Houston TX - New Zealand

Sadly it's come to our last day in Houston for this adventure, we fly out tonight at 9.25 pm.  Our bags are packed and we can leave them in the hotel office.  Glad I took the opportunity to make waffles for brekkie the other day, 'cos today it is crazy in here, large families have overtaken the area and they all want waffles. And the toasters are all being used to toast bagels - another mental note - avoid weekends at these airport hotels.

Anyway us girls today are doing a last power shop at the Cypress Outlets Stores and the boys are doing more RV shopping etc.  We spend a successful and enjoyable couple of hours at the outlets, surprisingly we are not totally shopped out yet!



Once we rejoin with the boys we find a ‘Rooms To Go’ store, I’ve been wanting to check one of these out for ages, they advertise a room full of matching furniture for one single price.  However we find the furniture is all quite heavy and dark, not at all suitable for an apartment, nor a mobile home!  The kids furniture is awesome though!

None of us had time for lunch yet and we are getting pretty hungry by the time we collect our bags from the hotel, return the rental car and take the shuttle to the terminal.  We are a bit too early to check in, but we had to get the car back on time, so we sit around the airport patiently waiting for the Air NZ team to turn up and open ‘ticketing’.  It only takes about 45 minutes so not too long but we are still hungry - nothing to eat on this side.  We get ticketed fairly promptly and through the queues to an extremely thorough security screening, ie shoes off (even jandals??) and absolutely nothing in your pockets, not even a hanky eh Kim, and then into the departure area to find a place to eat.  Came across Ruby’s Diner, which was great!  The wait staff were dressed in old American candy stripe shirts and aprons - picture Happy Days - and the music was all good the old rock and roll songs, those you know the words to.  And they had beer – and wine : )  It was a very pleasant place to sit and wait for our flight to be called.


We took off as scheduled, at 9.25 pm and arrived in Auckland early, after approx. 14 hours in the air.  The time seemed to go fast though - had some supper, watched two movies, took a pill and slept most of the way with my eye mask on, ear plugs in and snuggled up in the blankie - zzzz’z.

PS  Watch this space for our blog on the Cruise.  We weren't easily able to blog from the ship but I did make notes and we have lots of photos.  I will post something in a day or two!  

Houston TX

The girls shopped at Galleria today, probably Houston’s most famous shopping centre, it’s huge and there’s even room for an ice skating rink on the ground floor.  There are a couple of very prestigious hotels on the property, which is right in the centre of Houston and one floor of the three levels of the mall is dedicated to all the most expensive European and American designer brands -  needless to say we were totally captivated by our window shopping!  

The boys picked us up a couple of hours later and after visiting a local PAWN shop for a cultural experience, we stopped at a ‘Jack in the Box’ fast food joint for a very late lunch.  Come night time nobody was particularly interested in dinner so we sat outside around the pool chatting to Elfie, an American Airways hostess who flies the USA-Germany route.  She was really interesting but smoked like a steam train!

Houston TX

Up early, we are on a shopping mission today!  First, a complimentary brekkie at the hotel - it's pretty quiet in the breakfast area today being a Friday, but I guess it will get super busy at the weekend, so I should do the waffles while I can - right?

After said sustenance, us girls are at Willowbrrook Mall at 10 am - right as they open the doors.  We need much more than a couple of hours here, there's Macys, Nordstrom Rack, Dillards, JC Penneys, all the big department stores and all the chain stores too!  Heaven!!  The boys go off and do boys stuff.  A brilliant shopping day  : )

Back to the hotel at 6 pm for a shower and a cold drink then out for a bite to eat.  Made sure there was wine on the menu tonight – we ate at Red Lobster!  We all had seafood and I can totally recommend the Parrot Isle Jumbo Coconut Shrimp – they were awesome but sadly I couldn’t eat them all – still haven’t learnt the American way of asking for a box for the leftovers.  The meals look just like they are advertised, impressive!



