Got to start off by saying that we travelled along with our good buddies, Dan and Barb. As always, we have so much fun together and we cherish their friendship beyond description. 

We left home in Edmond, OK in late March and headed to Canton, TX for a quilting retreat for Kim and also to visit the First Monday Trade Days. We stayed at the KOA just north of I-20 which is a nice campground. They have a real good BBQ joint on site and they had a little craft show of their own going on while we were there. There were about a dozen of our friends staying there with us, too. 

After Canton, we headed to New Iberia, LA for the Cajun RV Festival but we were a few days early so we headed to Nachitoches, LA (pronounced Nak-a-dish, I think - close enough, anyway) for a couple of nights at the Grand Ecore RV Park. Now this here is a real nice RV park with easy boat access to the Red River. Sites are all FHU and spaced our well with nice grass all around. It has a real nice riding/hiking trail that's about 1.5 miles long that goes around a pasture full of cows and down my the bayou.  We toured around downtown too and ate at Lasyone's Meat Pies. We'll be back here.

OK, off to New Iberia for the festival at the Isle of Iberia RV Resort! We booked this about a year in advance. We met up with about ten friends again. Some we didn't even know were going to be there. There are two back to back rallys and that turned out to be a good thing. Big Booty Judy (BBJ) threw a check engine light on the way down in Lafayette, LA and we limped in. Seems the high pressure fuel pump failed. UGH! Pop over to BBJ's page and you can get a bit more info on that. 

Back to the festival and New Iberia. The festival was great with bands nearly every night, cajun food like jambalaya, gumbo and my favorite - a big ole crawfish boil! We also toured around, hitting the Tabasco factory and Rip Van Winkle Gardens among other sites. Also had a good meal at Shucks! restaurant in Abbeville with the whole group. 

We ended up staying in New Iberia for two weeks because it took that long to get the truck fixed. Some nice folks helped us move our RV to another site (the first was booked for the rally) and some friends we know from the Balloon Fiesta let us borrow their Jeep to run errands a coupe times. Neither of us knew to other was coming to this festival! God was looking out for us, as usual.

Next on the agenda, Texas Crab Fest!! We go down and stay on bolivar Penninsula for a month and help my buddy Tom prepare for the fest and spend time touring around too. We went on the tall ship Elissa, saw the battleship Texas, played bingo (and won!) at the Eagles Lodge, ate lots of fresh shrimp, toured the Offshore Drilling Museum, hit the Strand and the beach, rode the Bolivar ferry 100 times (not really that much), toured the Galveston Railroad Museum, and more. Whew! Busy month. All that and Dan & I worked at the festival grounds for about two weeks.

We found a nice place to stay that's remarkably reasonable at about $18/night for FHU. We could stay there a month for less than a couple weeks at many places so a month it is! The kids come down and stay a bit with us on the weekends and it's a real good time.

Now off to Natchez, MS for two nights. We stayed here last year, but this time we took a tour of the sites in town. This is a very interesting place with lots of history dating back to civil war times and before. Well, the second night I woke up with severe abdominal pain and turns out, my gall bladder wanted out! Quick emergency surgery on that and all good! Spent an extra couple nights and and then off we went to Lake Guntersville in Alabama.

Drove about 200 miles that day and stayed in Meridian, MS at a stopover campground. good enough for a night. Basically ate supper, went to bed. Next!

Next day, we continued on to Guntersville for a week and arrived at Lake Guntersville State Park. Another quilting retreat for Kim and I got to rest up from surgery. This is a beautiful lake in the mountains of northern Alabama. Again, several of our RV travelling friends were there and we had a good time catching up, eating, fishing, riding bikes, playing games - all that good RV stuff.

Well, our lake visit was over at the lake and it was time to head home. We headed north from Guntersville, AL towards I-40 westbound. We got to Conway, AR and Kim found us a site north of town at Millers Outpost RV Park in Greenbrier, AR. Really nice little campground. Quite a few full-timers here but they're mostly in the back of the place and it was well maintained and quiet.

Headed home and nearly as soon as we pulled out, the transport company called saying they were toming the next day to pick up the Palace and take it to Grand Design Service Center in Elkhart, IN! Kim called in the troops and as soon as we got home, we emptied out the trailer and had it ready for pickup the next morning. 

So, there you go. 66 nights, and about 2400 travel miles later and the 2024 Spring Trip is done. Let's see, where next? California, Albuquerque, Branson, Grapevine, those are all on the schedule!