Simsboro is the red mark at the top

Surprise! We moved!

We knew for a while that there might be a change that James would have a job for 4-6 weeks up in Ruston, in the north of Louisiana, and last Friday we suddenly got the go ahead for that project. 

Since commuting would be a 6 hour drive and staying in a hotel and coming back for the weekend didn't make much sense either, we decided to move the rig to a campground in Simsboro, about 10 miles from Ruston.

Hey, we got wheels, don't we?!

So, after an uneventful 275 mile road trip, here we are, at our new spot! isn't it a beauty once again?!

We're staying at the Antique Village RV Park:

Rent is cheap here, only $400/month, although it's not much of a concern to us this time, because James gets 'comped' for the rent and for the gas back and forth to Hammond! Sweet!

As you can see, we're right on the pond/lake, which by the way is stocked with Bass and Perch, so we might actually will try to catch one, one of these days!

We love the little deck that comes with the site! It's facing south and with the days being so cool at the moment it's a great place to catch some rays and warm up a little.

Sunday morning coffee on the deck, it was a little cloudy but 74F (22C)!

Merlin has claimed his chair already and has been sleeping off his travel-'stress' for the last couple of days!

But lets backtrack a little here, because before we left, we did a couple of other things last week.

First, we went to "White's Seafood restaurant for their famous buffet!

We'd tried to get in here for James birthday on the 17th, but when we arrived the waiting time was an estimated 1 1/2 hours, so we'd left.

This time we went early, as in 4.30, and were lucky enough to score a table! This restaurant is famous for their buffet which features all you can eat crab, shrimp and crawfish and loads of other 'southern' goodies as okra, collards, gumbo and dirty rice.

We thought we 'loaded up' here, but it was nothing in comparison to the 'locals' who piled their serving trays (who needs a plate?) high with crawfish only!
Apparently the 'mudbugs' are very early this year and on top of that they're very large too! Not that there is much left after you take the head and the tail off!

James is demonstrating here how to properly suck the spicy broth out of the head of a crawfish, you have to suck and squeeze at the same time, otherwise you'll be wearing it! 

                                                                                                                               

I'm holding up a frog leg there! Our first .... and definitely our last too!
They taste fine, just like chicken, and I must say they were 'meatier' than I thought they would be, like I say, quite good. But ... since then I've learned (from my friend Irene) that they cut off these legs while the frog is still alive!!!
I can't believe I didn't know that! How incredible cruel is that!!! I feel so bad! 
(I'm so sorry 'Kermie', I'll never do it again ...)

OK, enough of that, I feel nauseous just thinking about it again!

Let's talk some more Mardi Gras! Yeah!

On Friday evening we went to see Hammond's Krewe of Omega parade. We were lucky to be able to park the car a block away from the parade rout at one of James' clients houses for whom he'd tiled a bathroom.
Since we were an hour early, they invited us in for a pre-parade glass of wine, to kill the time and I got a tour of the house and the, much appreciated, new bathroom! (Great job Hon')

This parade was a very family friendly, small-town-USA type of a parade and the whole neighborhood was out and about beforehand to chat and mingle and eat snacks and appetizers in each others yards and driveways ...
The weather was gorgeous, no wind and downright 'balmy' temperatures.

The kids were ready! Everybody holding his or her own big tote-bag, to be filled with beads!
Finally the first floats started to roll at around 6.30:

The King and Queen looked beautiful, the school-bands played almost in tune, and although the floats were a little smaller than the ones of Slidell, there were a lot of them ...

As the ones in Slidell, this parade also had it's share of interesting characters:

And a lot of 'decked-out' cars, mostly Jeeps, for some reason ... (I think there's a Jeep-club in town).

        

And of course there were beads! Lots and lots of them! And we couldn't help ourselves asking for and catching them ....

As if we needed any more!
Anyhoo ... we had a lot of fun again. Afterwards we were invited to come over for po'boys and King Cake, at the house of another one of James clients, a little farther down the road. Yum!

 

There really are a lot of very nice people here in Louisiana!

Showing off our new loot! This time we had a lot of 'signature (special) beads!

Well, that was it for this week. James is most likely off for the weekend so we'll be exploring our new neighborhood. We got to check out the local golf course of course!