Travel Report – Page 40 – The Hermits' Rest

I Found The Tacky Stuff. Still Fun.

Yes, yes, I’m still in New Orleans with the Friends of La Leche League on their bonding trip. Today was the day of less history and more typical tourist stuff. However, I managed to have fun.

Me having fun and trying to not get sunburned. Failed.

In the morning, people mingled and bonded until time to walk (if you were fit) to the Steamboat Natchez, which is the only steam-powered paddle-wheeler in use in New Orleans.

There, we were treated/blasted to an actual steam calliope concert. It was fun to watch the steam coming out for each note.

On the boat, we had a brunch, which was adequate, and good jazz music (though one DOES weary of “When the Saints Go Marching In” around here). Since you couldn’t see a dang thing during the meal, I got out of the dining room as fast as I could to see the river.

It’s Okay to Be a Tourist

When I was a teenager in a tourist destination (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida area), I sure didn’t like tourists. They showed up and drove strangely, got horrible sunburns, and asked ignorant questions. Grr. They filled “our” restaurants.

Get off our stairs! Tourists (our group) milling around).

I currently spent half my time in another tourist destination, where natives carefully avoid downtown or our beautiful parks during certain times of the year, since so many people show up to party and have fun at festivals. We grumble, but know the economy needs it.

Right now I’m the tourist in New Orleans. I have done tourist activities like bus tours that crowd the streets, and walking tours that crowd the sidewalks. I sure wouldn’t want to live where my house is photographed by people like Suna all day long. Certainly living in the French Quarter would require a special patience.

With all this good food, the economy can’t help but do well.

I see tourists wandering around getting blitzed and screeching about things, and they are contributing to the economy, I guess.

Then I see our group asking question after question to learn more about the area. I see us making connections in local shops (I bought yarn!). This is good tourism, as far as I’m concerned.

Local yarn to celebrate the yarn shop’s 50th anniversary. Also there was needlepoint. Ah.

New Orleans. Old. Less Tacky Than I Feared.

Not a lot of time to write today. I’ll share that I am more charmed by New Orleans than I anticipated. And it’s not just noise and drunk people. Whew.

Random parades were fun. Someone is making a lot of money doing these.

We went on a walking tour of the French Quarter today. Our guide was great and we learned a lot from her.

Stacy the tour guide entertaining our group.

But, no time to go into details. Just enjoy all these buildings. More later. Hope you’re having an okay weekend!

More Architecture! It’s Old Here.

Not much soul searching to report today, though I think some of my colleagues tried to get me to do so. That’s even AFTER I said I am really doing well and coping with whatever challenges may come up. Oh well. What did I do today?

Mostly I looked at a lot of buildings and some darned impressive old oak trees. Our trip planners did us all a favor by setting up a bus tour of Greater New Orleans this morning, which makes it a lot easier to figure out what we’ll want to do in our free time tomorrow.

Our tour bus driver is usually a swamp tour driver, so I enjoyed listening to him try to remember all his NOLA facts and figure out how traffic has changed.

Of course there was the odd sighting of a wookie.

This Is a Call for Super Introvert!

I’m sitting in the Austin airport again. This time I’m also going somewhere fun, but not for relaxation. I’m traveling to New Orleans to participate in semi-annual Friends of La Leche League trip. Since I’m on the Board, my role will be to help make the trip fun for the participants.

I have to go back to my Super Introvert mode that I used to get in at the large conferences, where I had to be on and available 24/7. Usually I handle conferences by getting a room to myself. But, this is a nonprofit, so we share!

It’s fun sharing rooms with old friends. You catch up, tell funny stories, etc. I just hope note that we are all older, we will sleep some.

This is a group of wonderful people, and I am hoping everyone’s issues and infirmities don’t prevent everyone from having fun. And I hope I don’t collapse from being my busy LLL persona for 5 days. I’m not the same person I used to be.

Luckily I’m in a great mood and looking forward to some fun and good. Yes, I will eat a beignet! Moderation in everything.

Final Vacation Day: Bluffton, Then Home

I had no time to write this morning and spent all day today on planes, so I’m late. You 11 people who read these things survived, no doubt.

Friday was a nice calm day, since Anita worked until noon. But then we set out to the mainland to visit the lovely town of Bluffton. It reminded me of Green Cove Springs in my youth. Lovely old h of huge trees covered in moss, with a beautiful river.

An old church. Sadly, most of my photos got messed up, so no cool house images.

