We will be staying close to Pensacola for a while to visit with family and friends.

Along with the visiting we plan to go to the beach and maybe see a few tourist sites in Mobile that we have not been to since childhood.

Native people have lived in the area for thousands of years.  Tchefuncte, Acolapissa, and the Choctaw lived here at different times. The tribes were known to eat Buffalo (Bison) as a large part of their diet.  Yep, herds were found this far east at that time.  An interesting thing about the Aclapissa was that they covered their bodies with tattoos.  Most of the native people were killed by disease brought by the Spanish or French and many were enslaved by them.

In the early 1800's, this area was a sugar cane plantation, brickyard, and lumber mill.  It was near 3,000 acers of land and included a large main house, slave quarters for over 150 people, and a processing plant.  The plant boiled down the cane juice to syrup and sugar. People could visit the area by small steam ship that would cross the lake from New Orleans in under 3 hours.  The plantation was in operation until the mid 1800's.

What remains of the processing plant shows that time will erase anything eventually.  I would imagine that 50 years from now only a pile of bricks will remain.

What was the primary promenade to the plantation is lined with enormous oak trees.

All the trees are covered with Spanish moss, beware of chiggers. Their bites cause a lot of pain and inflammation.

The park has a very nice campground, 12 cabins, a huge grass area for picnicking, 6 miles of hiking trails, large playgrounds, and a big splashpad.

On our walk around the grounds, we found several small deer antlers and some interesting mud mounds from some sort of land crab.  We never did see the animal.

Near the lake was a small pond with just the kind of warning you would expect in this area.

This is our second time to visit Cajun Palms.  It is one of the highest end resort we have stayed.  Not only is is HUGE.  Over 450 RV sites and over 60 cabins. There are two kids pools.  One adult only hot tub that could "seat" 40 people and pool with bar at water edge with under water stools. A huge bar, dance floor, and band stage.  Every weekend they have bands play on weekdays they have a DJ.  This place is focused on keeping kids busy. Not only with the pools but they have planned kids games and activities, a 50 seat theater with multiple movies playing each day, big playground, a water park (yep with fancy slides and a "pirate ship", and an Arcade. They also have several stocked catch and release fishing ponds. Near by is a Dinosaur Park. Kids were riding up and down the rows all day without a care in the world.
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Warning to future us:  This is a very loud place on weekends or holidays. Not only from the band but people riding around on their Golf carts decked out with speakers.  I like Cajun music but hearing multiple songs at the same time.  Not so much.

The Cajun Oasis RV Resort is a brand new RV park.  They are quickly expanding the number of sites and they have both fishing and swimming ponds.  The swimming pond has a nice sand beach.  It was a very quiet stop.

The road to the park has some history.  It was originally made to allow the Confederate army to move during the Civil war.

There was also an out break that killed many solders.  It did not say what disease.

Time to move East to a very high-end Resort.

We are moving east stopping for overnight stops much to often for comfort.  It is tiring to drive, stop, setup, getup the next morning, takedown and move again.  We are going to take a couple of full days staying still over the next week.

One of our overnight stops was a Saloon/Restaurant/Dance Hall.  The atmosphere was great but the steak was fantastic.  When we asked for the steak dinner, the server asked if we wanted 2 steak dinners or wanted to share a meal. I asked how big was the steak and he said Texas sized (16oz steak).  He was right and we did share the meal.

I scream, You Scream, We all scream for Ice Cream.  Wow, I'm old. Anyway, we stopped at the Blue Bell Creamery in Brenham, TX.  It was fun.  $1 for a huge scoop of any flavor.  We even got to try a new flavor for free.  It was a cookies and cone flavor but I did not get the exact name.  It was a very good lunch time stop. I had the triple chocolate which was so much chocolate that I was worried I couldn't finish it. Shawna had southern blackberry cobbler. Hey it has milk, eggs, natural flavoring....  Ok yes, we had ice cream for lunch.

Our next stop is in Livingston, Texas.  This is a special stop because they have a all point tire weigh system called SmartWeight.  We will find out a lot of details about our towing conditions.

On our way to Fort Davis, Texas, we pass a lot of Border Patrol then something curious came into view.  It was a dirigible/balloon tethered to a ground station. As far as we could determine, it had a lot of cameras and maybe some sort of radar.

Our spot at the Davis Mountains State Park was very nice.  They did have Wi-Fi but it was  limited.  There is no cell signal at all in the park.

We took a drive up on "skyline" drive.  It gave some views of McDonald Observatory. We would liked to have visited but because of the current restrictions it would have been pointless. 

The valley was pretty.

The CCC built the park.  Many of the structures are original.  Pretty neat.

In the valley beyond the park is a HUGE green house.  I do mean huge.  The information I found was that it was the company has 5.7 million square feet of greenhouses in the area.  When we drove by, it was clear that the greenhouse was more than 20 feet tall.  It seems that these are growing tomatoes and the plants are huge.  I guess when you control everything and have a lot of sunlight you can grow a lot of plants.  They mentioned on their web site that they could quickly convert these to growing Cannabis if Texas's laws changed.

Javelinas walked right past the 5th wheel this morning. I think they can best be described at small hairy pigs.