When Ray came by to welcome us and collect our money he presented us with a flyer that contained info about restaurants and area attractions. But, look what was on the front of it. It is a photo of our group when we were there in 2012. We are famous!
Friday Morning we got up early and all went over to the hospital for breakfast. Still waiting to see if we would be able to get into Pontchartrain Landing we wanted to be up and ready to leave if we could. However, we did not get slips.
Since we knew we would be here for several days now we had to do something about electricity. After what seemed somehow to be a Mexican train wreck, Jeff and Crystal moved back making way for Sweet Tides to switch to their power pedestal. Then finally Josh moves Last Trade back instead of us having to move back and around them into the space where Sweet Tides had been... we were able to back up to them and tie into their power pedestal. After shuffling back and making power cord length adjustments we all found a suitable spot and all had full electrical access. It will be nice to have power outlets and A/C on the boat again.
Shortly after we got all of our electricity set, another trawler "Gold Looper" came in and pulled into the spot we had just moved from. Shortly after that the Electrician showed up and was able to get them 2 30Amps so they were set.
We decided to walk to the Scarlet Scoop. A great little ice cream/yogurt shop. We walked down there, but they were closed until they could get "good" ice cream... probably a Blue Bell vendor... and they will reopen early spring 2016. Well... its already past "early" spring 2016 and almost summer... So, rather than waiting, we walked to the gas station and bought a Klondike Bar!
Back at the boat we had lunch and Al got a long over due haircut. What a wonderful day on the lay-a-long. Its a bit warm, but our sundeck is due east and we have wonderful shade.
Before we know it, another boat arrives. A catamaran. Woody and Dee on 'We Bailed' from Gulf Shores. They are headed to Corpus Christi. During our stay there the entire pier was filled and we had boats turning away.
April 9, 2016 - Houma
Today was a down day for us. I cleaned inside and we watched the Masters. The Eddingtons and we road our bikes up to 1921 Seafood Restaurant. We met the others there. They had walked.
The food was just terrible. Al got a shrimp salad with 6 small rubber shrimp... that were cooked so long that the shells were fused to the shrimp. I had gumbo and crawfish and they were ok. But not awesome.
On our way back we stopped by a military museum cache and Al found it!. Then we rode over to Christiano's for a nite cap. It is such a great place.
April 10, 2016 - Houma
We slept in. It was so nice to casually get up, enjoy a cup of coffee and then we strolled over to The Pit Stop for a great breakfast. LOVED the grits! Al is not doing too good with his food choices again. The hot cake was not too good.
We got back to the boat and gathered all of our dirty clothes and headed over to the laundry mat. It was nice to get everything washed up. We then spent the rest of the afternoon watching the finals of The Masters.
We ended the afternoon bringing out our grills and having a cook out and dish to share in the park. We have a great time getting to know Pat and Sam and Jeff and Crystol. They will be continuing with us for a while.
We have found out that we can't stay at Boomtown Casino. And, we can't get slips at Pontchartrain. This leaves up trying to decide what we will do from here. We hope to be able to rent a car tomorrow and drive into New Orleans and check out our options.
Tomorrow is another day.
April 11, 2016 Houma Louisiana
We got up early and went to the Hospital for breakfast then were picked up by Enterprise to go get our rent car. Curtis, Diane and Josh went along to check things out. We drove to check out Boomtown area for an anchorage, Pontchartrain Landing for room at the inn, Hero Canal for an alternative anchorage, Seabrook Marina in the Lake and Lake Shore Marina in Slidell. We found no real plan to move forward and with the coming weather we decided we would stay put in Houma through this week and weekend and see how things shape up next week.Oh, and we stopped along the way to get a geocache..... Blue Angels. Fun.
We grabbed lunch and headed back to hit Walmart for provisions. Another beautiful evening and we sat out and enjoyed docktails and visit.
Later, Cristol and Jeff needed to go to Walmart so I took them and Diane and Curtis and I went to Chick-fil-a. We called it a night.
April 12, 2014 - Houma
We got up early and returned the car to Enterprise. It was a rainy day.
We hung out in the sky bridge most of the day. We researched all of the mileage and hours needed to get to options from anchorages to tie ups. I did reach Kristen at Jean Lafitte Marine... formerly C & M Fuel. The new owners are doing some repairs and upgrades. She said we could all five tie up to the lay-a-long. They would charge only $25/night. There are only a few electrical outlets so not everyone would have power.
Later, everyone ended up in our sky bridge for an impromptu docktail party.
April 13, 2014 - Houma
We woke up to storms. So we just hung out in the boat all day. About 10:00 the Last Trade took a hit to their power. Burned their splitter.
We were on the same power pedestal so we turn all our power off and Al got out and pull off both of our cords as well as Last Trade's. The electrician came over really quickly and got the outlets changed. The marina bought Josh a new power cord.
That evening we walked over to Cajun Cafe.... a local establishment that has a dance club. A Cajun dance club. Right out of the Circle 8 category. Pat and Sam had wandered in there the night before and said we just had to go. They had a pot luck meeting first... then we were able to go in and have some fun.
The band was just terrible... but we had so much fun. It was a real culture shock, I think, for some of our group.
We were presented with "Honorary Cajun Certificates" We were just the main attraction. You would have thought these people had never seen "normal" people before... LOL
April 14, 2014 - Houma
When we were at anchor in Taylor Bayou we lost our anchor windlass. It was kaput when Al tried to bring in the anchor.
I spent some time on the internet trying to find a replacement so that we would not have to totally reconfigure the footprint. It was a Simpson Lawrence windlass and they are out of business. Of course. After lots of research I ran across a website of a fellow in Scotland who had worked for Simpson Lawrence and when they went out of business he had purchased all of its inventory and went into business for himself. He was able to replace the windlass with the exact replacement for much less than a new one would have cost us. We ordered a new windlass from the guy in Scotland and we had it sent to Ray's house.
Al had quite a time trying to get the old windlass off, And the only issue we had was that the bolts with it were a little too short so we had to go all over town looking for some thread to cut to length. We finally found some at a very old hardware store, Davis Hardware, that had been around for ever.
Josh wired in the new windlass for us.
And here is Al with his new windlass.
Diane worked on installing some snaps in our dingy to hold the oars on. The velcro on the old straps had worn out.
There is a pump out at Houma. But to get to it we had to shift all of our boats around. So we spent the morning doing the Potty Shuffle.
Diane was our fly swatter.
It is not unusual to find crew change and package delivery right at the end of the dock. With the ICW passing right along the pier we saw one such package delivery that didn't go so well. A fellow was throwing boxes of "bug spray".
One box didn't make it!
But Curtis and Diane came to the rescue. They recovered it and got it back to the crew on the barge
Lexi and Cristol watch the whole thing!
House boat without steering came in at dark. Everyone was out making sure they did not bounce off of any of the boats.
April 15, 2016- Houma
Picked up our rental car and took Lexi to the Groomer. Cajun Canine. They did a great job and said that Lexi was very well behaved.... LOL... Like I believe that!
April 17, 2016 -Houma
Almost every day these two ladies, out for a walk, stopped by to say hello during our docktails hour. They kept saying that they were going to join us one afternoon. Well, they did. Monica and Alice were their names. They brought some wonderful food and then they took us over to a great restaurant for dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We love comments :-)