We ate lunch at a wonderful spot in an old house, called The Cottage. The food was hearty and sophisticated all at once. I got oysters, crab, and shrimp in a delicious sauce, over cheese grits. Heaven. Anita had a pot pie that she raved about.

After that joy, we found a marvelous boutique and I got an amazing poncho kind of top with sleeves. I can’t wait to wear it all winter.

The town has been beautifully preserved, with more work going on. All the new developments are out of the historical area.

We Invade the Plantation

Yesterday was a bit more of the same vacation stuff as the rest of the week. We have a routine where Anita works all morning (that’s why I have time to blog; otherwise I’d be doing activities) and then off we go. I made a lunch with our eggs and turkey and cheese all scrambled together, making me glad we got the grocery delivery package when we got here. That way, most days we don’t have to eat out but once.

We See Sea Pines

One of the negative things about Hilton Head Island is that lots of it is not easily accessible unless you live there. It’s divided into “plantations” (which were actual plantations with all the sadness that went with them), and they are gated, so only the well-do-do who live there can get in without a pass.

Luckily, for $8 they will let you into Sea Pines, so we made the most of it and drove all over the place yesterday. There’s a large forest preserve in the middle, which the developer of the property kindly deeded to the residents. We trundled through there and really enjoyed the boardwalk area with lots of labeled plants and interesting terrain.

Anita in her Halloween shirt enjoying the boardwalk.

The land was reclaimed from being a rice plantation and now actually provides drinking water. That’s a great story. We saw a couple of alligators and lots of birds, plus some huge trees that survived Hurricane Matthew.

It’s Halloween, So Time for Scary Hair

After the boating outing, we spent the second half of yesterday doing the required vacation pampering activities that are probably somewhere in the official rules for women going to resorts: You MUST receive some spa-like service or you FAIL as a vacationer!

The horror! Very unruly hair, scary eyebrows, and so many wrinkles. Good morning, Suna.

We did not fail. My hair had gotten rather unruly, and I’d been having a hard time finding time to find somewhere to get my hair cut in Austin, so hey, why not get it cut in Hilton Head? It’s only hair, right?

Oh, sure. I got an appointment with a random stylist at the place Laura from the resort goes to. It turned out to be someone a bit older than me, so I thought, hmm, I bet I get “old lady hair.” But, I enjoyed chatting with her, and I did get the back shorter, which I wanted.

There was a great deal of time spent by the stylist on blow-drying and spraying stuff on my hair. I thought Anita was going to die from holding in her thoughts until we got outside. I had very high hair. It gave me a good chuckle.

Ahoy! We Set Sail!

Admission: we were not on a sailboat, we were on a ski boat, but nonetheless, Anita and I had a glorious time with Boat Captain Scott out on the waters surrounding Hilton Head Island yesterday. We spent two action-packed hours as our guide took us to beautiful spots filled with birds and dolphins. It was a very high tide, so we could get into all sorts of tight spots, too.

When the son did come out, it was very sparkly.

It was a gray day, so none of the photos look spectacular, and of course most of the birds were way too far away for photos, but I sure got my money’s worth out of the binoculars, which I was gracious enough to occasionally share with Anita, when I wasn’t all mesmerized.

What was your favorite, Suna?

Thanks for asking, hypothetical reader! By far my favorite sight was all the little blue herons in the marshlands. They were harder to spot, but so blue! Of course I couldn’t get pictures, but here’s what they look like.

By Sandhillcrane – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75471386

There were dozens and dozens of great egrets, a good number of great blue herons, and a lot of sweet snowy egrets. The marshes were crammed with them. We also saw two tricolored herons, so it was a good day for that family.

Mother Nature Had the Sniffles

Yesterday’s big plans got thwarted, because it kept threatening to rain all day. Mostly it just drizzled, which made me think Nature has the same thing so many of my friends have that makes them all sniffly. It never rained hard until the evening, when we were sitting in the hot tub talking to random fellow guests.

What this meant is that we had to cancel our boat outing around the Pinkney Island preserve. But, we talked to Scott the Boat Guy, and are going to try to do it later this morning. It appears dry outside.

All the moisture makes decay happen quickly and beautifully.

We did manage a quick outing to the Audubon Preserve, where last year I saw a zillion birds, but had no binoculars. This year, yes to binoculars, but no to birds.

The pond was beautiful, even in the drizzle.

I really do appreciate the efforts the group has made to label so many of the plants. They have a very nice brochure that talks about all the different mini-ecosystems in the park and what grows there. It’s also where I learned about the original topography of the area, with high ups and downs of boggy spaces and higher land with trees. It’s not like that where all the houses are now.