I made red beans and rice for dinner tonight, in an ode to New Orleans, which I’d planned on seeing but which I think now that I’ll have to skip. While there are plenty of places to camp around New Orleans, there aren’t many with availability unless you planned in advance, which I did not. I also refuse to stay at an RV park (I will do state parks, national forests, national parks, and other fed land like BLM), and I’m not going to pay $100 a night to camp, which limits your options along the coast. But the main factor is time. I plan to be in San Antonio, TX, on March 17 to stay with my friend Joel for a while.
Because I work during the week, that schedule would basically leave me with this Saturday or Sunday to visit New Orleans. Big Biloxi Recreation Area/National Forest is where I’d likely stay, about 80 miles from the city. But to do New Orleans in a day just doesn’t seem right. I visited years ago, not long after Hurricane Katrina, and the city was still a wreck. But even then, it had more life in it than any U.S. city I’ve ever seen. I think the next time I go I want to be able to devote at least a long weekend to it, and I know if I visit now, I’ll be rushed.
My plan is to stay another week where I’m at, Conecuh National Forest. I’m in a perfect spot overlooking the lake and the wifi from Starlink has been flawless (that’s another risk in moving to a new campground). If the fish would start biting, I’d be even happier to stay. I’ll head to the Florida coast again this weekend for some beach time and sightseeing, finish out a 3.5 day work week, then cut and run 780 miles to San Antonio all at once on March 16-17. I foresee a Walmart parking lot campground in my near future.
Tonight I noticed that my toiletries bag, which I’d set on the kitchen counter, had about a ¼ inch of mold growing all over its underside. There is no way to wash dishes in the tiny camper sink without spilling on the counter, and the camper is leaning a bit one direction, so any spilled water was running to my toiletries bag, which absorbed it completely. The humidity and high temps here then cheered the mold colony to great achievement.
I usually am pretty good about checking and wiping down the counter, but I hadn’t noticed it. I should have taken a photo and posted it to the popular Instagram #vanlife thread, because people, let me tell you that life is a lie (like about everything else on Instagram). Life just isn’t that perfect, and if it was, what would be the point?
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