Spanglering Along

Sending a little southern charm to ya'll on this fine Wednesday!   We ventured to Jackson Mississippi from New Orleans for a couple nights and stayed in the LeFleur's Bluff State Park.  The cost to stay in State Parks is about half of an RV park, so we are keeping an eye peeled for these awesome places.   National parks are definitely nicer and cleaner to stay at but the State Parks are cool too.  LeFleur's Bluff was quite marshy with a large lake that surrounded the campground.  It had alligator and turtle territory all over it, from the looks of it.  I was right!  The first night we stayed, I saw a big alligator swimming slowly along the outer banks of the lake in front of us.  It was a cool thing to observe because I'm scared as hell of alligators and crocodiles.  The 30 foot rule is the one to follow for them because they tire out in 30 feet and have to rest I guess.  I stayed about 100 feet away from the lake. The south is very much...

Hello all! We made it to New Orleans on Wednesday after spending some time in Lafayette Louisiana.  The Louisiana experience has been awesome!   For starts, the people here are so unique.  Their southern charm and polite hospitality is incredible.  Some of the people I've chatted with are challenging to understand sometimes because their southern drawl is so significant.  They seem to be super proud to be from the south and pretty happy.  It's exciting to experience the full effect of this area.  It is like another world. We ventured to the French Quarter two days ago and made our way to the iconic Bourbon Street.  The buildings were very old and had the Mardi Gras awnings we've all read about.  Mardi Gras is not happening right now and the area was very slow.  I liked it because we could just walk around like tourists without any crowds at all.  There were a few spots that had live jazz playing.   When we arrived to New Orlean...

Good Friday to you all! We headed from Midland to Austin a few days ago and stayed almost a week.  Austin was such a sweet city!  Both Laura and I were so impressed by the community feel, the layout of the city and all the greenbelts and parks, that we began looking at Zillow to see what the costs would be to buy a house.  It's definitely a town I would be very happy living in for part of the year.   We spent our time exploring the city and the outskirt areas of the city.  It reminded me of Boise quite a bit but at a way larger scale.  The population in Austin is almost 1 million compared to Boise.  The buildings are way taller and there are little places with ample outdoor seating all over the city, similar to Portland.  It has lots of neighborhoods that remind me of the North End of Boise which had houses converted into little restaurants and pub houses.  There is no shortage of entertainment in Austin.  The city still stays consistent...

We drove into the Carlsbad Caverns National Park yesterday in search of the epic caverns and caves we've been reading about.  The park was about 17 miles away from our KOA camp.  We got there, loaded the baby Henry up on the backpack someone gifted to us a few months ago and went trekking! I get our tickets and we get on an elevator that took us 750 feet down into the cave system.  You could feel the temperature change as we descended.  We exited the elevator and it was an eery, cold and musty environment. I couldn't help but feel a little on edge.  I had Henry facing toward the cave versus me so he could take it all in.  He's not used to facing out yet, so this new world we took him into was kinda scary.  Probably the biggest fail I've done so far as a new daddy. We start trekking.  How they built this paved trail so deep inside the Earth, is beyond me.  As we walked through, you could hear and feel little drips of water that apparently, ove...