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10/8/2009 - Day 34 (Thursday) - New Orleans, LA (last stop)

We walked into the french quarter from the RV park.  It was still very humid outside.  I wanted to do a segway tour but I pulled a muscle in my back in San Antonio and it was difficult enough to walk, never mind trying to balance on a segway (maybe next time). 

 

 

We ended up taking a bus tour through the entire city which included the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina.  There is still a lot of buildings that remain untouched, destroyed and not yet rebuilt.  I found this photo particularly interesting because of the Room for Rent sign on the pole in front of the house . 

We visited a voodoo shop and Kylie had her past lives reading done.  The woman said she was a nurse/teacher in a past life.  Kylie thought it was cool, I was a bit skeptical of the entire experience but that's just my nature I suppose.  Eric found something to do...actually he was across the street at Pat O'Brien's ordering us one of those famous hurricanes to share.  It was still very hot and humid and getting late in the day so the streets were starting to get busier with people. 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited one of the above ground cemetaries which was really neat (but I like that kind of stuff anyway).  There was a lot of construction going on and the damage of Hurricane Katrina was still evident around the city but I was very glad that we stopped and took in the sights for the day.   After this stop we're heading home for the winter...we'll be off again in the Spring!!!

 

 

10/7/2009 - Day 33 (Wednesday) - East to New Orleans, LA

So today we travelled all day from San Antonio to New Orleans (this was our bonus stop because we cut the Balloon Festival short).  I found an RV park online that is right in downtown New Orleans, Eric was skeptical because he's been before and couldn't imagine that there was an RV park there.  Well here's the photo.  The story is the RV park is new since Hurricane Katrina.  It's in back of this store that was destroyed during the hurricane, the RV park is enclosed by an wrought iron fence and gate and has 24 hour security.  It's not in the best part of town so they don't recommend being outside the park after dark but the park itself was very nice and clean and generally a pleasant surprise.  We didn't arrive until after dark so we bedded down for the night.  Tomorrow we'll walk into the french quarter to explore. 

10/6/2009 - Day 32 (Tuesday) - San Antonio, TX

Today we travelled to the Alamo.  It is still very hot and humid outside, but it was nice and cool inside.  Sorry no photos allowed so I couldn't take any pictures of the inside, but the Courtyard was really beautiful.

 

 

 

We took in all the sights and lingered around the grounds for awhile before taking a walk around town.  We walked a few blocks away to the Riverwalk.  It was really cool, hidden in the middle of the city.

 

We walked along the Riverwalk and ate at the Salt Grass Steakhouse.  Lunch was really good and it was nice to get out of the heat and into the air conditioning for awhile.   Then we walked around a bit more before heading back to the MH and heading back to the campground for the evening.  San Antonio was a very nice city, we enjoyed our stay.

10/5/2009 - Day 31 (Monday) - Southeast to San Antonio, TX

 So we decided to leave the Balloon Festival early to try to squeeze a few more stops in before we have to head home.  We spent the night in the parking lot of what is probably the oldest Walmart in the Country...somewhere in Texas. Well we don't know what happened but as soon as we entered Texas it seemed that the humidity increased by 1000%...

We arrived in San Antonio in the evening and scoped out the campground we were scheduled to stay at.  We didn't really like the area so we searched for another campground and found a nice place near Seaworld.  Tomorrow we're heading to the Alamo!

10/4/2009 - Day 30 (Sunday) - Albuquerque, NM

  It was really neat to be able to walk right onto the field amidst all the balloons and watch them inflate and then take off into the air.  After awhile you start to see all the grassy spaces disappear as the balloons inflate next to each other and close off the empty spaces betten them. 

There were a lot of balloons but not as many took off today because it was still pretty windy.  The balloons were also not able to hover over the field as long and ended up flying away upon takeoff instead.  Because of that a lot of the balloons ended up inflating and then deflating and not taking off at all.  It was still a really cool experience to walk across the field and watch them inflate.

 I made Kylie wake up this morning and come with us on the field (yesterday she slept in and missed the best day).  She was still sleepy but she liked all the different balloons.

 

 

She liked the dead cat balloon (see photo) and the giant pepsi can (special shapes).  We all had a good time but since the weather turned we figured we'd already seen the best day of the festival (morning 1) so we decided to head out towards San Antonio earlier than originally planned.  We're leaving this afternoon.

Eric must be thinking of the long drive he has ahead of him.

 

Check out the photo album for more Balloon Festival photos!!

10/3/2009 - Day 29 (Saturday) - Albuquerque, NM

 

Today we woke up early and went out onto the field to watch the morning glow and mass assention.  Everyone should visit the annual Albuquerque International Balloon Festival once in their lifetime. 

 

It was pretty cold out early in the morning and it took many tries to finally get a good picture with the low lights. 

 

 

 

The mass assention was really cool.  All of the balloons managed to go up and we learned that the festival is held in Albuquerque because of the unique wind pattern of the area.  The balloons were able to hover over the field for a long time by assending and decending to change direction.  It was really a sight to see! 

We ventured back to the RV (see how close we were to the field?) and decided to drive around Albuquerque for awhile.  When we returned we went back down to the field to watch the afternoon activities but the wind kicked up pretty hard and the gas balloons (nor any other balloons) took off because of the high winds.  Tomorrow's another day.

10/2/2009 - Day 28 (Friday) - Holloman AFB, NM

 We spent most of the day on base hanging with Nikki and Matt.  Took some pictures of the nice planes and bought them a few bar stools for their kitchen.  We detoured our trip so we could see them so we only had one day there.  Next time maybe we'll stay longer and visit awhile.   We headed out mid-afternoon to head to Albequerque, NM to the International Balloon Festival to get to Albequerque you need to go completely around the White Sands Missle Testing Facility, we even saw a few test going on during our drive that day!  Thankfully Kylie is feeling a lot better!  We had reservations to camp next to the field that the balloons take off from and we needed to check in by dark.  We made it Albequerque with only 10 minutes to spare and got a great spot on the end of a section next to the exit/enterance.

 

10/1/2009 - Day 27 (Thursday) - East to Holloman AFB, NM

Today we made our way from Las Cruces to Holloman AFB to visit Nikki & Matt.  We were surprised that we had to go through Customs to get there.  We spent the day with Nikki until Matt came home from work.

 

 

We got to see their base housing which is very nice and big and we went for dinner.  We were lucky enough to stay on base in the campground for the night (Kylie stayed at Nikki's house).