Our trip to the South was a blast!
I think EVERYONE who knew we were going asked us...WHY we had chosen to fly to Gulfport Mississippi or go to New Orleans.
Basically I saw a deal to Gulfport... looked it up on a map and saw that it was an hour away from New Orleans... then checked the cost in miles, which was only 12K miles/person... so I booked it.
Honestly there was a little more thought in it than that, but that's the bottom line. ;)
So, Tuesday August 15th the four of us flew to Gulfport Mississippi.
The night before we had changed our flight from 4 PM an earlier time of 1 PM. Luckily Shane noticed that the flight we were originally on was going to be delayed several hours.
So we left earlier than planned... only to have that flight delayed a couple hours, but we made it!
This was a trip of hotel hopping,
five nights, five different hotels.
It's kind of a pain, but works out super well when we're traveling in all different directions.
That night we stayed right by the Gulfport Airport.
The next morning we drove the hour to New Orleans.
Our first stop was the St. Louis Cemetery.
It seems odd I know, but we paid $25/person to tour a cemetery.
All in all I'd recommend the tour, it was super interesting!
St. Louis #1 Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in New Orleans dating back to 1789 and is still a working cemetery.
There are 100's of 1000's of people buried here, because... ONE of these vaults can hold hundreds of family members. Since New Orleans is below sea level burying someone 6 feet under doesn't work, since the hole fills up with water and when it floods caskets push out of the ground. So basically a body is placed in one of these vaults and because of the heat and humidity inside the vault, the body disintegrates in a natural cremation process.
The vault can't be opened to place a new family member in before one year + one day of the last placed body. (there are holding vaults to hold someone if they die in that time frame). But then the ash and leftover bones are swept out and put in a bag and then pushed to the back of the vault and that process happens over and over.
So now that you've had the history lesson you can save your $ from the tour I guess. ;)
This is Marie Laveau's... (known as the voodoo queen of New Orleans) vault... also the reason we had to pay $100 to tour the cemetery. A few years ago it was locked down to visitors (except family members who can get a "pass") because there has been so much vandalism to hers and other vaults.
Our next stop was lunch @ Dooky Chase.
Tiana from Princess and the Frog was based off of Leah Chase the chef at this restaurant back in the 1950's. She continued to work in the kitchen to some extent until her death in 2019 at age 96.
It was delicious!
Our next experience was riding the St. Charles street car line.
We had no real purpose, we just rode for a bit got off and hopped on one coming back.
There were beautiful old homes in the Garden District.
This is a picture I found on the internet haha
But I should have taken an actual picture to show the Mardi Gras beads EVERYWHERE on those power lines.
We checked into our next hotel the Hyatt House Downtown.
We ended up paying $35 TOTAL for the 5 nights, with hotel points.
Things like that just get me all excited. haha
Our next stop was a Mississippi river cruise on the Steamboat Natchez.
But first we had to park... parking in New Orleans is crazy. A LOT of things in New Orleans are crazy!
We paid $25, then realized we could have parked at the meters for free after 6. grrrr
This is our favorite picture.
"Sir, would you mind taking a picture for us?"
He answered sure, but then Shane handed the other guy the phone... and somehow this guy in a captain hat taking tickets thought we wanted a picture WITH him.
That was funny stuff!!
The weather was perfect, the jazz band was really good, it was a very enjoyable night!
Cafe Du Monde for beignets after was a fun treat.
The next morning we headed an hour west to tour a couple plantations.
When we were in Plymouth last year the name "plantation" had been banned... it was now called Plymouth Patuxet. I asked one of our tour guides if there had been any talk of changing the "Plantation" name. She was like, uhhhh not here in Louisiana... they're plantations! But then she said maybe it's because these are privately owned and Plymouth is government owned???
Anyway, our first stop was Laura Plantation.
Then on to Oak Alley
Such a gorgeous view.
Both were super informative and interesting!
Then we were back in the car for another hour drive northwest to Baton Rouge.
First, a quick tour of the old Louisiana State Capitol Building...
then the new Capitol Building, where we explored then rode the elevator to the observation deck.
Our next stop was to visit "Mike the Tiger" at LSU.
He's real.. but he was asleep.
This exhibit set LSU back $3.7 million. WOW
But I guess if you can seat 102,000 fans in your stadium you can afford a tiger.
Dinner @ TJ Ribs was fabulous.
Except Lydia doesn't like BBQ sauce so she opted for chicken strips.
And both Lydia and Jadyn don't like fish or shrimp.
