Dateline May 10, 2017, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana
We had a wonderful winter at home, playing a lot of golf at our local course, Riviera Country Club. Not wanting to let the good weather go to waste, we set off again, a month-long Spring Fling in the Roadtrek: some golf, a string of presidential libraries, a few stops for the fun of it, and, out at the far end, a visit with Janice's longtime friend Marty Newton Skelley in Sedona, Arizona.
Panama City. Our first stop was Panama City, for a two-day Florida State Golf Association event at the Bay Point Resort. Whenever we can, we stay in local and state campgrounds, and this time we pulled into St. Andrews State Park on the bay, a home run at eighteen dollars a night. It happened to be the weekend of Thunder Beach, Panama City's big bike week. Being from Flagler Beach, we are no strangers to that, with Daytona just down the road, but most of the folks in the park were there for the rally and seemed shocked that we had turned up without a Harley.
The first day we played the Meadows course, a nice enough track but not one to remember. We were paired with a lovely retired Air Force lady and a gentleman from Panama City who did graphic arts and photography, and it made for a wonderful round. The next day we played the Nicklaus course, far more challenging and in beautiful shape. Janice won the women's gross division both days, and on the second day took a skin worth all of seventeen dollars. Then we packed up and pointed the RV toward Biloxi.
Mississippi. We rolled into Shepard State Park in Gautier, Mississippi, around 7 in the evening for a two-night stay. What a fine park, the sites clean and roomy and the people as helpful as could be.
In the morning we headed out to play Shell's Landing Golf Club, a beautiful course in great condition, under a cloudless sky with the temperature in the seventies. A perfect day for it.
It being Sunday, we checked online and saw that the Biloxi visiting center was open, so we drove the twenty-five miles over to get the lay of the land. It was not open after all. So we drove around the city instead and parked the RV near the Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino to have a look. Janice had been there years ago with the ladies from Fort Lauderdale, her partner Diana Robe among them, and she remembered bits of it. The lobby is beautiful, flowers everywhere.
The drinks are free if you gamble, so we got a couple and wandered to the roulette table. Half an hour and a couple more drinks later we walked out a hundred and twenty dollars ahead. A good stop. Back to the state park for dinner and a good night's rest.
New Orleans. In the morning we headed for New Orleans. John had never been, so the plan was a full day in the old French Quarter. The drive in through the low country was something, and it was easy to see why Katrina did so much damage here. We pulled into a place with the wonderful name Two Pines and an Oak RV Park, which is exactly right; on the whole property there are two pine trees and one oak. A few miles out we passed the wreckage of a tornado that had come through only months before. The park sits about five miles from downtown, so we checked in and took the local bus and a streetcar into the city center.
At the visitors center a very knowledgeable woman gave us our bearings and, to our surprise, told us to skip Bourbon Street. It had become a rough and dirty place, she said, not what it once was. There are young people living on those streets now, some of whom came years ago from comfortable homes and never left; many keep dogs, and as we understood it the law mostly leaves them be unless they actually break it. They are not really kids anymore, most of them into their thirties and forties, which struck us as a sad thing. She pointed us instead to Royal Street, the new Bourbon Street, she called it, with the charm and none of the grit.
She was right. We stopped at the Hotel Monteleone on Royal for a glass of wine at the Carousel Bar, the only revolving bar in the city. For decades it has drawn people in to take a slow spin on its bright, circus-painted merry-go-round, twenty-five seats turning gently as you sip. It should not be missed, though it is always packed.
From there we walked on down Royal Street toward the markets and the Mississippi River, taking in the music and the performers along the way.
Then back to the RV park for a good night's sleep.
Shreveport. Next we pulled in at Diamond Jacks Hotel and Casino in Shreveport, which has an RV campground of its own. This one was just okay; the casino had been there better than twenty years and did not look to have changed much since the doors opened. We went in to have a look. Casinos in Louisiana were all built on barges docked beside the hotel, and inside it was a bit of a ghost town, only a handful of people working or playing. We wandered out a back set of doors and met the security guard, who had been there since the beginning and was full of stories about this casino and the others up and down the Mississippi. This one was built on a barge and floated into place. Farther south, he told us, they used to disconnect the casino from the dock and float it out into the river every four hours to satisfy the local gambling laws; the guests would be told it was happening and could ride along or step off. We had a fine time listening to his old tales.
The tire. In the morning we were worried we had lost some air in a front tire, so first thing we got online and found a reputable shop, Gene's Tire in Bossier City, and waited for it to open. They had a look and found a back tire low as well, and we feared we were about to buy two new tires on an RV with fewer than ten thousand miles. Instead they found the real trouble, a leaking valve stem. When we bought the RV, all the tires had been replaced, and whoever did it had used car stems rather than the proper brass truck stems. They swapped out all six, and we were on our way. We were thankful they fixed the real problem instead of selling us tires we did not need; lucky again. Off to Dallas and the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
