New Orleans April 2013

Michelle joined me on a work trip to New Orleans April 2-5th. It was a very, very quick trip, but we walked around as much as we could and crammed what we had time for in to the evenings. Michelle took a swamp tour one of the days I was in conference, and we managed to find some good food, music, and intrigue after the conference let out for the evening.

Quick trip to Stub Stewart in April

We packed up the camper and left town last Thursday and drove to Stub Stewart near Vernonia, OR for a quick camping trip. Turns out we had reserved the wrong weekend, but there were a couple less-glamorous spots left. We set up camp quickly and Michelle did a quick tele-conference while the girls played at the playground. It was cold that night, and it seemed that Maddie and Barley took turns waking up every hour, so I was a bit of a slug the next morning when I drove back in to Rock Creek to work half of a day. By the time I got back, the nice sun had gone and a chilly wind had driven the family inside the camper.

One of the other kids in the “neighborhood” invited the girls to go Bigfoot hunting. The kid’s description of bigfoot was all over the place, and MG grew concerned about the carnivorous monster that they were searching for. The girls left a food offering of plants, which sadly, was still there the next morning.

We set up the awning for the first time on Friday and didn’t take it down because it had been so calm. Around 2am, the wind came up and started to shake the camper. Next thing I heard was the awning buckle and hit the camper. I went outside and couldn’t find the awning. I walked around the camper and discovered the poles on the back side. The awning had flipped over the top of the camper. It took some time to flip back over and take apart, folding the wet, nearly frozen mess back in to the storage bag. Noticed that other campers around had stowed their awnings, but most of their awnings were mechanical. The next morning as we packed up camp, we discovered that when the awning had flipped over, the frame hit the roof so hard that it put a hole in the fiberglass. D’oh.
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