And not liking those genres of food REALLY doesn't fit in with Louisiana!
So we'll let them eat the lame stuff, but I'm still picking the restaurants WE want.
Our main purpose for driving up to Baton Rouge was for this...
baptisms in the Baton Rouge Temple!
My favorite.
A little more "swimming" in a different way that night...
and we called it a very good day.
The next day we toured the USS Kidd.
It was much hotter today.
Everyone was so excited with how "cool" it had been the previous few days. And it was definitely so much better than what we had prepared for!
But we were feeling it more this day...
This is our new friend Fred.
Fred is volunteering with a project cataloging old maps used on the USS Kidd.
It was a self-guided tour and we found him down in the bottom of the ship working.
We talked to him for a bit... I told him "my "grandpa" was a rear admiral" he kindly let me know that he was a Master Chief Petty Officer and that ranking was higher than a rear admiral. He then explained the ranking that he was E-6 and rear admiral is 0-8 or something like that.
But google tells me Admirals are ranked higher than MCPO's, but MCPO's are the highest enlisted rank.
So I don't know... but anyway...
we were walking away and he asked us where we were from.
We said Utah...
and he asked us if we were Latter Day Saints.
We answered yes and he said and said, "Oh, Latter Day Saints are good people, we have Latter Day Saints that volunteer on the ship on Fridays they are wonderful and should be here about now."
We didn't figure out for a minute that he meant missionaries... both sisters and elders who volunteer on the ship and in the museum every week. (We chatted with 3 elders on our way out.)
We left Fred and kept going on our tour and then he came after us and said, "How about I show you around".
So he gave us our own personal tour.
Fred showed us old maps and took down ropes and unlocked doors for us that were off limits to the tour... he took us into the Captain Control room? I don't know what it's called but where the ship is driven :) and he role played with us how the Captain repeats commands to the other people working in that room. He showed us where the Kamikaze attack in April 1945 hit the USS Kidd killing 38 sailors. Fred taught us MUCH more than our self guided tour would have. ;)
So thanks missionaries for making a good impression on Fred!
Our next stop was the Movie Tavern in Covington.
This was actually quite a bit out of our way.
We'd been to a movie tavern back in Virginia years ago and had such a great time. We had a waitress who we ordered from and she brought our order to us during the movie and we ate on stationary tables in front of the fancy lay back couches. We all remember watching Mr. Popper's Penguins there and loving it.
Ehhhhh, times have changed...
I guess since covid they bring your food, but you have to order online.
And at least at this theater the tables are actually just oversized trays + the food was super expensive so I ordered us a $25 medium pepperoni pizza to share and a $12 popcorn. haha
The pizza was actually pretty nasty... it had honey on it. It CLEARLY stated that in the description, so I don't know what I THOUGHT that would be, but not ACTUAL honey drizzled on my pepperoni pizza hahaha.
+ it was dark so you couldn't actually tell if you were going to get a big bite of honey or not.
We watched Haunted House and that was good movie.
We definitely had a fun time, but I don't think any of us need to go to a Movie Tavern again.
After the movie we drove back to New Orleans on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.
It's 24 miles long bridge + the longest bridge in the US.
So I guess it was worth the $5 toll. ;)
Next we were off on our swamp tour.
We were lucky cuz we ended up being the only ones on our airboat that fit 9.
We saw LOTS of gators!
Our guide fed them a couple chicken legs on a string.
But we were really hoping he could have found a baby for us.
This tour was known for letting you hold a baby alligator, but the babies he found were too young and with their momma. He told us he would NEVER pick up a baby cuz that momma would kill him.
So I guess it's better he didn't get one.
Shane got a good, well deserved mud splashing from this guys tail after he jumped for the chicken.
This was our tour guide.
He was as Louisianan as they come. haha
I think swamp life, was his life...
Such a fun memory!!
After the swamp tour we headed back in to New Orleans.
Our next hotel was the Hyatt Centric French Quarter on Canal Street right next to Bourbon Street.
Parking was $45/night.
We opted for the free meter parking overnight.
Even though the concierge told us he would NOT park his car on the street if he had one.
I thought he was trying to rip us off, and we were quite pleased with our across the street parking.
Oops... Bad idea...
That night we walked down one block of Bourbon Street.
That was enough.
We had a super yummy dinner @ "Evangeline's".
This was our deck that looked out over the pool... that was green.
We did NOT swim + we never saw anyone else swimming either.
That morning we walked over to Cafe Beignet for breakfast.
