A quiet night at a New Orleans Walmart ended with a thunderous thunder shower. A torrential downpour scheduled to last all day and tomorrow. So we departed and headed west. A stop in Lafayette, LA, to buy a battery charger for the house batteries when we are not driving anywhere for a day or more. This will makes us fully functional even without the inverter. The rain lasted almost all day and made for slow going. We checked in to the Walmart in Beaumont, TX.
A short drive to Pensacola for a visit to the beach. A leisurely stroll along the beach through beautiful fine white sand, advertized as 99% quartz. Next another stroll through Seville Quarter in downtown Pensacola where we found our favorite and hard to find olive oil, Cobrancosa, in a store appropriately named Olive. Lunch in the coach and use of the microwave revealed another problem, electrical this time. A trip to Carpenter’s Campers which diagnosed an intermittent problem with the inverter. We were able to get it working and after an hour we continued to head west. A stop at a rest stop and Rosemary decided to make tea. Well the microwave took out the inverter again. Onward to New Orleans, arriving in time to have dinner in the French Quarter at Pierre Masperos, in a building dating to 1788. My Crescent City Sampler of jambalaya, crawfish etouffee and gumbo was disappointing. They botched Rosemary’s red drum fish dinner and had to remake it. A stroll to Canal Street where we find Amorino Gelato and share a 3 flavor dish, coconut, pistachio and mascarpone fig which was delicious. A walk up Bourbon Street made us want to hurry back to the coach to shower. And to think when I visited Bourbon Street as a 19 year old I enjoyed that loud, raunchy filth. I think we both decided we have seen enough of New Orleans. Back at the coach I disconnected the inverter and bypassed it. This allowed all to function with the generator with one exception. The house batteries will now only charge when we are driving. A problem to deal with manana.
Day 1, April 2, 2019, Tuesday. (453 miles)
After a one day delay to obtain new meds due to some medical issues, the coach is loaded and we are ready to begin what will be our longest (5-6 months), wildest trip, to Alaska by way of San Diego with a detour flight from Seattle to Boston to attend our nephew’s wedding on Cape Cod. We hook up the car and I make my last round to check that all of the storage bins are locked only to discover one bin will not latch at all. After a failed attempt to fix it, we are off to our repair shop, RV Medic. An interior loose screw is the culprit which needed an extra long screwdriver. But after an hour and 45 minute delay, we are off. Unfortunately, the delay nixes our planned visit to Falling Waters State Park near Chipley which has Florida’s highest waterfall at 73 feet which we now cannot reach during park hours. Instead we head on west going through Hurricane Michael’s path, lots of trees felled or snapped in half. In fact we encountered three areas where the interstate was down to one lane due to clearing debris from the October storm. We spend the night at a quiet Walmart in Pace, FL, about a half hour from Pensacola.
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