March 20-22 – 2018 Utica and Vicksburg, Mississippi

STRANDED!!!

We pulled out of New Orleans Tuesday morning (March 20^th) headed for Vicksburg, Mississippi. 200 miles/320 km
About 20 miles east of Vicksburg (near Utica) we ran out of luck!!
We noticed smoke coming from one of the camper wheels! We pulled over and waited for a while to let it cool off, so we could limp (halte) to Vicksburg to let somebody take a look at it.
We took off again, but after only a couple of minutes a car behind us flashed his lights and we pulled over again. Now there was not only smoke but fire!!

We took the wheel off and could see that the whole thing was falling apart.
Put it back on and moved carefully a few hundred yards (meter) down a gravel road (grusvej) to a small church. The Strawbridge Missionary Baptist Church of Utica.

Parked on their ground and called AAA (Falck). This was around 2:30 in the afternoon. They had a hard time helping us. We needed a lowloader (blokvogn) to put the camper on as it could not drive on 3 wheels. At 7 pm just before it got dark somebody from AAA showed up to see if he could make a temporary fix, so we could move it on our own.  Unfortunately it didn’t work. Now we were really stranded. At 9 o’clock in the evening at a graveyard (kirkegård). No electricity, no water (except for a gallon of bottled water), no nothing!
It was a quiet place 😊 so we actually slept well.

The view from our camper Wednesday morning

Wednesday morning it was back on the phone with AAA. They finally agreed to forget about towing (bugsering) and accepted to pay for the transport cost of a mechanic to where we were (the repair cost is entirely on us ☹).

We got hold of an auto repair company in Vicksburg that would drive out here and make the repair on the spot. He got here around 11 am. Took the wheel hub apart. The bearing (hjulleje) was totally damaged and the breaks went the same way because of the bearing. He took off to get parts. He came back shortly after 3 pm. It didn’t take long to put everything together and right after 4 pm we were om the road again.

We only went the 20 miles (30km) to Robbie’s Auto Repair where we stayed the night, because we wanted the other wheels checked, the axels greased etc. etc. We also needed two new tires (another consequential damage (følgeskade) from the bad bearing).

 

So Tuesday night at a real graveyard, Wednesday night at a car graveyard !! 😊



The view from our camper Thursday morning

This morning, Thursday, we had the other wheels checked and greased (smurt), and got two new tires.

The repair shop may not look the classiest, but they were very nice people.
Very helpful and also good at doing their job.

By 10 am we were "On the road again" ♫♫♫

Written by JJ

March 19 – 2018 New Orleans, Louisiana

 

We spent 3 days in New Orleans. For all three days the weather forecast predicted rain.
And we had none!! Except for a 5-minute shower (byge) at the campground the day we got here.
Today was a day with mostly sunshine and 80 degrees (25 grader).

We visited the old part of New Orleans today. The famous French Quarter.
Before that though, we went to the Louis Armstrong Park. A nice park made in memory of Louis Armstrong and with jazz music as a theme through the statues and sculptures.

 

Louis himself was there, of course.

 

 

 

There was also a statue of Mahalia Jackson.
In all of our lives we have never heard her
sing a song she hasn’t been able to ruin totally!! 😊
(Amazing Grace, Star Spangled Banner,
Silent Night etc. etc.)
She is not one of our favorites.

 

The state of Louisiana was
originally a French colony.
And then briefly Spanish,
before it was purchased (købt)
by the USA in 1803.






Not surprisingly, therefore the French Quarter is the oldest part of New Orleans.

 It has a lot of nice old buildings and again a different architecture than we have seen before on our trip.

 

We saw the Mississippi River again. It runs right through the middle of town.

And we saw something new – buggies drawn by mules!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Orleans is where jazz was born, and some will say that from jazz grew all modern music: Rock and roll, country etc. etc.There are two famous bar and music streets in New Orleans: Bourbon Street and Frenchmen Street,
where many bars have live jazz music, but it was in Royal Street, that we found the entertainment we were looking for. Right out in the middle of the street. At one time 3 bands were playing within a quarter of a mile. 6-8 people in each and with very different orchestration. One had a piano, another a violin, a third had a washboard etc. etc. but all had trumpets and trombones (trækbasuner). It was very entertaining to watch and to listen to.

