Thursday, April 9

New Orleans Experience

While Lum and Donna were at the hospital getting Lums first chemo treatment Butch and I held down the fort at their place AND went to New Orleans with Dutch, a longtime friend of Lums and Dutch's relatives visiting from Holland, Jelmer and Alie Kuipers. We had met Dutch at Snow Mountain Ranch where he is also a volunteer.
We had a great time getting acquainted with the city. It is charming, no two ways about it. The people are friendly and outgoing and the streets are clean. There is evidence of the homeless but that is a nationwide thing.

Katrina's aftermath is still in evidence but they have come a long way from the dreadful scenes we all saw on tv. One of the things Donna told me was that the birds left after Katrina and they returned just this year, four years later!

We noticed a street musician trying to herd a young injured bird into a box before it was run over on the busy street. The young musician told me that Jesus says we will be judged by how we treat the least among us so he wanted to do something for the bird. I helped him herd the bird into the box and he decided the least he could do for it was to move it to a location less traveled and asked me to watch his CD's while he did so. I was happy to do that.
In the cathedral I noticed a shabby man saying his prayers and wanted to get his photo. I did but unfortunately he caught me doing so. I hope his prayers were answered.
We had cafe au lait (coffee with boiled milk) and beignets (pronounced bin-yay) early in the day. A beignet is a doughnut/sweetbread type dough that is deep fried then doused liberally with powdered sugar.
For lunch we had red beans and rice with Italian sausage. It was a house specialty of the restaurant and a typical New Orleans meal.
Still later we had a pralines...hey, we were on vacation!!!
Lum is home now and resting and so are we from our big day.

New Orleans 2009 Slideshow

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Monday, April 6

We are in Pass Christian Mississippi at the home of Lum and Donna Ellis friends of ours we met at Snow Mountain Ranch YMCA of the Rockies. Lum and Donna have been volunteers at Snow Mountain Ranch for the past 15 summers but will miss this year because Lum finds himself in the middle of a battle with stomach cancer. He will be going for his first round of chemo tomorrow. We will not ask anything of Lum and will try to pick up the slack for him on his chores around here. Lum did say it will give him a chance to plant a garden this summer and he has already started on it.

Sunday, April 5

Big Woodpecker

Taken at Stephen Austin State Park near Sealy TX

Exit 121

We are at exit 121 in Louisiana- near Lafayette. Butch is struggling with the satellite for Direct TV. Every now and then when we move we have a problem. We were in amongst a bunch of trees at Stephen Austin State Park and every time we have a tree problem we subsequently have a sattelite problem... Oh well, this too shall pass.
Tomorrow we get to see our good friends Lum and Donna and that will be a fun time.

This place we are staying( Welcome Center) is a boondock situation but they are kind enough to let us stay. Earlier today we went to a Wal-Mart and they had all the entrances fixed to be unavailable to RV's. Needless to say we didn't spend any time or money there. Lousiana I-10 isn't too bad. It was worse in East Texas.
Till next time...