Fort Pickens/Pensacola/National Seashore

 Fort Pickens National Seashore Campground; near Pensacola, Florida

We'll see if I can get pictures posted or not. My confidence level is about 75% (hint, hint, I've finished the post and it does include picture).

Today is day 3 of 5 here at Fort Pickens. It's been on my list of future campgrounds for a while now. It's a National Seashore Campground which means my Senior Pass gets me 50% off on campsites. I actually had reservations for this campground back in the fall of 2023 but canceled them because my air conditioner went out and I needed to get it replaced. At that time, I said, "everything happens for a reason and for some reason I wasn't meant to camp here at that time". Well, I'm here now.

 

Travel Picture. Interstate 10 somewhere between Biloxi and Pensacola.

This is from the road on the barrier island headed to the campground. Sand on both sides with a warning sign that I didn't fully read about some animal hatching and to stay on the road. 

The white sands of Florida beaches and the Gulf in the background.

Entering the Gulf Islands National Seashore, Fort Pickens area.

Campsite C-1. Electric/water for $20 per night with senior pass.

The campground is usually hard to get reservations, but it's still early in the season, so I got lucky. Also, it is an old campground with smaller campsite pads which limits it to smaller rigs, like Liberty. They have a strict requirement that all tires, RV and tow vehicle, must be on pavement. Freedom and Liberty just barely made it. I would have been too large with my old fifth wheel. The beach and Gulf of America are about 1/4 mile from my campsite. I haven't made that walk yet but plan to today. On day one, after getting camp set up, I drove around and got the lay of the land. There is an interesting old fort worthy of exploring which will probably be tomorrow's exploration. 

My verizon signal is on again/off again. I've run across this before and assume I'm real close to being in the exact middle between two cell towers. One second I have a very strong signal and the next only one-bar. It's frustrating. The good news is Starlink has a blazingly fast signal. It's as fast has changing channels on cable TV. That blazing speed was a problem at first. It seems this new laptop came with something called One Drive which backs up files to the Microsoft Cloud. That sounds like a good idea, if I had known it was doing it. I had already transferred all 15 years of my pictures from flash drives to this new laptop. Unknown to me, One Drive was uploading them to the cloud. Due to the blazing speed, by the time I noticed what was happening, I had already blew through about 35 GB of data. Luckily I caught it before it uploaded all of them which would have been about 180 GB's. Oh well, although it will cost me a little, it was a lesson learned. 

Yesterday, I drove about 45 minutes to Pensacola Naval Air Station to see their museum. The museum is extremely massive in size and information. I think it is impossible to absorb so much in only one day, but I will not be back on this trip. I've been to aviation museums before but this one tops them all. I would rank it 8 out of 10. The one drawback for me was there wasn't a natural flow to museum. A person could easily get lost or miss seeing something due to the strange layout. Oh well, it was nice having a positive experience at a museum for a change. 

The entrance to the National Naval Aviation Museum is deception. Such a small entry point for something so large inside. 

This picture doesn't represent anything special, it is just showing a small part of the museum, a very small part.

This exhibit sparked my interest the most. I had not heard of this plane or what it had done. It is a Navy NC-4 and it flew across the Atlantic Ocean 8 years before Charles Lindbergh. I understand Lindbergh did it solo and non-stop, but for some reason I was led to believe he was the first "to cross" the Atlantic. It's not the only item of my childhood education that sort of led me in a different direction. Our children are different now a days, if they want additional information that can easily google it and find all they want.  

I guess I need to publish this post "WITH PICTURES" so I can walk to the beach and check it out. The problem of the day is what shoes do I wear? Hmmmm, walking shoes to get to the beach and then change into sandals/swim shoes to walk through the loose sand and then along the beach before changing back to walking shoes. Going barefoot just ain't gonna cut it for me, maybe once on the beach, but not getting there. Decisions, decision.  I guess I'll carry a walmart bag for the shoes. Surely no one will laugh, at least not to where I can hear them. But hey, I don't know anyone around here so I can do anything I want, as long as it's legal.

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

National Seashore Campground

 Location: Davis Bayou National Seashore Campground; Ocean Springs, Mississippi. (just east of Biloxi)

Warning; There won't be any pictures in this post because I haven't figured out how to upload my pictures from my cell phone to this new fancy laptop. My old laptop gave up the ghost after at least 15 years of use. I had been nursing and cajoling it for a couple of years. Luckily. I saw the future a few months and bought a new laptop when they were on sale at Best Buy. I loaded a few programs on it, charged it up and set it aside until the day it would come to the rescue. That day was today. However, it seems computer stuff has changed a little bit over the last 15 years that I've been using my old laptop. The more I've gotten into this new laptop, the steeper the learning curve gets. Oh well, it will give me something to do instead of walking the while sands of the Florida beaches, or watching sunrises/sunsets or sipping coffee on the banks of Corps lakes. Yep, I sure am going to miss those boring activities while learning this new tech stuff.