 

 

 

 

 On the way out of New Orleans we drove through the part of the city called the Ninth Ward.
The Ninth Ward was hit very hard by the hurricane Katrina in 2005. Well, all of New Orleans was.
80% of the city was flooded (oversvømmet) and over a 1000 people died.
The French Quarter was not flooded. It was built on “high ground” 10 feet (3 meter) above sea level (havoverfladen). A big part of New Orleans is built on ground below sea level, so when the levees (digerne) broke the disaster was unavoidable. The Ninth Ward looked now, 13 years later, like it never
happened, but it was a strange feeling to drive on a road where there had been 15 feet ( 4,5 meter) of water,
at the time of the flooding.

Written by JJ

P.S
On our way back to the campground we hit a new low as far as the price of gas (benzin) is concerned:
$ 2.11/gallon (ca. Kr. 3,50/liter)

March 18 – 2018 New Orleans, Louisiana

The New Orleans area is more than just a big city. Today, we decided to see some of the nature in this part of the country.

 

We went to Jean Lafitte National Park at the Barataria Preserve. We went to see the swamp and the plants and animals, that live there. The park offers guided tours with park rangers, so we took one of them. It was very interesting, and we learned a lot about life in the swamp.

The swamp is formed by the flood waters of the Mississippi River. Because the ground level here, is lower than the banks of the river, all the water, that floods over the banks of the river, is trapped. This creates the swamp.

In the areas of high ground, there are different types of trees. Especially the oak trees grow very large here (up to 200 feet (60 m)). And once again, we encountered Spanish moss hanging on the trees.



Cypress

Oak

In the swamp, the only trees that grow are cypress. These trees can get up to 100 feet (30 m) tall, and they are very resistant to rot.

In the areas between high ground and the swamp, palmettos grow (they are like miniature palm trees).

The roots  of the cypress don’t have much to hang on to, so they grow smaller “anchor” roots, to help them stay standing.

As for animals, we saw:

Alligators - at least 20 on the walk

Non venomous water snake

Venomous (gifttig) water moccasin

 



A barred owl

And some frogs and turtles, that we couldn’t get good pictures of.

Because we were very close to the end of the Mississippi River, and because we hope to see the beginning of it, when we get back to Minnesota (neither of us has seen it), we decided to get a look at it. We didn’t make it quite to the end of it, but close enough.
We were about 30 miles from the place where the river runs into the Gulf of Mexico. Mostly for the Danes 😊: The mighty Mississippi River is the largest river in the USA. It runs 2300 miles (3700 km) from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota to New Orleans

On our way back we stopped at a cemetery (One of our habits when travelling :-)).This one looked fairly new. In this area people are buried above ground. A big difference between the US and Denmark is, that here it is not at all uncommon to put the name on the surviving spouse (den overlevende ægtefælle) on the stone just leaving an open space for the date of that persons death!!  (Like Pellegrin, last row in the middle).

Also, it is not uncommon to be prepared.

The weather has been nice. Almost too nice. 80F (25C) but with a high humidity (luftfugtighed).

Written by Mary

March 17 – 2018 New Orleans, Louisiana

Today, Saturday, we moved from Gaultier, Mississippi to New Orleans, Louisiana.
Only 120 miles (ca. 200 km), and we could unhook the camper for the first time since Ft. Lauderdale.
We are staying at a nice state park only 7 miles (ca. 11 km) from downtown New Orleans.
We got here so early that we had time to do something in the afternoon.

We don’t now a lot about New Orleans at this point, so we are excited to find out.
We associate it with New Orleans Jazz, creoles, a French speaking part of the US, Cajun food,
New Orleans Saints (amerikansk fodbold), The French lily (den franske lilje) and the hurricane Katrina.

But today it was not about the above, but all about the Irish.
Today, March 17th is, St. Patrick’s Day. The Irish National Holiday.
St. Patrick, a catholic bishop, is the patron saint (skytshelgen) of Ireland.
He died on March 17th year 461.

Without knowing for sure, I would guess this national holiday is the one celebrated the most all over the world. Also in New Orleans. There is a big group of Irish descendants (efterkommere) in New Orleans.
Around the time of the potato famin in Ireland, a lot of ships needed ballast after unloading in Liverpool, England.
A lot of them went to Ireland and picked up people who were desperate to get out, even as human ballast!
A lot of these ships went straight to New Orleans for a new load of cargo.

We went downtown New Orleans where there was a big St. Patrick’s Day parade.
It was crazy!! The parade followed a 3 mile (5 km) long route. The route was packed on both sides of the street, and in the street. Seems like everybody is Irish today!! Us too; after all the Irish got their red hair from the Vikings! 😊
It’s hard to guess, but here must have been near 100.000 people there.
Lots of vehicles in the parade and LOTS of green! It was real fun.