Guess what... we had... Beignets.
We were all enjoying those, except Shane was panicking because the meters had started back up at 8 am and he couldn't get the app to add money to it.
So he ran over to put $ in manually and we found out why we should have forked over the $45 for parking.
He sent a picture in the family chat and the girls and I grabbed our beignets and hurried back to the car. The 3 of us went back to the hotel and packed us up. While Shane waited for the police that never came, (they did eventually call Shane back and took his report), but EVERYONE told us, "Oh the police never come. And definitely not for a broken window, that happens every night."
Shane called the car rental place and they said to just head to the New Orleans airport (even though we'd rented in Gulfport).
Shane was NOT a happy guy that morning.
I felt like it stunk, but it was a crazy memory for all of us and that we were lucky the car was still there. So I could laugh about it, I still don't know that Shane can laugh about it.
After swiping as much of the glass off the seat with a towel as I could, I laid the towel down for them to sit on.
We had to stop at a little shop for a stuffed animal Lydia had wanted, so the girls and I ran to the St. Louis Cathedral fast for a picture.
(It's in Princess and the Frog, so we had to)
Then we headed to the New Orleans Airport to exchange our car.
Gosh, they didn't seem to think it was a big deal at all.
Just said, "yeah that happens a lot."
Ummmmm, OK.
We didn't have the car rental insurance but we did rent it on a credit card that carries primary insurance... and we never heard another word about it.
So... maybe it wasn't a bad idea to save $45 in parking????? hahaha
In our NEW rental we drove the two hours to Dauphin Island, ALABAMA.
We knew we could cross 3 states of our bucket list if we drove that far + it was totally worth it!
We stopped at a seafood market and had them boil up shrimp for Shane + Shrimp and crab for me.
Of course we stopped at a little deli for sandwiches for the girls, who thought that our lunch smelled disgusting. Oh well ;)
We packed these tubes all the way from home... and were glad we did.
Gosh that water was SOOO warm.
I looked it up and the water temp was 86 degrees that day.
It was amazing!
These two found hermit crabs and decided they wanted to take two home with us.
Meet Al and LaBam.
The next day we bought food and accessories for the hermit crab cage we had at home.
Sadly, Al died at the airport on our way home and La Bam joined him in hermit heaven a couple days later.
Sorry little hermit crabs.
We went to church the next morning in Moss Point and then we were off to Biloxi Beach.
It was gorgeous and once again the water was so warm... actually it was almost too warm... I've never said that before.
Al and Bama came with us to the beach.
They were running for their lives here... no joke. ;)
We're out this far and the water is still only at our waists!
We had a late lunch/early dinner here...
a successful meal I'd say...
We then headed to this huge store for some souvenirs.
Biloxi was BEAUTIFUL, we could have spent more time here for sure.
Then being all sweaty and sandy we headed to the airport.
The Gulfport Airport is a tiny little friendly airport... there were only 8 departure gates, not a soul in front of us @ security + the TSA workers were cracking jokes with us and actually LIKED their job. But they WERE the most THOUROGH at checking our luggage I think they opened ALL of our bags. haha (I lost my sunscreen that got through just fine in SLC :))
We had another delay... (Grrr American Airlines) which meant our layover in Dallas was shorter than expected. My girls and I would call Shane's reaction in the airport of running to our gate "frantic" Shane says he wasn't acting "frantic" he was acting "urgent"... Whatever you want to call it he ran ahead of us to the gate and we still arrived 30 minutes before takeoff.
Except right when we got to the gate they announced that the pilot had deemed the aircraft "unsafe to fly" and we were moved to a new gate where we waited for a new plane to arrive. So there was no need for frantic OR urgent.
Shane had a flight to Tallahassee @ 9 am Monday morning from SLC, we were LITERALLY a 4 hour drive from Tallahassee that morning. And since we didn't make it home to Logan til 3 am... Shane was back on the road to SLC at 6 am.
I might have planned differently. ;) since he had other workers going to the airport with him anyway, THEY could have just got his stuff.
But it totally made sense to Shane because he had to go home to pack and get his tools ready HIMSELF. I suggested that I might have thought about that BEFORE I left for Louisiana... or just had my guys go pack up for me. But he was VERY secure with the choices he had made. haha
Overall it was a fabulous vacation filled with tons of memories.
It's really strange only having these two at home... but traveling with just the four of us is definitely more convenient + I just plain like being around them!
So, I guess we'll keep it up for as long as they'll come with us!!
