Gulf of America and Initial Starlink Review

 Location: Intracoastal Park; Calcasieu Parish Louisiana

Yesterday was the first time I've seen the Gulf of America and it was a good day. It sure looks a lot like the old Gulf of Mexico. Although I didn't have any healthy bologna, I still packed a lunch of turkey/swiss cheese and headed south. Now if you head south from where I'm camped you will eventually have to turn east or west or end up in the Gulf of America. It's a leisurely 30 minute drive with a few interesting things along the way. I explored some of those things the last time I was here and didn't stop this time. If you're interested in them you can read my old posts here >>> https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2014/12/moving-day-cajun-riviera-and-circle-of.html and here >>> https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2023/12/marshes-and-gulf-of-mexico.html

It's always a good ride when headed to the Gulf and the weather was great. Window down and letting the Freedom Fragrance fly around.

There is a large LNG export plant just a little south of the campground. They collect natural gas through pipelines, clean it up a little bit, then cool it down to about -260 degrees where it turns to liquid. Once in the liquid state its volume has been decrease by 600 times. As long as it remains cold, it can be pumped onto ships like in the picture. This ocean going ship is on the Calcasieu Ship Channel and appears to be headed to the Gulf. The drilling for and exporting of natural gas is big industry in Louisiana. 

There is a small fleet of shrimp boats on the way to the Gulf. You can buy shrimp that was caught just hours before you buy it. I thought about it, but didn't want to mess with them. Most of the Walmarts in south Louisiana sells frozen Wild Caught Gulf Shrimp. Since I can't really tell the difference between fresh, fresh and recently frozen, I get mine at Walmart for the convenience. I do have a hankering for some shrimp gumbo now. I guess as Jerry Clower would say, "I've done flung a craving on to myself". 

For those along for the ride, here's your picture. The water on left if pretty much natural while the water on the right is probably a "borrow ditch". The dirt that was dug up was used to make the road. There a several places along the way where people can fish and crab alongside the road.

It was the first time Freedom2 had seen the Gulf and she was gobsmacked (you younger folk may need to ask a seasoned citizen for the defintion).

This is looking east from where we parked. Just like in Texas, you can drive on the beach. Even though my truck has 4 wheel drive and new tires, I didn't feel comfortable driving alone. Freedom laughed at me and called me chicken, but I held firm and stayed parked on solid sand.

This is looking west from the same location. Notice the rip-rap (stone) breakwaters doing their job at protecting and creating the beach. Money well spent.

This is the community of Holly Beach. The gulf is one block to the right in this picture. The entire community has been wiped our several time by hurricanes but people continue to rebuild.  

I've been using my Starlink Mini for the last six weeks or so. It's been doing really good and provides fast internet speeds even without having it accurately aligned. I guess if I spent time adjusting it more, the speeds would increase but I've fine as it is for now. I'll probably get bored one day and play around with it just to see how high of a speed I can get by aligning it more. I'm using about 1 Gb per day while using my laptop and haven't used it for TV or streaming movies. In fact, I haven't turned my TV on in months and don't miss it. I guess I need to make sure it works because it is useful when traveling if bad weather is around. The local TV stations give more detailed information than my Accuweather app. Anyway, back to the starlink. I get 50 Gb per month for $50.00. If I overrun the 50 Gb's, I'm charged $1.00 per Gb over 50. If I want to, I can go with the unlimited option for $165.00 per month but so far, the 50 option seems to work for my use. It will be interesting to see the challenges to setting up the receiver in future campsites. At any time, I can pause my service and resume it in the future. I've heard people talk about pausing it for a week and use it for a week. I don't think I'll do that, but we will see. That was a little bit rambling. If ya'll have any questions, just post it in the comments. I'll do an additional review after a few campgrounds. 

I'm looking forward to having a visiting lunch with my oldest son today. Tomorrow is moving day and I had planned to use the Cameron Ferry to cross the shop channel but the ferry is out of service so I'll have to go the long way around to get to my next campground. 

I took this picture while I was walking around the campground. The lift bridge is only used in special cases for over-sized loads. It hasn't been lifted since I've been here this time but was when I stayed here previously.

I've camped in many places where I could easily see the tow boats working but this place is the best. I can hear them all night long, but it isn't a problem. This was near sundown yesterday evening. The sunset was below average but the calm and peaceful feeling was above average. 

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.

Trip Began and Questions Answered

 Location: Intracoastal Waterway Park; Calcasieu Parish, Louisisana

First things first, Calcasieu is pronounced Cal-ka-shoe and whenever you see the word "parish" in Louisiana, think of county. The parish is located in the southwest corner of Louisiana and borders the Great State of Texas. Interstate 10 bisects the parish and its largest city is Lake Charles. The Port of Lake Charles can handle large ocean-going ships by way of the 68 mile long Calcasieu Ship Channel, not much different than other places like the Houston Ship Channel.

