony master does a countdown every few minutes and at zero all the balloonists in unison activate their gas burners illuminating their balloons across the eight times football field size launch area. Totally impressive and awesome considering the amount of propane being roared inside those 500 + fragile nylon envelopes!

Crowd in-control!

One very nice aspect of the Albuquerque Fiesta is that the crowd is allowed complete freedom of access to the launch field which is exciting and participative! Often you can just help by hanging on to the basket to prevent premature liftoff!

Mass Ascension

Opening day at the Albuquerque Fiesta with 550 balloons ready to take off in rows of a dozen often out crowding each other and bustling with neighbor balloons. What a sight! One of the peculiarities of Albuquerque is the wind streams are often different at various altitudes so balloons launch and drift south, then ascend a bit higher and catch the northerly drift and can sometimes land close to where they started! On Sunday one balloon hit high tension lines and went up in flames but thank goodness no injuries!

Proof of aliens visit to earth!

Checked out the Petroglyph at the national monument park near Albuquerque and sure enough the Ancestral Puebloans have left a record of aliens arriving on earth in their rocket ship (right Petroglyph) and the aliens with antennas on their heads walking and waving a welcome. This is one of many sets of rock drawings in the area! Von Daniken wrote a book "Chariots of the Gods" about this topic and made a movie!

Sunday Ascension!

Crack of dawn balloon ascension on Sunday morning with friends Emerson and Kathy from Tappahannock visiting briefly before joining their SW Adventure with Tauck Tours in Tucson. We were all awe stuck by the 500 balloon liftoff and wandered around with our heads and eye looking skywards until our necks could not take the strain anymore! The ground crew chasing this balloon to its landing spot only realized too late that the balloon pilot had accidentally taken their truck keys with him on his flight! Oops!

Spirit of New Mexico

On the morning of the second ascension we made our way to K2 location on the ballon field to catch up with Bill Lee and his Spirit of New Mexico balloon which he was ready to launch. Bill had been our pilot in Gallup NM a week earlier. We gathered around with the balloon team and watched the familiar process of unfolding, checking and tethering lines, setting up the air blower to partially inflate the envelope, starting the gas burners, rotating to vertical, final adjustments to match passenger weights and at the festival marshall signal liftoff in unison with a dozen other balloons in the K row! What a sight at the break of dawn joining several hundred other balloons already in flight!