Our RV Adventures

We reluctantly pulled out of our site at the Gulf State Park a little after 8:30 this morning. I say ‘reluctantly’ because we always really enjoy our stay here and it’s never long enough.

For me it’s like coming home, since I lived here from the time I was two until I was thirteen and we moved to Colombia, South America, When we moved to Gulf Shores in January 1951 and my parents opened their motel, the main beach road had only been paved for about six months. There was one restaurant, four motels, and a lot of empty beach.

I used to know every building, and every family here. Now there are so many condos and multi-story hotels that it’s hard to get my bearings.

They say you can’t go home again, but it’s always fun trying in Gulf Shores.

We got hitched up in one of those semi-circle pull-thru’s they have here and headed out for one last drive along the beach road a little before 9. And by 10am we were turning onto the I-10 washboard and headed west.

On a quick segue, who is this guy and why is he on every billboard in Alabama.

Well, almost every one.

We started to see his billboards up in north Alabama, and saw them all the way down to Gulf Shores. I have never seen so many billboards for one thing.

In some cases he has billboards opposite each other on both sides of the road. In other cases, you will be passing one billboard and you can already see the next one further down the road. One time I counted 10 billboards in a 5 mile stretch.

I can only imagine how much he spent on this media buy. I  guess he’s hoping for a lot of accidents.

We pulled into Poche’s RV Park right at 3pm and got set up in our usual site. They have several corner pull-thru’s reserved for over-nighters right on the lake with a really nice view.

About 4:30 we headed out to have dinner at Pont Breaux nee Mulate’s. We’ve eaten here for about 30 years, mostly just for one thing, the gumbo.

Their gumbo here is the standard against which all other gumbos are measured. The only other gumbo that equals it is at Floyd’s Cajun Seafood in Webster, TX. And that’s probably because the ‘Floyd’ in question is Floyd Landry, one of the brothers who started the Landry’s Restaurants chain before they sold it off.

Note two things here. It comes with potato salad, and the gumbo looks kind of green.

The potato salad is one of those regional things you find around the country, like some areas put cole slaw on their pulled pork BBQ sandwiches. In fact some places serve their gumbo with the scoop of potato salad already in the bowl.

Different strokes, and all that.

And the gumbo has a green tint because of the filé powder I sprinkled on it, because you can’t  have real gumbo without filé.

For dessert we had our usual Bread Pudding with Vanilla Rum Sauce.

I don’t think they cook all the rum out, or maybe they add more rum afterwards, but the sauce has a little kick to it. Really good.

Tomorrow we’ve got another 300 mile run, this time to the Colorado River Thousand Trails west of Houston in  Columbus,  TX. Really looking forward to seeing the kids and grandkids again.

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Thought for the Day:

One half of all people have below average IQ.   In the US the number is 54%.

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Today was a day of wrapping up our stay here. It was a week that seemed to last only a couple of days or so. Maybe we’ll try two weeks next year.

I did make a couple of phone calls this morning, one to Jamie, our Gate Guard Services supervisor for the last three years. I know things are really tight in the guard business, but I thought I’d get our name in the queue anyway.

My other call was to the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts in Friendswood, TX, near the house. Regular blog readers might remember that while we were in Las Vegas last April, the radiator in our Dodge Dakota truck developed a leak, After a couple of tries, I was finally able to patch it using JB Weld. It lasted about 5000 miles, including the 3000 mile round trip from Prescott, AZ to Vandalia, IL and back for our family reunion.

But then it started leaking again . . . and I repaired again . . . and again. It quickly became obvious that the part plastic/part metal radiator was just plain rotting out. I can’t imagine why it didn’t last. It’s only got about 240,000 miles on it.

They just don’t make things like they used to, I guess.

Anyway, it finally started leaking on the backside where I can’t reach it without removing the radiator. And if I have to take the old one out, I might as well put a new one back in. According to my Haines and Clymer manuals, it should only take a couple of hours.

But I’ve been nursing it along until we get back to Texas. Although I could do it myself, that would leave me doing it at an RV park with no way to go back to the auto parts store for that one extra part that you didn’t think or know you’d need.

So I was checking with O’Reilly Auto Parts to be sure they had one in stock. So Jan and I will drive down to Friendswood on Sunday morning, pick up the new radiator, and Chris and I will install it.

At least that’s the plan.

About 1:30pm Jan and I headed up to the theater on the other side of the canal to see the new superhero movie, Ant-Man. The latest from the Marvel people, it stars Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, inventor of a suit that lets a man shrink to the size of an ant, or smaller, but still have his normal strength. He can also mentally control real ants as well, and use them to travel or fly.

But this story picks up years later in the present where Hank recruits a new person to wear the suit to prevent the suit’s secrets from being sold on the open market.

This all probably only makes sense to someone acquainted with the Marvel universe. As I’ve said before I really enjoy how Marvel manages to link up all their movies, as well as the Agents of SHIELD TV show.

We both liked Ant-Man and look forward to the next one. (there’s always a next one.) And lucky for me I have a beautiful wife who enjoys these movies as much (well, almost as much) as I do.

After the movie, we headed back down to Wintzell’s Oyster House for dinner. We just ate here this past Sunday, and enjoyed it so much we wanted to have our last Gulf Shores meal here. And in fact we enjoyed it so much we both ordered the exact same thing we had before.

Jan had her Cajun Seafood Pasta, with Shrimp and Scallops.

I once again had the Low Country Boil,

and we both started out with their really good salads.

And this meal only cost about half as much as our meal at King Neptune’s last night, and it was much, much better. A really good last meal here in Gulf Shores.

Before heading home we made a quick stop at the new Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in Orange Beach for a few things.

Tomorrow we’ve got a 300 mile run to Breaux Bridge, LA, before we head on into the Houston area on Friday.

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Thought for the Day:

For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not, no explanation is possible.

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