Travel to Mobile Alabama (with headache)

May 03 - 07, 2018: 

After deciding to keep on truckin' toward Florida we went through Louisiana, Mississippi, and then Mobile Alabama.  Our first stop for just a night was in Delhi Louisiana and then we sailed through Mississippi with Mobile Alabama being our next 2 night stay.

Our one night stay was at the Delhi RV Park in Delhi LA just a few feet off Interstate 20.  These are the places we like for overnighting, cheap, simple, and easy in and out.  The Delhi RV Park fit that bill perfectly.  We didn’t even need to go into the office to find a site or fill anything out. We call a number and get a guy who says to pick any site and then put $20 in an envelope into a deposit slot on the unoccupied office.  Oh yeah, all of the sites are 50 amp pull throughs!

The unmanned office and our rig on the right in the back

Our no frills $20 a night 50 amp full hookup site in Louisiana

May 4th we took off for our 250 mile trip to Mobile Alabama.  This a longer trip than we usually do but it fits into our schedule for arriving at our final destination in Florida on the 9th.  

Just crossed this bridge on the left over the Mississippi River into Vicksburg.  The bridge on the right is a railroad bridge

We stopped for a few minutes at the Mississippi welcome center. 
It is one of the nicer welcome centers we have stopped at

The trip to Mobile was mostly split between I 20 and then southeast on route 45 to Mobile AL.  Interstate 20 was pretty good but the southeast part of the trip out of Meridian Mississippi was pretty awful!  The first 20 miles was on and off construction and when not in construction the road was even worse.  It was very difficult to keep up to highway speeds!  We were both glad to finally arrive in Mobile after 5 hours of driving.

Our site in Mobile was at one of those southern RV/Mobile home parks with mostly full-time renters.  We just never know what we will run into at one of these places.   Patty found the City RV Park on the Passport America site.  The price for a night should be half of their daily rate of $35.  However, when on-site manager came the next evening to get the site fee it was $70 for the 2 nights.  We asked and she said that was the Passport rate.  Basically she gave us just a 5% reduction that took off the taxes.  I think the woman pockets the extra money.  She came with her small child and acted scatterbrained so I am pretty sure if we pushed it she would have feigned being so sorry for not being good at math or some such thing.  We let it go anyway.

Getting to the RV Park was a trip on the residential road leading to the park.  The trees were very low and there was a fair amount of traffic making it hard to navigate around the low tree limbs.  I know we hit a few but it didn’t seem to damage the RV in any way.  The park itself is in a very treed area where you can’t see very far into it and the entrance is narrow.  It gives you the feeling that once you are in it will be difficult to get back out.  This is a place that would have really scared me when we first started out but now I feel I can basically navigate anything.

Patty was told on the phone that we could have any of 3 different sites when we arrived, just pick one.  Picking a site in a park like this is very rough.  First, we don’t know the layout of the park.  Secondly, we don’t know how to navigate the park either.  The sites we were to pick out were all in a row as we entered the Park.  However, the sites were alternating pull throughs that we didn’t pick up on right away.  So we pulled into the first site backwards.  After we were in the site we realized that we should have gone around a very sharp curve in the Park and then pulled into this site.  Fortunately we figured this out as the utilities were backwards.  Originally we thought that all of the utilities were just backwards, nope, it was us who were backwards.  It was very easy to just back up and then pull forward into the correct site.

Our site here at the City RV park in Mobile AL

So we have one full day to explore Mobile Alabama!  We picked going into downtown and having lunch and then visiting the Carnival Museum.  

Nice fountain in Mobile where we found a parking place

We got lucky as we arrived early to lunch and got one of the last tables that weren’t reserved.  Today was graduation day for the University of South Alabama (USA) which is located close by.

The Royal Scam restaurant

After a nice lunch we walked a few blocks to the Carnival Museum.  We learned quite a lot here and the price was nice at just $10 each.  First thing we learned is that Carnival in the US originated here in Mobile before moving to its more famous cousin New Orleans after the Civil War.  Originally Mobile was much more prosperous than that of New Orleans or any other port city for that matter.  Things changed after the Civil war though.

These statures were all around the Mardi Gras Park in downtown Mobile AL

The history museum of Mobile.  It was across the street from the Mardi Gras Park.  We didn't visit there but it was a cool building!

Mobile has a cruise port that we didn't know about. 
This Carnival ship is heading to South America today

Anyway Mobile has been hosting its own Carnival continuously since 1702 which was several years before New Orleans was even a city!  The museum has many of the past king and queen costumes that have been worn over the years.  These costumes are very ornate and very expensive.  In fact, to be a queen or a king you need to be from a pretty wealthy family.  Our visit to the museum gave us a very good education on this traditional festival.  We are glad we had the chance to visit the museum.

Veils with the King & Queen's costumes

A table setting from a Carnival King & Queen Ball.
It matches the colors of the King & Queen costumes.

These moon pies are a tradition at Mardi Gras in Mobile.  They wanted a treat that didn't hurt people when thrown and didn't fall apart.  They use tons of these during the event.  We had to get a few to sample!

As for my headaches, I am still having some issues.  I have a low grade headache most of the time and I get dizzy at weird times.  The dizzy part comes at some usual times like when I get up quick but also when I walk.  It also seems like my upper legs are involved.  It is hard to walk because it hurts to get my legs straight when I am walking.  Trying to get my legs straight makes my head hurt, weird.  So far this stuff is all mild and not enough to keep me down so I just muddle along for now.

Getting close to Florida now!  Our next stop will be a one nighter in Tallahassee Florida and then off to our next 2 nighter in Ocala Florida.

Stay Tuned!