Awesome Coconut Prawns!!

Houston TX

Last day in our lovely motor home : (

It took most of the morning to do all the laundry, clean coach and ready it for going into storage, it was great having extra pairs of hands to help!  Our hotel (Towne Place Suites) and U-Haul is only about a 35 mile drive from here.

Arrived at the hotel just after 2 pm and organised the shuttle to take us to Enterprise at the airport to pick up our rental car at 3.30pm.  We chose a nice white Malibu which had a very good sized trunk - necessary to take all the luggage of four people and their shopping! It was still early when we got back to the hotel so decided to take the coach off to U-Haul then and get it all set up for it’s lonely life for the next 6+ months.  The whole U-Haul facility was much cleaner and well cared for this time round and the clicker for the automatic gate entry actually worked.


The boys worked very hard getting the tyres inflated, the jacks under the chassis and boards under the tyres, it was hot work, the temp was still 29C at 6pm!   A final clean and look around for the stuff we forgot to pack and we are good to go.  Back to the hotel for a much needed shower and a cold drink then off to Cracker Barrel for dinner.  We were all looking forward to a nice wine with dinner but were disappointed to learn they have no liquor licence.  I am sure they did the previous times we ate in one of their restaurants – but then again maybe not...

The retail shop at Cracker Barrel was worth a look around, they were showcasing lots of Halloween stuff and even Christmas goodies.  I am quite taken with the effort the Americans go to to celebrate Halloween and also Fall.  I have seen some amazing costumes and real cool scary stuff.  Next year we might hang around to see the actual celebrations.

Hooters was just up the alley a bit and the boys were keen to go there for dessert - at least!


Park on the Lake, Willis TX

We were all packed up and were on the road by 11am.  Sad to leave Toledo Bend, it’s a lovely park.  Not much wildlife around though, but I did see a frog outside the bathroom, I guess that counts!

Stopped at Walmart (as you do) and Popeyes for lunch.  After about 100 miles we arrived at Park on the Lake around 5pm just in time for happy hour.  It was hot when we began happy hour but it eventually cooled down a bit and it was just lovely sitting outside looking out over the water.  At a house across the water is an animal, we can’t decide if it is a sheep, a woolly dog, maybe a goat or a pig, even with our fancy new binoculars.  Found the answer the following day, it is a pot bellied pig, been there for 8 years and it’s not tethered at all, it just roams freely within the yard.

The pot bellied pig lives at the house just behind the barge

Chris fed the ducks


Note to self if we say here again, the laundry requires a laundry card that you load money onto, so not as simple as just using quarters.

Toledo Bend Reservoir, Anacoco LA

It's our second day here, woke to birds chirping and blue sky again.  Today we want to hike the trails and see what we can see.  Made some pikelets for our morning tea/lunch – the meal you have between a late breakfast and drink nibbles at Happy Hour.  Happy Hour might be a short one tonight, Chris is nearly out of his beer and we have no more red wine : (

Note to self: next time we come here we want site 50 which has a wooden patio, a picnic table and a jetty onto the lake, ideal venue for happy hour!  

Toledo Bend Reservoir, Anacoco LA

Broke camp around 11.30 am after many cups of tea and headed north towards the South Toledo Bend State Park, near Anacoco.  Stopped enroute for a wee shop at Walmart, lunch at Sonic (where were the rollerskates Sonic?), a quick look in Dollar Tree and off to our new camp for the night.  And very nice it is too, although the road coming is was very rough.  We stayed here before when we first bought the coach back in 2014, it was here that Kim had his first drive of the bus!  There are few people camping, being the off season and mid week so it is very quiet and peaceful and neighbours are a distance away.  The bathrooms here are lovely, modern and clean but they are a bit of a hike up the road, the bikes come in handy here.  

There is no way you wouldn't be aware that Halloween is looming.  We passed a paddock full of pumpkins on the way here and most of the shops have really cool costumes on display.

