New Orleans was a lot of fun. I ended up adding another night at the Hostel ($13 for the night!). It was a really nice place, the room held 8 beds and was co-ed. Most of the people were from other countries, and it was fun to talk with them about traveling.
I did a tour of the Garden District to look at some cool larger houses, every home seemed to have a historical marker.
With cool garden features.
I visited the Lafayette cemetery in the Garden district, it is one of the few that you can walk in without having to pay or have a guide. Lots of pics of dilapidated grave sites, here are a couple.
As always, more pics at the smugmug site.
I also went to the NO Museum of Art, it had a pretty interesting collection but is quite small. My plan to walk the sculpture garden got interrupted by a massive thunderstorm. Which was a relief from the 99 degree / 90% humidity day.
I also had a really good hotdog at this cool looking place near NOMA. Really good food, let’s face it I didn’t have a bad bite of food the entire visit.
I spent my evenings on Frenchman street listening to live music, enjoying the vibe, food, and people of New Orleans. One night walking around I found a band Bon Bon Vivant playing on the street. They sounded amazing, so I stayed out there on the street with about 20 other people enjoying the tunes. The next night they were headlining at a club on Frenchman and I was lucky enough to hear them as I was walking by and stayed there the rest of the night.
Party in full swing.
To complete my last night in New Orleans as I was walking along Bourbon I was propositioned by a tranny hooker and a coke/pot selling dude. Who could ask for more?
arty
The next day I loaded up the bike and headed to Pensacola. I had reservations at the Fort Pickens national park campground for a couple nights.
On my way out to the island I saw a dive shop and pulled in to see if they had any trips available the next day. Bay Breeze Dive Center is a NAUI shop (which always makes my old school NAUI heart happy) and they were able to hook me up with a charter for the next morning. Pretty impressive in that I had showed up at 5pm. So we arranged my gear rental and one of the dive masters there agreed to open the shop an hour early so I could pick up the gear in the morning rather than have to load it all on the bike and camp with it.
I got to Fort Pickens with 15 minutes to spare before camp registration closed. Set up camp, and headed to a recommended seafood place (Peg Leg Pete’s) for some really great oysters.
And another round, just to see how the cooked ones tasted.
In the morning I headed to Bay Breeze and loaded up the bike with a couple SCUBA tanks and all the gear. The dive master had been a bit nervous about my carrying tanks on a bike as they make excellent bombs. Once she saw the load set up she relaxed.
I headed out in fairly heavy 8 am traffic to the marina where I met up with the N 2 Deep and Captain Clark (WreckMasters Dive Charters). We hung out for a bit waiting on the rest of the divers who were running late (did I mention lots of traffic?).
All but one of the other divers were pretty experienced technical divers so there were no worries or drama. Also, our dives were shallow and easy anyway, just the way I like em. On the way out we had very light seas, but a pretty heavy rain storm. It cleared up just as we got to the dive site.
Our first dive was the Massachusetts. Among the largest and most advanced ships of her time, the Massachusetts was a heavy-caliber battleship and one of the first to be assigned a hull number by the US Navy. Officially commissioned on June 10, 1896, The Massachusetts was over 350-feet long, with a beam of 69-feet and a displacement of over 10,000 tons. I didn’t bring my dive camera on this trip.
I saw a massive turtle, sting ray, and a few 300+ Lb grouper as well as the huge schools of fish. At some points it was hard to see the wreck through all the fish swimming around me. Visibility was about 30 feet, but getting close to the ship was easy and it was only 30’ deep so I was down there for an hour checking everything out.
The second dive was at a wreck called the Joe Patti, named for the local restaurant that sponsored it. It was a deeper dive at 45’. The really cool thing about this dive was all the things that local businesses had welded onto the ship prior to sinking. Bar stools, company logos, sharks, fish, signs, etc… just lots of stuff to check out. I was only down for half an hour but got to see everything and really enjoyed the dive. Youtube has some videos of the sinking.
The dive master for the trip Tommy was nice enough to take my gear back to the dive shop so I didn’t have to load it all up again. Really a top class group of people and super interesting to talk with. Once again dinner was at Peg Leg Pete’s, but this time I had grouper… because when I see it swim I want to eat it.
The next day after hanging out on the beach for the morning I packed up and went to the Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum. My grandfather had been stationed at Pensacola after WW II so I was especially interested to see the base. Here are a couple of the many aircraft pics.
I had lunch at the Museum and ended up talking with a guy who volunteered there. He gave me a few pointers on what else to see that I had missed, and told me about his favorite place on the planet… St Joseph state park. Now this park is on an island, has amazing white sand, warm water, and generally is awesome.
He also warned me that on a Friday afternoon heading to Panama City could take 5 hours due to beach traffic. St Joe is just past Panama City…. So as I was heading down the coast I kept an eye out for places to camp.
I saw a sign for Grayton Beach State Park that had the little tent symbol so decided to detour down that way. The entrance had a sign up saying camp ground full, but I asked the ranger anyway and she said they had one walk up space left for just one night. I was stoked! Especially because I’d spent the last 100 miles in moderate to heavy traffic in 100 degree heat / 85% humidity and was ready to stop.
My spot was beautiful, with a private path to a lake.
A quick swim across the gator infested lake got me to the beach.
After the swim I headed into the local town / resort area for some really delicious seafood and to watch the sunset over the gulf.
I had the check indicator which usually means kickstand switch or kill switch problems, both were fine. I posted up the problem on Stromtrooper and quickly got a reply to check the ignition fuse. Which was the problem.
After spending a couple days in El Paso I decided to head to Big Bend NP.
So I decided to head on to San Antonio.
! Thanks for taking us along!