This campground, Davis Bayou, is a small National Seashore campground. That means the senior pass is recognized and the camping rate is $11.00/night for water/electric. Good deal. The campground is perfectly maintained, and its condition is probably in my top 10. The problem is it fills up quickly due to its size and likeability. The camp host said he hasn't checked in a while, but soon, the entire summer and fall will be reserved. I made my reservation about 2 months ago and I felt lucky to have scored a spot. 

The campground is across Biloxi Bay from the town of Biloxi. I went there on my second day here to check out a museum and to drive through town. The museum, Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum ranked a 3 out of 10 but I think I need to check to make sure I haven't gotten unfairly jaded to all museums. The museum didn't surprise me too much since I've been disappointed in them for a while. The real surprise was the vibe I got from driving along the beach road through Biloxi. It wasn't a good or bad vibe. It was something on the bad side of center. One of those iffy things. To calibrate my vibe meter, I checked with 2 other people and mentioned how I felt and they both agreed. I guess that means I won't be back, but the campground is so great, if I can get reservations again I'll be back and will just avoid Biloxi.

I had pictures that I planned to post here but since I can't upload them, I'll just have to wait for me to educate myself. Once I graduate, with honors of course, from my Windows 11 Home Schooling Program, I might come back and post the pictures. 

Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be headed to another National Seashore Park. It's Fort Pickens National Seashore. I've been waiting years to get there which usual means I've over-hyped it in my mind and will be disappointed. We will see.

Once again, I'm sorry for no pictures. 

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

Escaping New Orleans & The Tchefuncte River

 Fontainebleau State Park; Mandeville, Louisiana (north shore of Lake Pontchatrain)

A map to put the places into perspective.

The wind was blowing hard when I passed thru New Orleans on my way to this campground. Accuweather warned me that a wind advisory had been issued for 9 a.m. and would last all day. My tow distance was very short since I was just going to the other side of Lake Pontchatrain but the wind is what was bothering me. There were sustained winds in the upper 20 mph with gusts in the mid to upper 30 mph. I hadn't towed in such conditions with my new truck and that was a concerning unknown. Over the years I've easily towed in those windy conditions while towing a fifth wheel and even my current trailer, but my new truck hadn't been tested in that way yet. I know there are a lot of people who tow their RV's with weight distribution hitches and/or sway bars, but I've always believed that if the trailer is loaded correctly, sway bars are not needed and if the rear suspension is strong enough, weight distribution hitches are also not needed. My RPod seems to have been designed with this in mind since the only things of any weight behind the trailer axle is the furnace, water heater and spare tire. 

The windy conditions were going to be exacerbated (oops, that word slipped out from my previous life) by having to pass over the Twin Span bridges on Interstate 10. We were completely exposed to the wind. Ok, OK, I've built this up long enough. The new truck, "Freedom", did just fine. "Liberty" shook her booty a couple of times when some strong gusts hit us in our starboard quarter (wow, something must be wrong with me, those words go even farther back into an earlier life,,, it means the back, right corner), but Freedom put her right back in line. I'm now comfortable and confident in the new truck, although I still don't like all BS stuff on her and she better quit hollering at me if she knows whats good for her. That car she was hollering about wasn't even that close. I have a pair of wire cutters and not afraid to use them, if I can figure out which wire to cut. Oh, crap, nevermind.

At least the roads were in good shape. It helped ease my concerns about the wind.

This campground is on the north shore of Lake Pontchatrain. The entire area has a strange vibe to it. Although today is day four of my stay, I still haven't put my finger on that vibe. It feels like a strange combination of a touristy coastal town and "any small town" in the USA. It's not a bad Ju Ju feeling like I had gotten down at Fort Jackson a while back, but more like a heeby jeeby type of feeling.

Our campsite. Notice the Starlink attached to the grab-bar at the door. It worked fine even though I didn't fine tune the alignment.

This is looking out my back window. The squirrel eats it nuts while looking at the window. At first I thought it was looking at me, but I think it was seeing the reflections in the window. It was interesting to watch.

This road is inside the park and lined with live oaks with spanish moss.

It is a nice sculpture down by the shore. That is Lake Pontchatrain in the background and a nice fishing pier on the left. 

Strange looking bench before going out on the pier.

Another strange bench. This one is at the end of the fishing pier. The boy on the right is the grandson to the grandfather to the left, but not in the picture. They were making memories.

A view looking at the fishing pier. When I booked this campground, I had hopes of some nice sunsets but the weather hasn't cooperated. That's that strange bench on the left again, almost like a throne with it's own concrete pad.