Pumpkins for Africa
We are working through our stores of food as we only have three more nights in the coach before we move to our hotel in Houston until Sunday when we fly home.  So tonight the boys cook sausages  (Johnsons Original Beef Bratworst - the best we can find here) outside on the grill.  We foraged and scavenged for some big wood with much success so our fire was another blazer this evening!  It’s a beautiful night, the stars are out and it’s just a nice temperature for sitting outside, drinking in the atmosphere.

Toledo Bend Reservoir (South Toledo Bend State Park)

Dang it we missed the sunset, but did get a pic of after it has set.  Will pay more attention tonight. You can't really see the little black dots in this reduced size photo but there were dragonflies flirting in the sunset right in front of the camera.

After sunset on Toledo Bend Reservoir LA


Lake Charles LA

Second day here, it too went extremely fast.  Explored and lazed, read, ate and drank!  

Cooked up a batch of Cinnabons and they weren’t too bad for something pre-made out of a tin!

Bat House, they are squeaking away inside waiting for night time!

Perfect habitat for alligators

Had a pretty good camp fire blazing  tonight  too!

Lake Charles LA

The ship emptied out pretty quickly this morning.

Pick any deck chair you like on the last morning!

We were out of our cabin by 8.30am, off the ship by 9.30am and eventually got out through immigration by 11.30am!  There were two ships in port at the same time and it was the full gambit, fingerprints etc.  Grabbed a taxi right outside the terminal to take us back to Bayou Shores then headed off east to Louisiana.
 
Stopped for food and a coffee at Walmart and then a brief stop at the Visitors Centre before leaving TX.  There was a bit of activity on the I 10, saw a nasty looking car wreck on the westbound lanes, which caused us to make a rather sudden stop - just over the brow of a hill - as the drivers on our lane were rubber necking, then as we were walking out of the Visitors Centre heard and saw a 18 wheeler have a blowout and screech to a stop spitting sparks some metres up the road.

Car wreck which nearly caused one on our side of the Interstate

We crossed the state line into Louisiana (got the ‘welcome to’ photo, dang - I’m getting good at this) and luckily scored the last large camp site at the Sam Houston Jones SP Lake Charles.   There’s lots of wild life here, we’ve seen squirrels, a raccoon, alligators, turtles, a stripey bright green garden snake, deer, bats (or at least a bat house and we could hear them squeeking) and more squirrels!

Cheeky little squirrel on our picnic table!

Not so cheeky alligator in the swamp, it liked the bread!


There’s  free laundry here, a nice surprise, so took advantage of that well and truly.  Ideal after just getting off a cruise ship.  It’s warm and sunny but we still crank up a campfire for the ambiance!

Carnival Freedom, Western Carribean

The cruise was great, brilliant weather, very hot!  

Leaving Galveston
We saw three ports – Cozumel Mexico, Belize City and Roatan Island, Honduras.  We didn’t book any excursions, but probably should have to see more of these islands, instead we just went ashore and looked around the compounds, which were gated and guarded.  My favourite was Roatan Island which was pretty, had hills and was way more beachy.

Walking ashore at Cozumel, Mexico
Belize City

Roatan Island

Beach at Roatan
The shopping was just about the same in each port, souvenirs and tee shirts and of course diamonds for the well-heeled.


Hurricane Mathew stayed well east, so well out of our way, although we did watch the TV closely to check which direction he was travelling.  We didn’t see any bad or rough weather in the whole seven days.

We enjoyed the balcony off our cabin.  The food was excellent, we were well looked after and didn't get bored!

Serenity Deck, our favourite Happy Hour bar!

Towel animals - I bought the how-to book!

Carnival Freedom Cruise Blog October 1-8, 2016

Saturday 1 October, day one We got a taxi from the RV park, which took us right to the cruise drop off zone.  Our embarkation time was ...