11/22/13 - Mandeville!

Friday, November 22, 2013

We decided to take a drive to Mandeville, LA today - it's only 150 miles one way!  Why did we do this?  Because what else is there to do on a rainy day in Louisiana - just kidding, there is actually a lot of things that we want to do and I hope we have time for them all.  We will be in Mandeville on Sunday, December 1st and we wanted to check out both of their state parks to see which would work better for us.

We left Abbeville around 10:00 and  drove mostly on Interstate 10 which went through the Atchayala WFR, which is pretty amazing -  it was a misty, foggy morning exactly the way a swamp should look.   Then it started to pour and we ran into a lot of traffic and it wasn't such a fun ride anymore.


We arrived at Fairview State Park and talked to a very nice park employee (he was the park manager) who gave us some suggestions on how to circumvent the two week stay rule.   Thanks to this very nice young man we are going to stay at Fairview for 4 full weeks, 2 weeks working on a Habitat for Humanity Build and 2 weeks to explore the area and spending some time with one of our favorite families, the Winchells.

Site 26, Our home for December

Becky, Mary, Marty and Maddie

And since we were so close to their house, we decided why wait until December, let's see if anyone is home now and lucky for us Becky and one of her daughters, Mary Margaret were!  The younger kids were still in school but we will see them next time.   We had a very quick visit of their lovely new home and then it was time to hit the road and head back the 150 miles to Betty's RV Park.  

We got back around 7:00 and thought we missed Happy Hour but these people are really happy and were still hanging out in the lounge area.   We picked up the directions for our tour tomorrow and headed in for the the night.