For ten years, we explored all over the country while living in an RV. Later, after we settled on the Canal Cottage as our winter home, we “migrated” twice a year from coast-to-coast. When we got tired of driving pretty much that same route every time, we started to “commute” by plane, leaving our trusty RoadTrek camper van behind in Florida. It has been our reliable daily driver and occasional camping getaway rig every winter/spring season for years. More to the point, it has been living all by itself during Florida’s hot, wet rainy season (while we’re in Oregon). That subtropical climate is hard on cars so, because we wanted to save it, we needed to bring it home.
We — the driver and fulltime-passenger — thought we were up for another road-trip. And we were — but this time it took us even longer than it used to.
Here’s a random dinner-time view from our traveling home on wheels and a good example of why we still love RV camping. A road-trip motel room seldom has a view like this.
People used to ask us how long it took to drive back and forth and we’ve never really had a good answer. We stop a lot! We take detours. We try to stay off the freeway. This trip was no exception as it took nearly the full month of June to cover a distance of 3579 miles. Obviously, for us ‘road trip’ doesn’t mean covering the most miles in the fewest hours.
We weren’t in any hurry — on our traveling days we started off about 10 and pulled into our campground for the night by late afternoon.
We didn’t explore many new places on this trip, but we did re-visit some favorite old ones. The collage and the picture above are from our visit to one of those favorite spots — Avery Island Louisiana. The island is a salt dome that extends about eight miles down into the ocean. For five generations, the McIlhenny family has grown peppers on this salty soil. Tabasco — the hot sauce the family developed — is still manufactured and bottled here.
On our previous visit years ago, we toured the factory and museum, but we skipped those this time in favor of spending our day exploring the Island’s ‘s semi-tropical Jungle Gardens.
In 1895, Edward McIlhaney (second generation of the founding family) became interested in the birds and wildlife the land attracted. He built an aviary and began by raising and breeding a few wild egrets. At the time, egrets had been hunted to near extinction. Their plumage was popular for fashionable ladies hats. McIlhaney freed the adult egrets after they had raised their hatchlings. They migrated and then returned the next spring. And they kept returning year after year. After all these generations, thousands of egrets still return to the island to nest every spring — their rookery is called Bird City.
At this point we were definitely not driving on the fastest East-West route. But our detour had a purpose as we were heading toward the Texas Gulf Coast where we have family. From there we would travel to Colorado for more family time.
We loved revisiting the beauty of Cajun Country (and the food was wonderful!) but we had miles to go and more good times ahead.
More road(trip) ahead!
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