Hitting the road to Louisiana

On June 20, we kicked off this year’s road trip. We got up bright and early in the morning, hopped in the car, and hit the road.

Louisiana has a weird way of welcoming visitors

Our first big stop was in Lake Charles, Louisiana. We had a great picnic lunch, then the real fun began. Before our trip, Dad scouted out lots of cool stops for us, including this great park that had a fantastic playscape that had sections that looked like a treehouse, a pirate ship and a castle, and also had a seesaw, which we all really liked, and low monkey bars that Hazel had fun on. The other side of the park had a splash pad, which was perfect for such a hot day.

After a couple hours there, we headed on to our overnight destination, New Orleans. After unloading the car and checking into our room, we headed out on the town. 

Fun at Millennium Park

We walked a bit and to a New Orleans streetcar. It looked just like the trolley from Daniel Tiger. It was fun riding on it. 

We took the streetcar to the French Quarter, where we walked along the Mississippi River. We saw lots of things, including an aquarium with a huge outdoor bird section and a steamboat. There were lots of people on skateboards and bikes. I almost ran into some of them, and they yelled, “Stop! Stop!” at me. After I moved out of their way, I laughed and yelled to Mom and Dad, “This place is crazy!” They thought that was pretty funny.

Walking around New Orleans

Then we had dinner. The menu was pretty exotic, and we all had the chance to try alligator for the first time. We agreed it tasted better than we expected.

After dinner, we were surprised by a Pride parade right in front of our restaurant. We saw lots of fun costumes, and people in the parade gave us lots of candy and fun bead necklaces.

Beignets at Cafe du Monde

When that excitement ended, we walked through the neighborhood to a famous restaurant, Café du Monde. Mom had coffee and we all had their famous beignets. They were delicious; we especially loved eating (and wearing) the powdered sugar.

By that time, it was very late so we took the streetcar back to our hotel so we could get a good night’s sleep before continuing our adventure. Mom asked me if I liked the city and I told her, “It’s pretty good but also pretty stinky.” We all felt like we kicked our trip off to a good start.

Click here to see the first leg of our trip, in Louisiana.