Day 75: Morning in New Orleans and All Day on the Road

What could possibly top Bourbon Street at night? Beignets for breakfast at Café Du Monde, of course. After another half-mile mile walk back to the French Quarter, we were ready for the donuts.

We had previously told the boys these were special donuts covered with more powdered sugar than they’ve ever seen, which caused their eyes to light up with excitement. Once we got there, we realized everything was served to-go, though you could eat on the patio. We got three orders (nine donuts) and sat at an outside table. To say the boys enjoyed the treat is an understatement.

One side effect of getting the order to-go is that all the powdered sugar was in the bag, which made it REALLY easy to eat it all.

Two key takeaways: We later saw someone shaking their bag of donuts before eating and that was the critical step we missed. When given these donuts in a bag instead of on a plate the desire to eat straight sugar afterwards increases significantly.

As we left, Rob and I discussed the fact that both of us have been to New Orleans several times but we always centered our trip around the French Quarter. Next time we plan to explore more (and Rob mentioned wanting to go back to the World War II museum).

Next we walked to the Mississippi river to check out the riverboats and then headed back through Jackson Square before getting back into the RV for our long drive day ahead.

We had 7+ hours of RV drive time to go to get to Houston, where Rob’s parents live. After one night of boondocking (no hook-ups), we were debating whether to pay ~$60 for a full hookup campsite or just boondock again. We opted to just see how far we could get and then find a place to boondock.

Our first leg of the drive was a solid four hours before stopping at 2 p.m. for a late lunch and an important work call for Rob. We followed the stop with another 2.5 hours up to sunset, so we ended up just an hour shy of their house and in a Walmart parking lot. With two street parking nights in a row, I was hoping the exhaustion would make tonight’s rest a good one.

This was my longest drive day by far: a solid solo 6.5 hours. With 880 total miles to cross Texas, I am hopeful it can only get better than our first 10 miles. During that time the truck in front of us side swiped the concrete barrier while trying to avoid colliding with a crazy driver. Fortunately, they somehow managed to not lose control. I slowed down to get through a stretch of road with huge 2″ wide, by 2″ deep sections of pavement missing across the entire lane that repeated every 5 ft for what felt like miles–how does this happen on an interstate highway? Then there was a dog at the end of the onramp right next to our lane I had to avoid. This was all on top of the crazy amount of construction that narrowed every lane with concrete barriers on the lines, leaving no shoulder or wiggle room. Again, fingers crossed the 870 miles that follow are WAY less eventful.

As we were settling in for the night, my gut said to check if we can park at this Walmart since no other RVs or semis were here with us. Turns out all the reviews said we could not. It was nearly 11 p.m. right when the store closed, so we figured we would get a knock on the door soon or hopefully not at all. Rob was on edge, worried we would be woken in the middle of the night to move, but in the end we opted to stay here and roll the dice.