April 27, 2024 - May 11, 2024 -- Baton Rogue KOA to Lincoln Parish Park, Ruston, LA
Written By: Wendy
After our laid back 2 weeks at Lake Conroe, we were ready to party and do some hard core adventuring again. Southern Louisiana here we come! We stayed in Baton Rogue which ended up being the perfect jumping off spot to explore all over Southern Louisiana. Our first full day there, we took the kids to see Disney on Ice (a Christmas present we were finally cashing in on) in downtown Baton Rogue. Disney on Ice blew all of our minds, as Disney always does. How do you do it, Disney?! On the way back to the car we got stuck in a major downpour while we walked along the Mississippi River. As rained drenched us and our hair became sopping wet, we all laughed harder than we had in a long time. I guess Disney + rain = magical combination. Who knew?
My (Wendy's) parents flew in the following evening to spend the week with us. Parker and Caroline were so excited to see Nana and Papa and have new playmates for the week. My parents are travelers through and through and a good vacation to them means they have seen all the sights, eaten all the delicious food possible, and explored the new area to the fullest. With that in mind, we knew we would have a jam packed week that none of us would forget.
We started off with a bang, the first morning we drove an hour and half down to New Orleans. We had been to New Orleans 8 years ago with mine and Scott's parents. It was an amazing, and we ate and drank ourselves silly all week and gallivanted all over that incredible city. It was one of our favorite places in the world after that trip. So, we had high expectations, but we knew that our previous activities weren't the most kid friendly, so we were cautiously optimistic about our day trip there. New Orleans did not disappoint! We started off with beignets from Cafe Du Monde, as you just must do in the Big Easy. We then spent the day letting the kids run around Jackson Square, walking along the Mississippi in total awe of its girth, leisurely walking down Frenchman Street while reminiscing about all the great music that we listened to last time (which I would not recommend doing in the daytime; it was dead during the day. Not a soul in sight and kind of eerie, but we reminisced anyway!), and filled our bellies up with all the Cajon and Creole food we could from a crawfish boil, to po-boys to shrimp and grits to crawfish etouffee to bananas foster. Mmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about all the deliciously amazing food we ate. We listened to live jazz music at the Jean Lafitte (who by the way was a pirate, so Parker was enthralled with his story) and New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park played by park rangers and local musicians. By the end of the day, we were all exhausted and our bellies were so full, we could barely walk. We drove away with the sun setting, and Scott and I already making plans for the next time we'd be back.
We took it "easy" the next two days. We had our 50 Pies party one day, and explored downtown Baton Rogue the other day. We have continued to be surprised by how different all of our 50 Pies parties continue to be, but how people always show up. We did this one midweek, and KOA's midweek are often mostly retirees with families coming on the weekends. This KOA was no expectation, and we were the only family in the entire campground during the weekdays. As always we weren't sure who would show up, but once we started making pizzas, people started streaming in. It was an older crowd, and our kids were disappointed that there weren't any new little friends to play with, but they chatted up the adults and recruited them to play pirates and build rock towers. With another successful 50 Pies party under our belt, we spent the next day exploring downtown Baton Rogue, eating more po-boys and going to some historic sites and museums downtown.
Our last full day in Southern Louisiana was spent doing something quintessential to the bayou state: we went to a crawfish festival. All I have to saw is that Scott was in heaven. We drove an hour west towards Lafayette and spent the morning doing a swamp tour, in the poring rain, which made it all the more authentic. We still saw a few alligators, and the kids were thrilled. We went to a living history museum, and Parker and Caroline were enamored with the people dressed in "funny" clothes that were hand making thread and cleaning cotton. But the highlight of the day was definitely the crawfish festival. It seemed like a mostly locals event (unlike Jazz fest, which I think the locals tend to avoid), and we loved having a small glimpse into the community. The started off the festival by having a crawfish eating contest with all the local celebrities: the crawfish queen and past queens, the police sheriff, the mayor, etc, and Scott was in awe of their crawfish eating skills. He then took on the crawfish challenge himself, and bought 5 lbs of crawfish to eat. He was one happy crawfish eating soul, though. I was less enthusiastic about the crawfish, but I had a few to pay homage to the crawfish gods. Scott downed the 5 lbs, with help from my dad, in no time, and I think he could have been a serious contender in the earlier competition. The technique, or so I'm told because I definitely did not master it, is all in correctly ripping off the head and sucking all the juices and brain out and then perfectly peeling the shell off the tail to get the maximum about of meat out of the tail. I ate some tail chunks, but sucking the brains out was just too much for me. Maybe next time, maybe? The festival had live Cajun and Zydeco music, so after we stuffed ourselves with the local delicacies, we danced off all the calories. Have you ever listened Cajun or Zydeco and not danced? It is absolutely impossible I tell you. The beat of the music just grabs your entire body and soul from within, and you just can't not dance. We swayed our hips and bounced around, moving our feet as quickly as we could to keep up with the beat of the music. After our feet started to hurt and our kids had let out several big yawns, we knew it was time to bid the crawfish ado and head back to our cozy little home.
After a bonus day of rest (my parent's flight was canceled at the last minutes due to weather, so we all stayed for an extra day), we said our good byes to Nana and Papa and head north to Ruston, LA. We spent a week at Lincoln Parish Park. It was an absolutely beautiful park, with miles of hiking and mountain biking trails, a huge playground, and a lake with a paved mile long walking path around it. It was the perfect place for a week of recovery.
When I imagined us traveling, our week in northern Louisiana was exactly what I imagined our time would look like. It only took us 8 months to get there. Scott and I would wake up before the kids and trade off exercising - mountain biking and trail running, respectively. I would then take the kids for the morning, while Scott headed to a local coffee shop to work. I did a circle time routine with kids each morning that included songs, calendar, a book, and a short activity. We would then head outside to explore, hiking one of the many trails, hunting for turtles in the lake, or biking on the pump track. In the afternoon, Scott and I would switch, and I would work while Scott had the kids. In the evenings, we'd all go for a walk together along the lake while the kids burned off the last of their energy with Scott and I holding hands and walking behind them talking about what work we accomplished that day. Sounds idyllic, right? It was. It truly was an idyllic and relaxing week just doing life and not trying too hard to do everything, but what we were doing was just enough to provide contentment to us all.
After a week, it was time to pack up again and say good bye to this lovely campground. None of us were ready to leave, but we had reservations waiting for us in Arkansas. We wondered when or if, we would allow ourselves more flexibility to stay somewhere longer if we liked it or slow down and booked places for 2+ weeks. We knew we needed to do this, but somehow it was still not happening. Maybe someday.