Wrtiten by JJ

 

 

 

 

Part of the Black Irish community in New Orleans 😊

 

Remember the "Where's Wally" (Find Holger) books? This picture is - Find Mary

This officer had a gun AND a cigar

 

 

 

They threw all kinds of things from the parade vehicles -
candy, beads, cabbages! Here they are throwing beads (perler)

 
 

March 16 – 2018 Gautier, Mississippi

Another day in transit!
Today we drove from Lake City, Florida to Gautier Mississippi. It was a 390-mile (624 km) trip… one of our longest.
Nothing too eventful to write about… rain, about an hour of traffic stops,….

One thing to note - when we got here, spring had arrived. Flowers were blooming and the leaves on the trees were springing out. We hadn’t noticed this in Florida – probably because it was more like summer there. So now we have experienced all four seasons, since we started our adventure – summer at the start of the trip in the north, autumn for most of the east coast, winter in Denmark, and now spring in the deep south. 

We have now visited all the states east of the Mississippi river  and are ready to take on the “western frontier”.

Written by Mary

March 15 – 2018 Lake City, Florida

Florida has 2 oranges on their license plates (nummerplader).
With all the cars in Florida, that amounts to an awful lot of oranges!!

But that was about all the oranges we saw, when we were here in December, traveling on the east coast. Even in the stores we had a hard time finding oranges from Florida (most of them were from California). (We also could not and cannot understand that oranges are outrageously expensive in a state like Florida. 69 cents (Dkk ca. 4,00) a piece!! That is twice as much as we pay in Denmark for oranges (from Spain and Israel). And Denmark has by far the highest prices of groceries in the entire EU).


Today we finally found the oranges in Florida. On our way out of Florida we went inland on the peninsula (halvøen)  and saw a lot of orange groves (appelsinplantager). We stopped at one near Clermont, Florida where you could go into the grove and pick your own oranges. 

 










 

We were on our way to Lake City, Florida where we will do a quick stop for the night, before heading west to New Orleans, which is the next destination (as far as the plans are right now). The trip from Fort Lauderdale to Lake City was 350 miles (ca. 550 km).

Written by JJ

March 14 – 2018 Fort Lauderdale, Florida

When we left Denmark, we didn’t realize how long our flight to Florida would be. It takes about 9 hours to Minnesota, and 6 to New York City, so we thought it would be a 6-7 hour flight. When we got into the plane, and started figuring out the time difference, we realized that the flight would be 10 hours and 20 minutes. Neither of us had ever been on a flight that was that long! Old bones (and smokers) don’t do well on long flights☹

But we made it, and are back in the USA now! (Well, JJ almost didn’t make it in!!!! The immigrations officer (paskontrol) didn’t like the idea of JJ spending more time in the US than in Denmark during a 12-month period. We guess he had heard, that Denmark don’t send their best to the US!!!! But he decided that we didn’t look like too much of a threat (alt for farlige)😊 So I didn’t have to do this leg of the trip on my own😊😊)

The car and camper were fine, when we got to the storage site. (We didn’t know what to except after 3 months.) The only problem was that the battery on the car was dead. We got someone to help us jump it. After that, everything went as well as hoped.

Today we spent time cleaning the car and camper, buying food and other supplies, and planning the next few days.
AND taking a nap – after our long flight. We are “on the road again” tomorrow.

Written by Mary

Here is a picture of our “view” at the campground.
Definitely not the prettiest we have had. But it was convenient
to be able to move directly from storage to a camp site
 yesterday (about 200 yards/meters).



 

March 12 - 2018 Gistrup, Denmark

The time has come, for us to resume our trip around the USA.
We are almost ready – just need to finish packing and closing the house down. Tomorrow, we fly back to Miami, Florida.

We are anxious to see, how our camper and car are doing.
Hopefully, there will be no unpleasant surprises waiting for us there!

It has been so good to be home for a couple of months. We have enjoyed seeing family and friends again, and it has been nice to have a little more living space around us.

When we left Florida in December, we were looking forward to getting home to Denmark, where the colder weather and Danish Christmas traditions, could get us into the Christmas spirit.

After 3 months of cold, dark, windy weather, we are ready to get back to the warm and sunny Florida!

Let’s hope, the second part of our trip, will go as well as the first. We hope you will enjoy following us on our new adventures.

Written by Mary