Travel Recap #16: Five States and Family!

 

“There’s no normal life, Wyatt, it’s just life. Get on with it.” 

~ Doc Holliday ~

Christmas was fast-approaching and we had plans of being in New Mexico for the holiday, so we chose to pass up spending time in Tucson this time around and headed straight for Tombstone. A few miles before the town, we turned off onto a long and bumpy dirt road that eventually led us to another narrow dirt road and a grassy pasture where we could set up camp. We were once again in our boon-docking element; surrounded by gnarly prairie trees, climbable rocky hills, and mooing mama cows. A visit to the town of Tombstone was an absolute must, and if you’ve ever seen the movie, you’d know just what to expect! The town itself was quaint and definitely old western-style, with a variety of reenactment shows to choose from as well as horse carriages and dressed-up cowboys walking around. We checked out the O.K. Corral and met the actors out in the street (looking just like Wyatt, Morgan, Virgil, and Doc Holliday) before the show. As we got seated and the show began, the kids lit up when the first round of gunfire sounded off. It was a fun and comical live-action account of the shootout at the O.K. Corral and the kids were reminding me of it for days afterward. 

We crossed over into New Mexico, spent a quick night in Deming, then drove up to Albuquerque to spend Christmas with family. It was great as always to see family and spend quality time together!! All good things must come to an end, however, and the freezing temps drove us to continue our march eastward. 

Texas was next on the agenda, and with friends and other ties in the DFW area, we chose to spend the New Year at a cute park on Lake Grapevine. Never sticking around any one place for too long, though, we headed down to Sam Houston National Forest for a week of dispersed camping in the woods. We visited more family in the Houston area and enjoyed hiking around various forest trails and splashing in muddy puddles after a good rain. Once again, a cold front heading for the area had us high-tailing it on over to southern Louisiana in a jiffy. 

Our first two nights in the state were spent at a quintessential Louisiana swamp. We didn’t have any gator sightings, but we did ride our bikes to an old cemetery and took a chance to contemplate life as the sun set over the gravestones. The next morning, we drove down to Rutherford beach and parked on the hard-packed sand for another free week of camping with the Gulf of Mexico as our front yard. Plenty of beach play was had, punctuated by a visit to the local town of Cameron for a kid-friendly Mardi Gras-style parade with fancy cars, candy, and colorful necklaces. We also made some new friends from California and had an impromptu potluck dinner together on the beach! Dolphins on the shore at sunset was a magical way to end the day. The cold front caught up to us, however, and the weather quickly turned to freezing rain and biting winds. Our pipes froze for the first time, so we had no running water for half the day until the sun came back out and things warmed up. Having a sheet of ice on the side of our rig while parked on the beach was kinda crazy! Soon after, we said goodbye to all the offshore rigs and took to the freeway again for a quick stop in Baton Rouge and a walk around LSU campus. 

Finally, we came to Mississippi and spent several days catching up and spending time with Justin’s family. It was another welcome chance to reset, revisit progress with work and homeschool, and create a plan for the next leg of the trip.