I have to say something about the elephant in all our rooms. This thing happened (and is still happening in a big way). A new virus called COVID-19 has emerged in the world and is impacting life as we know it. It’s weird. People are falling ill, people are dying, people are scrambling to accommodate the exponential growth of occurrences, people are losing jobs, people are working from home, with kids home from schools which are closed, and people are raiding stores for every kind of supply they can get their hands on in order to self-quarantine and try to stay healthy or stop the spread of this new, scary virus.
It was handled poorly at the beginning, someone called it a political hoax, not enough personnel were available at the CDC to try and come up with a game plan to control it because their department was decimated within the last 3 years, not enough testing kits have been available for various reasons, and many people haven’t bought into the severity of the situation, which is becoming more alarming each day. Spring break still happened, and the snowbirds didn’t get sent home from Florida until after spring break was over. Now, the states are pretty much shutting down, with all public activities other than essential services halting.
We are communicating with our loved ones from afar, and thank technology for Verizon, FaceTime, Marco Polo and other apps that enable us to see and hear those sweet babes we miss so much.
As you can imagine, this has impacted our trip, and while we are still on our way back west toward home, we’ve been trying to figure out what our plan of attack is. Do we race home to self-quarantine? Do we carry on as we’ve been planning? Do we change it up a bit and look for more places where we can practice this new thing called Social Distancing? We travel slowly in our rolling home, and are limited by routes which we can handle in it. It’s a daily review, and as we’re still moving westward, we’re trying to make the best of a very difficult and WEIRD situation.
Things started getting weird around the second week of March, which is when we were leaving the Gulf Coast and heading inland. We were just becoming aware of the importance of washing hands and sanitizing any time we had any contact with anything or anyone outside our RV. Fortunately, we were already well supplied with the necessities and the runs on those type of goods at stores didn’t hurt us.
As we drove away from the Gulf, we happened to pass by Avery Island, home of TABASCO!!! We decided to detour slightly, and were happy to find out that they have a self-guided tour of the factory/facility, so we could keep our distance from folks. It was a kick, and we enjoyed it. We even got to see them bottling a batch that was destined for France. The best part was the gift shop, where it was a bit difficult to keep our distance from people, but we did our best, and got a little shopping done.
Next stop was lunch in Lafayette. We were given some info by my friend, Anna, who is from those parts, and ended up getting a parking spot just almost right in front of a restaurant called Dwyer’s. She swears they have THE best eggplant casserole, and after having a plate full of a few different lunch item choices, I have to agree. It was fantastic.
And while we were chowing down in the bar area, the nice gentleman who’d served us our plates brought his lunch in and sat down and we started visiting. He asked us what brought us to Lafayette, and we said the restaurant. He was surprised and I think a little pleased. We didn’t realize it was his restaurant until the young server girl called him Mike, and I saw an award that said Michael Dwyer, and you know, not much gets by me and I put two and two together and realized he owned the place. So we had a nice visit, and then we got a photo of him and his two sons who also are part of the place. And then we were on our way.
Our first stop heading north away from Lafayette was Sam Houston Jones State Park, near Lake Charles. We dropped into the casino near there, didn’t enjoy it much, and found the State Park. It was pretty, serene, and not too far off I-10. There was an opportunity to hike, and we took advantage of that.
It was a beautiful drive leaving Louisiana, once again in the broad daylight. I have to say, we really enjoyed this part of the US, and this part of our trip.
John & Armen On The Road 