Besides getting a prescription filled at Walmart, my plan was to visit two other places. Turned out that I couldn't get to one of those places because of emergency roadwork. I was able to get to the other one though. It was the Maritime Museum of Louisiana located in Madsionville which is the next town over from Mandeville. It is located along the Tchefuncte River (pronounced chah-funk-tuh). I figured I hadn't been disappointed in a museum in so long that I would give this one a try. Score = 6 out of 10. The best parts of the museum were the documentary videos stationed inside the museum. One video that liked in particular told about life along the Tchefuncte River. The river is only 70 miles long and empties into Lake Pontchatrain. The majority of lumber, bricks and pine pitch that was used to build New Orleans was made or harvested in this area and floated down the river then across the lake to New Orleans. After the Yankees captured New Orleans during the Civil War, the line of demarcation between the Union Troops and Southern Independence Fighters was the Tchefuncte River. There was a lot of interesting activity back then in terms of trade, blockade running, smuggling, etc, all of it seemingly centered on this river.Too much to get into in this post, and unless something strange happens in the future, I don't have any plans of returning to this area, so if I learn more about it, it will be online or library time.

The entrance to the museum. They do have a nice building. 

Some of their displays with half of a paddle wheeler replica to the right. 

This "jacobs ladder" gave me some rough flashbacks. I had to climb one of those when I was in the Navy. My ship and our sister ship was getting underway and I was sent to our sister ship to observe and critique their "sea and anchor" detail in their Combat Information Center as both ships got underway. To get me back to my ship, they put me on a Captains boat and took me to my ship. It hadn't even crossed my mind how I was going to get onboard until I saw the Jacobs Ladder hanging over the side. Stepping onto that ladder from a moving boat while the ship was making probably 5 knots was an experience. Climbing the ladder was something I only want to do once. My heart still races just thinking about it.

That's the Tchefuncte River from a nice city park in the town of Madisonville. 

Tomorrow is moving day with thunderstorms in the forecast. This has surely been some strange weather the last week to 10 days. I'll be headed east to a National Seashore Campground just the other side of Biloxi.

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

Random Thoughts and Thinking Rings

 Location: Bayou Segnette State Park; Westwego, Louisiana

This post is going to be a little different than most of my other posts, mainly for two reasons. Rain, sometimes heavy, occurred two of the three days I was here and this is the third time I've been in this campground and area. Both of those reasons resulted in almost zero explorations. I did find a couple of things that sounded interesting, but both were closed until Wednesday which will be tomorrow and moving day. I stayed here back in 2016 and explored downtown New Orleans. I'll post the links to those three posts. Although conditions have improved somewhat in New Orleans in the recent months, it is still considered an unsafe place for a person that explores on their own, like I do. Back in 2016, I didn't hesitate to travel around the city on foot as well as using every streetcar line. Here's the links if you're interested in New Orleans >>>>>>>>>

https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2016/02/new-orleans-part-1.html

https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2016/02/new-orleans-part-2_22.html

https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2016/02/new-orleans-part-3-and-last.html

This last link is from my visit here in 2023 when I traveled as far south as I could alongside the Mississippi River.

https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2023/12/where-mississippi-river-ends.html

I promise I'm not turning my blog into a link-only blog. This one and the last one were special circumstances. Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be moving to a new-to-me Campground on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. New explorations and favorable weather awaits (fingers crossed).

This is my promised road picture. It is South Louisiana between New Iberia and Morgan City.

My campsite here at Bayou Segnette SP. At $13.33 per night, with the senior pass, for water/electric is a good deal. The previous camper left a lot of trash and a few whiskey bottles behind. I cleaned it up a little and let the people at the office know about it. I figured they just hadn't had enough time to clean since I checked in early, so I didn't complain loudly. I just wanted to make sure, if they kept records of this kind of stuff, they knew it wasn't me. 

A few random thoughts:

1) I've checked my blood pressure and blood sugar every morning for the last several years. Like a good little former Engineer, I keep the results in an Excel spreadsheet so I can run averages, trends, graphs, etc. It works good when I try something new so I can identify if it's working or not. One such thing is a supplement I started using a few months ago. It is Berberine/Cinnamon/Chromium. I had read it was good at regulating and lowering both Pressure and Sugar. I've been using it for almost 6 months and it has, on average, lowered my blood sugar by almost 20 points and it has regulated it to reduce random highs. It has also had a positive effect on my blood pressure. I'm really satisfied with it. The only problem is the first 3 bottles I used had those three ingredients all in one capsule. I had a hard time finding that brand so I've had to get Berberine by itself and Cinnamon/Chromium by their selves. It's just a small inconvenience for such positive effects. 

2) My new truck (Ford F-250), is getting about 10 1/2 miles per gallon while towing Liberty. This is an improvement of about 2 to 3 mpg from my old truck (Ford F-250). That was good news although I still miss my old truck. This new one keeps hollering at me for no good reason. 