This is the first "thru windshield" picture from the new truck while towing. It is on U.S. 171 in western Louisiana. I promised someone many years ago that I would post travel pictures for them since they wouldn't be able to travel. Promise kept.

The campground is owed and operated by the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury (county commission)  and is located right on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). The ICW is a 3,000 mile navigable route that was built and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is mostly located just inland of the Atlantic and Gulf coast. It begins in Boston, Massachusetts and ends in Brownsville, Texas. My campsite is about 50 feet from the water's edge of the ICW. I've been here about 15 hours and seen at least 25 tow boats , with their barges, pass by in both directions. If you're wanting to watch the tow boats work, this is the campground for you. Oh by the way, the cost is $12.00 per night for water/electric. Good deal Lucille. I've stayed here once before and have explored the area so this time will be used to visit with my oldest son who works and lives in the area just north of here. I will take the opportunity to drive down and see the Gulf of America which is about a 20 minute drive from here. I've heard it looks a lot like the old Gulf of Mexico but just more beautiful. :)

This is the view out my back window. I took this one while drinking coffee and writing this blog post. Nice, uh?

I took this one while I was setting up camp and noticed a tow boat approaching. I hadn't set up my starlink yet.

Same tow boat but now leaving.

This is the first trip in my new truck and I had some questions that couldn't be answered until we hitched up and started the trip. If any of these questions had a bad answer, the trip would have to be delayed. Fortunately, all of the answers were good, at least so far. There was no question that the new truck would be able to tow Liberty. In fact, even though the new truck is a 1/2 ton, while my old one was a 3/4 ton, the new truck has a little more towing capacity than my old truck. The question was about how much "squatting" she would do when hitched up. In other words, how much would the back end go down and the front end go up. Even if your payload capacity will handle the tongue weight of the trailer, there always remains a question of how it will handle it. If your front end goes up too much, then it's dangerous and hard to drive. The good news is after hitching up, the front end went up only 3/4 inches while the back end went down 1-3/4 inches. Both numbers were acceptable to me, but I still need to see how she handled on the road. She did good. The second question about hitching was how level the trailer would be in relation to the truck. There are a lot of opinions about it, but my preference is to have the trailer slightly "nose-down" after hitching. I have an adjustable hitch on the truck and can adjust it up or down to my liking but to do so means hitching up, looking at it from the side and if I don't like it, then unhitching, adjusting, re-hitching, etc. You get the idea, just a pain in the behind. I got lucky again, and after hitching, she looked just fine. I may have been looking at it with a "wish-full eye" so I wouldn't have to adjust it before leaving but I will re-look at it when I hitch up to leave this campground on Wednesday. 

The other big question was how my new wireless brake controller would work or if it would even work. When I bought the new truck I made sure it came with the tow package. What I didn't know was it didn't come with the "max tow package". I didn't know there was a difference but on the day I took delivery I noticed there wasn't a manual brake controller on the dash. I asked about it and two of the dealership salesmen lied to me and told me it was all electronic now. I was in a hurry to take possession of the truck and didn't google it at the time. I figured I could easily add one if needed since I wasn't planning a trip for a while. Come to find out, the integrated brake controller on the dash is part of the newly created and mis-leading Ford package called a "max tow package". Oh well, I started searching for a brake controller. It looked like an easy "plug-and-play" computer package. Ut-oh, all of them was on back order with a delivery date uncertain. That's when I stumbled across a wireless brake controller. I had never heard of one before. It was way less than half the price of the brake controller I was looking at and it was in stock at the local Camping World. I bought one and gave it a shot. I plugged it into my new truck and then plugged the trailer in to it. After downloading an app, I could take my cell phone to the trailer wheels and push the screen and hear the breaks working so I knew I was connected and the app/device was doing its job. Wow, dumbass me got it working right out of the box. I can adjust the gain and sensitivity through a bluetooth connection on my phone. There is also a manual brake lock-up like the dash mounted brake controller. Once you get it set-up, you can literally throw your phone out the window and it retains the last settings. After only a 3 hour trip, I'm happy with it but I will keep an eye on it. 

Curt echo wireless brake controller. I didn't take a picture of it connected so I'll do that another time. But it worked just fine. 

Although I will greatly miss my family, it felt good leaving on this trip. My homebase campground, that I just left, had filled up with pipeliners due to a large pipeline that was being built. It is crossing the entire parish (see above for definition). The campground had become a large work camp with diesel trucks starting up at 4:30 each morning and welders practicing their art. It sounds like I'm complaining but I'm not. I completely understand and agree with the work they are doing and the choices they made to live in an RV while traveling around the country working. They were all well behaved and polite with at least a fourth of them with wives and children. I just didn't like the crowded condition. Hopefully, they will have moved on before I get back in July.  

 

I took this the day before leaving. Of the RV's in this picture, 90% are pipeliners. Again, I'm not complaining, I just felt crowded. 

This post has gotten a little long but I wanted to do a first post of the trip as well as documenting the answers to a few questions. My time here is 3 days before moving east along the coast. It's time to go see the Gulf and maybe even buy some fresh shrimp off the boats. 

