Wednesday, June 29, 2016

BEST LAID PLANS AND A FEW MORE VACATION PICS...

Most of the time we plan out our vacations carefully.  We do try to allow some free time for unexpected things that pop up, though...this time we planned to go on a bike trail in Louisiana and Mississippi.  This plan was after another plan for The Hubs to climb a mountain in Washington with a friend while I played in Seattle fell through.

So we said we were just going on an adventure.  It's funny, we got lots of surprises on our adventure, namely a major car repair! We never made it to Mississippi either since we needed to go home via Lake Charles to pick up the car.

We first changed up our trip by going to Louisiana via Houston.  We went to MD Anderson hospital to see some friends of ours who were there with their daughter who was having cancer surgery.  We were glad we took that detour!  On the way we noticed our gas gauge was not working.  So we just figured we would make sure we filled up every 200 miles.

Then the next day in Lake Charles, LA, our car started acting up and thankfully, we had just passed a Chevrolet dealership.  We limped in and handed it over to them, and they drove us to the car rental place.  We wanted to use our points for a free car rental, but they wouldn't let us do that unless we gave a 24 hour notice.  So my quick thinking husband told them we would pay for one day, then also made a reservation for 24 hours later for a free rental for the rest of the week.

So we ended up staying in that town for 24 hours.  We made the most of it and ate at a wonderful restaurant - one of the best meals on the trip - and also went to church with 56 other sweet Christians the next morning.

Have you ever had a fried avocado stuffed with seafood? It was the best!!!

Finally we got back on the road and made it to Covington, where we prepared to bike the Tammany Trace!  We biked 24.6 miles one morning, ate a hearty meal afterward, then relaxed the rest of the day.  Another day we were going to bike the remainder of the trail, only to find that both my tires had burst!  The Hubs changed one tire and it promptly popped again.  There was something wrong with the lining of the tire.  We had to put the bikes back in the car and drive to another town to a bicycle shop for repairs!!!  Thankfully we got great service there and were back on the trail within an hour.  The young manager who helped us gave us a great recommendation for lunch which I never would have eaten at just because of the name...Liz's Where Y'at Diner.  Seriously?  But it was great food, friendly service and unique bright colored decor.  It just made me smile!


We also spent a day in New Orleans - it was my first time ever.  We walked around, ate some good cajun food, and rode a streetcar just to view the southern homes and live oak trees.  Finally we stopped at the art museum and walked through their sculpture garden.




 House of Shards


Love the Live Oak trees down south!

Even though it wasn't exactly what we planned, especially a huge car repair, it was good just getting away from our responsibilities.  When we were younger this might have given me a lot of stress.  I don't know quite what it is, age, maturity, trust?  But these kinds of little detours from the plan just don't worry me anymore.  We enjoyed just being together doing whatever we wanted for a few days!



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Enjoyed all of the vacation pictures!!