3) Last year, I bought 10 silicone rings of various colors. I have them in a zip lock bag that is hanging on my medicine cabinet door. They are located there so they will be very visible. After brushing my teeth in the mornings, I'll think about a subject, a word or a memory that I want to remember or think about during the day. I will then reach in and blindly choose a ring. The reason for the different colors is so I don't get used to the ring. I want the color to spark my mind whenever I casually see it during the day. While wearing it during the day, it will jog my memory/remind me/knock me up side my head so I will ruminate (fancy word for deep thinking) on whatever I thought about that morning before putting the ring on. For example, one morning I was remembering my father who passed away many years ago. Every time I noticed the ring during the day, I would remember different things about him. Don't get me wrong, I don't need something to remind me of him, but this way, I thought of him a lot more that day. Other days, I may chose a subject like "honor" or "loyalty", "truth", "liberty" etc. It is surprising how much you can think about a single word when the ring reminds you throughout the day. Yeah, yeah, some of ya'll are going to think I'm crazy crazier, but I don't care. Hey, guess what, tomorrow's word will be,,,,, "crazy".

My rings of many colors. I haven't settled on what to call them yet, but am leaning towards "thinking rings". I think I paid like $10 for all 10. 

On that crazy note, I'll end the Random Thoughts. As I said, tomorrow is moving day. I'll be taking about a 20 mile detour to avoid crossing Lake Pontchartrain on the Causeway (bridge). The causeway is the longest continuous bridge, over water, in the world at a little less than 24 miles. The reason I'm avoiding it, is it doesn't have shoulders. Although there are two lanes in each direction, if Freedom or Liberty has any problems, we're blocking an entire lane for an undetermined amount of time. Therefore, I'll detour by way of I-10 which means I'll be passing through most of New Orleans. As usual whenever I pass thru a questionable and large city, I'll just crank up the music and check for bullet holes when I get to the campground.

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

Palmetto Island State Park

 Location: Palmetto Island State Park; Abbeville, Louisiana

I stayed at this campground back in December of 2023. It's conveniently located so I can visit my sister who lives about 35 minutes away. I didn't do any out of the way exploring this time due to rain showers and visiting time, but I did re-read the post I made back in 2023 and it was pretty good. So I think I'll post that link here and then post some recent pictures from this trip with captions. If the link isn't hot, then look at the archives on the right under December 2023. 

https://gozatravels.blogspot.com/2023/12/cajun-country-and-tabasco-factory.html

Campsite here at Palmetto Island SP. The rate is $15.83 per night for full hook-ups. Camping is half price for seniors (62+). The warned me not to hook up my sewer hose until right before I pull out on the last day. Apparently, the black bears have taken a liking to sewer hoses and ripped several away from parked RV's. 

The view out my back window while sitting at my computer desk. The frond-like plants are palmettos. 

This is the entrance to the state park. It is a reminder that there are animals around here that can kill and eat you. I'm more concerned about the black bears than the gators. I'm also keeping an eye out for the Rougarous that are suppose to be around here somewhere. 

Southern Live Oak trees with spanish moss along the road leading to the State Park.

I forgot to take a road picture so I got this one on the way back from my sister's place. The water on the right is a crawfish pond and the back dots are the traps catching the crawfish. Sometimes rice is planted in the ponds, but not always. By the way, it's "crawfish", not "crayfish". 

I had a hankering for some shrimp but wasn't sure if I wanted them sauteed like above or in a gumbo. 

I decided to go the gumbo route. But I ain't going to make the roux from scratch, no. I pulled one of the gumbo boxes I carry when I'm traveling up north (Yankee country). It makes a pretty good gumbo, although I like it with chicken and sausage better than shrimp. That is my electric skillet I'm making it in. That was one of the best things I bought for the new RV. I use it as a pot or skillet. I haven't used the gas stove in over a year. 

This picture may start an argument among some people. There is always a controversy about having the tator salad in a saucer on the side or in the bowl like I do. Of course mine is the right way and those other mis-guided people will come to their senses in the years to come. I will accept their apologies at that time. The red dots are cayenne hot sauce. 

I'm putting this picture here as documentation. In my last post I said I would take a picture and use it to see if Liberty is slightly nose down and it appears she is, which is good. I'm satisfied with the way the hitched up couple look in the picture. It would be nice if I could send the picture to the original Freedom and Liberty, but they don't have internet access. Oh well.

I'm sorry for such a boring post, but if that hot link was good, that linked post is informative and pretty good. Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be heading a little over 100 miles east to another State Park near New Orleans. The rainy weather is due to pass and it looks like it may get warmer and more humid. Hopefully not. 

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

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.