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road. 

General Update and Travel Plans

 Location: Heart of Haynesville RV Park (homebase); Mansfield, Louisiana

It's been a while since I've posted and I'm about a month from hitting the road again so I thought it was time for an update. It's been about five months since my last travel post but I have snuck (that doesn't look like a real word) in a couple of short stories. I've spent these few months visiting with family during the holidays, which was great. The entire family (kids and grandkids) get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I also visited with all three of my doctors and nothing was found to interrupt my life, meaning I'm good to go for at least another few months. All three wanted to visit with me again in May and made appointments. I'll fool them and reschedule their visits until probably July when I'll be passing through Louisiana again. I've also attended doctor appointments with my X-wife and Brandon. It's always a good idea to have someone else attend meetings with doctors so the information is heard by two people. Of course, I'm kind of hard-headed and don't take anyone with me. I'll have to think on that a little to figure out why I'm that a way.

I had planned on hitting the road beginning on January 6th, but I kept postponing it in one month increments (RV park rent period) due to my granddaughter's school archery tournaments. She started playing around with archery last year in her elementary school but this year it has become more competitive in her Intermediate school with state tournaments. The tournament season just about over but her school is ranked number two in the state and she is ranked 4th in her school. So they are 99% sure the school with qualify for the Eastern National Championship which is in Louisville, Kentucky during the first part of May. Yep, I already have reservations at a nearby state park during that time. If they do well in that tournament, then they go to the  Overall National Championship in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in early June. Yep, if they go, I'll be there too.

That's Olivia in the purple on the left getting ready to launch her arrow. I've never attended an archery tournament until she got involved in it. I like it.

 Anyway, her last tournament is March 8th but she is also in Drama and their yearly play is on March 21th. After that, I'll be free to travel. I've made reservations at 8 campgrounds beginning on March 24th and going through April 20th. I will head south and follow the Gulf of America coast over to the Pensacola area before turning north. The first campground will be used to visit with my oldest son and the second to visit with my sister. I've been gathering information on things to explore in the areas of my reserved campgrounds, but if ya'll have any suggestions, please post them in the comments. Thanks in advance.

CG #1 and 2 are for visiting family and a little exploring. Stop #3 is another old CG for me, but is located in a good spot for this trip. # 4, 5, 6 and 7 will be new CG's for me and I look forward to exploring those areas since at least 3 of them have been on my list for years. CG #8 is an old one for me and is actually the very first COE campground I ever camped at back in 2014. I'm curious to see how it's changed. 

A few things have changed. One is Freedom was retired and turned out to pasture. Actually, she was sold to a car dealer who promised to treat her right. About a month after I sold her, I received a call from the person who bought her. He wanted to know any particulars about her in terms of mechanical issues. Of course I told him everything I knew and the reasons why I sold her. I also referred him to this blog if he wanted to know every place that the truck had been since late 2013 when she was born. At the end of our conversation, I told him that her name was "Freedom" and that she would respond to that name. That took him aback but I could tell he understood as he quietly promised me he would continue calling her that. It was sort of a sad day as I reminisced about all the places Freedom and Liberty had taken me over the years. But like everything in life, we move on, eventually. I now have a new Freedom and Liberty and even though it may be confusing, I still call the new ones with the old names. I started calling Liberty, Liberty2, but that didn't take. So bear with me in the name calling. My new truck is a 2023 Ford F150 Lariat with so many accessories that I'll never use all of them. Frankly, there are so many, I won't even know they exist, much less use them. I don't like relying on that much fancy stuff. 

Freedom2 on the left and Liberty2 on the right. But, like I said, I'll be dropping the 2 from both.

Even though I don't like the fancy stuff on Freedom, I am  now up to date in one area of technology. I bought a Starlink to solve the problem I had on this last trip where I couldn't get a cell signal in a few campgrounds. Without a cell signal meant no hotspot which meant no internet. I'm hoping Starlink will keep me connected. For those interested, the receiver cost $500 and the monthly service is $50.00 for 50Gb's and I can pause and un-pause service whenever I need to. My Verizon cell phone gives me 30 Gb's which I've never exceeded. I'm on the Starlink roaming plan which mean I can move locations as often as I want and I can actually be connected while traveling if I feel the need. Starlink is working towards providing cell service as well so I may eventually be able to cancel my Verizon cell plan. I hope I don't cut myself too deep by being on this "cutting edge".

That's the Starlink receiver mounted to the ladder. On moving days, I will unplug it and wrap the excess cable around something I haven't figured out yet. After using it more and traveling with it, I'll post more about it. I'm using it now but it needs to be mounted differently so it can tilt flatter and get faster speeds. 

This post if getting longer than I thought so I'll end it for now and make another on in a week or so as I start preparing for the trip which is about 4 weeks away. It will take me that long to get everything in order. The good news if the cold weather seems to have passed and decent weather is in store up to my departure date. Hopefully, my cold winter weather is over for me this year. 

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.