Mardi Gras in New Orleans…cancelled? WTF

February 2021

We made it to the state park in New Orleans!! Woohoo! Bayou Segnette State Park.

I booked this site for two full weeks! The only site available only had water and power hookups…no sewer. Which was ok, because I would now be able to test how long I could go without dumping my black tank…it was research at its finest.

All sites were back in sites. Which was no problem for the expert I had become! The site also had a fire ring, a picnic table and what seemed like an acre of land. It was a very cool site!

Because I was going to be at this site for a while, I decided to order a cat tent for Murray and Sydney, so they had more to play in outside besides their metal cage. I found an Amazon pick up spot in a business in New Orleans that would accept the package and would allow me to come and get it…yeah! Murray and Sydney loved it!!! I also got a second tent with a round connector to go between them! I will wait to bring all of that out when the weather gets nicer. Plus, the metal cage worked much better when it was rainy and windy!

It was ok weather when we first got there. Murray and Sydney got to go out on their leashes. Everything was so green; it was so pretty. There is a lot of wildlife in the woods surrounding us. At night the coyotes came up to the trailer and were yipping. Freaked us all out, but I had my bear spray in hand just in case shit got real and they decided to try to get into the trailer.

But one night I was brave (or stupid) enough to go out and take nighttime pictures of the trailer. The sunsets are so cool!

Then the weather took a turn. It started to rain…and the wind started up too. I had to put down the tarp I had over the door because the wind tried to blow it off the trailer…no bueno. Then the campground started to flood because of the monsoon rain. It was awesome…not. As I went outside to bring everything out of the rain, I decided to setup my camera and take a picture of me in the rain! It was actually fun. I love being out in the rain, sometimes.

And somehow someone lost their underwear near my site…must have been a wild party! Parley thought it was strange too. It’s a little unnerving because it wasn’t there the day before.

In between the monsoon showers I would take Parley out for a walk around the campground. They had the coolest boardwalks through the woods. We went down one of the closest ones to our site. We also met a lady that had been there for months. She said her husband had a heart attack while staying there, so they allowed her to stay longer than the usual two weeks. She was also telling me that a film crew had just left the park. They had been filming an episode of CSI there! What?!! That is cool!!

Halfway through my stay in New Orleans I found out that they had cancelled Mardi Gras. You couldn’t even go downtown and walk around. The cops were there, and they would arrest anyone going down there. Well, dammit all to hell. And they also cancelled the cemetery tour and the alligator tour I was going to partake in. So instead, I drove around the outer area of New Orleans and took some pictures of any decorated houses I could find. I saw a few, and they were cool!

Then I decided to make my own Mardi Gras party, but with the pets and in the trailer. Which meant I needed to stop for more beer. I saw the Piggly Wiggly on my way back to the campground. Never been to one, so I decided what the hell, I’ll stop in. I had Parley with me, and he’s never been to a Piggly Wiggly either.

Well, it was an experience and a half. With my case of beer in hand I made my way to the check out stand. I stood in line behind a guy trying to buy some cigarettes, and then I looked over at the other check stand to see a woman who is obviously on meth buying up all the candy in the store, and as the checker is ringing up her stuff, the meth user continues to run over to the candy aisle and grabbing more candy. The guy that was in front of me looked like he was on something too, not meth, but maybe OxyContin or something. He was yelling at the meth gal telling her to hurry up. The rest of us just stood there and watched it all. The checkers just kept checking like they’d seen all this before. Parley couldn’t believe it when I got back to the truck and told him. He said it sounded like a shit show.

In choosing to come to New Orleans I had been checking the weather, and it was showing it to be above 55 degrees, and even up to 70 degrees during the time I was going to be there. But that is NOT what happened. You know that cold front that moved across the country…well, it came to New Orleans too. It was sooooo cold. And raining and windy. sigh. And all the flooding water froze. Parley loved being an ice licker.

And then my electric heater broke in the middle of this crap! It got a little chilly in the trailer.

With no heat and 40 degrees in the trailer, I decided to drive into town with the dog and the cats (to keep them warm) and went to about five different stores to look for a new electric heater…no dice. Everywhere had sold out of them. I did find an electric blanket at Rite Aid, I bought it immediately.

And since the heater broke on a Sunday night, I couldn’t call any of the little hardware stores in the area because they were all closed. I went back to the trailer with the electric blanket and it occured to me that maybe I could keep us a little warmer if I turned on the oven. Even though all my emergency training has told me that is not what to do, so in my defense I did crack a window open. The oven worked pretty good!

And on a good note, once I put the electric blanket on the bed and plugged it in the animals immediately went to it…they weren’t cold at all!

Before going to sleep I turned the stove off. (in case you were worried about it) Then we all slept with the electric blanket and were warm as long as we were under or on top of it. But in the rest of the trailer, it was colder than a well diggers ass. Not to mention my concern for the water freezing in the trailer. Even though I did disconnect it from the hose.

Then it dawned on me (dumbass) I have a furnace in the trailer…sigh. I have had and will continue to have these dumbass moments in life, it’s just how it is.

So I decided to call my dad so he could walk me through the lighting and operating of the furnace. He had shown me once, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t blow us all up. Once the furnace fired up it got very warm in the trailer, it was so awesome! I was so happy. Murray was impressed.

Then I called around to the smaller hardware stores and I hit the jackpot, one little store had two electric heaters left…score! I turned off the furnace and extinguished the pilot light on the thing, got into the truck and raced to the store…thank god no one else got there before I did. And for $39.99 I got a new heater. I raced back to the trailer, plugged in the heater and warmed up the trailer. Then it was nap time, and it was nice and toasty warm…ahhhh. Crisis averted…again.

Even though I couldn’t go into town to enjoy festivities, it was still a great stay at the state park.

There were a lot of firsts:

Upon leaving the campground bathrooms, and laundry room I went to load my stuff into the truck and stepped right on a Louisiana fire ant nest…fuck that hurt.

I also found out it took me a week to fill up the black tank on my trailer. Halfway through my stay I had to hook the trailer back up to the truck, get it ready to be moved and took it to the dump station in the campground. Not too bad. The guy across from me was there the same amount of time that I was, and he had to dump twice a week. He told me he couldn’t believe my tank held out that long! But I wasn’t using that black tank for my gray water, I did have to empty the tub I was using for that a couple times a week.

The area around the campground was so pretty, they had those cool white birds I love too.

Every time I went out for a drive, I passed this really cool church. I just had to take pictures of it.