On the road with Mike and Tina: Slidell to Westlake in a Snowstorm

Friday the 12th

As noted yesterday, it started raining just after we arrived in Slidell and it rained heavy all night finally letting up about 7:30 AM just in time to take the kids for their walk. But man was it cold!! Brrrrrr, probably about 34 degrees plus a 10 knot breeze that put a frost on the pumpkin.

Since it didn't snow last night we had a quick breakfast, put everything away, unplugged shore power, disconnected from city water, pulled in the slides and we were on the road by 8:15 AM headed back to I-10 East and onto westbound I-12, which is an 84 mile New Orleans by-pass.

Once on I-12 it started to sprinkle a little, then it started to sleet, then it started to snow, then it started to snow real heavy with a wind from the north. Thirty five miles later as we passed Hammond it reached its peak. Pretty much everybody had slowed to between 40 and 45 mph due to visibility problems. It was so bad that the windshield wiper on Tina's side was loading up with ice and snow.

This continued for almost 70 miles. At times it was so bad you couldn't read the signs along side the road. With lots of traffic and lots of snow coming down, shepharding twenty-eight thousand pounds of coach down the highway was a little stressfull. Not to mention when we were being passed by big eighteen wheelers just as cars were getting on the freeway. Wheeeeewuu!! Exciting!! Fortunately, with Tina copiloting, we were able to avoid having to hit the breaks. And being over 60 feet in length with the tow buddy dolly and the car extending back off of that, even with electric breaks on the trailer there's no telling whether we'd be able to make an emergency stop in a straight line or not. Fun stuff!!

We drove on, expecting at any time we'd have to pull off and wait it out. Fortunately, over the next thirty miles it slowly tapered off and by the time we linked up with I-10 again, it had quit altogether and the sky was showing signs of clearing, Yipeeeee!! We were so overjoyed that we missed our exit to I-10 and started north on I-110 for Ohio.

And then.... Tina spotted the correct off ramp and we did a very big "U" turn, back onto I-110 South, finally picking up I-10 and continuing on to our exit for the city of Westlake and our RV Campsite for the next two nights.

We arrived at Whispering Meadows RV Park around 12:30, registered and pulled into our site. After moving the car off the dolly and setting up camp (hooking up water and power, extending the slides, moving furniture and taking the dogs for a walk) we settled in with a sigh to a big bowl of hot leftover Gumbo. Delicious!!

Since it was turning into a nice day we decided to go to the Sam Huston State Park on the banks of the Calcaseau River. This is a nice big park with excellent camping facilities, many trails and access to a slow moving river for canoeing, kayaking or fishing. Unfortunately, due to all the cold iver a lot of the vegetation is dead and flooding has killed a lot of the Cyprus and flooded both the river and the swamp. Even though it was very chilly we got out and took the kids for a half mile hike along the Cyprus Tupelo Trail.

On our return to the coach we did a spot of site seeing and stopped to take a couple of photos of an old "Center Span" draw bridge. From down below it is easy to see some of the damage to the shoring from the recent floods.

The rest of the evening we took it easy, listening to the radio, reading and relaxing.