Festival Internationale in Layfayette

Our reason for going through Lafayette, Louisiana was to stop and see LaJuana and Dan.  We met them four years ago in Galveston at a NOMADS Disaster Recovery volunteer effort.

We did some research and found a good campground for an overnight stay at Bayou Wilderness RV Resort.

 It was a little bit of a drive off the freeway to get there, but it was a nice campground with big pull through sites and a good laundry.

Things worked out and we met them for dinner at PerJeans Cajun Seafood Restaurant. 

Oh my!  That was a home run! Pam and I split a Shrimp Festival Platter.

Then I got out my selfie stick and took a picture.  After I looked at it a minute I saw that there were six of us in the photo and we had no idea who the couple was behind us. :)  Have you done that recently?

After a little while, I retook the photo that included just us...

We had some sweet biscuits to start with, then shrimp gumbo (Wow! that was good!), shrimp salad, blackened shrimp with cocktail sauce and some Cajun (dirty) rice and shrimp ettoufee.

And as it happened, we hit town at the start of the Festival International in downtown Lafayette.  It is a music festival, money raiser for the town and only comes along once a year.  We went downtown and parked in their church parking lot and walked over to the happenings.  It was the first evening with the festival and they only had one stage set up.  By the end of the second day in the downtown area there would be 4-5 stages with music going on each one of them.

We wandered over to the stage and listened for a little while.  We had never heard Zydeco music so this was a first.

We hung around for about an hour or so, went through a couple of booths and then went back to the car.  Their church is in the downtown area and Dan and LaJuana offered to take us inside for a tour of the historic building.

It was a very beautiful church built in 1924.

We love to see historical places and local festivals.  And the seafood was really good.  It was a memorable experience and great time seeing Dan and LaJuana.

Thanks for joining us today on the Roadrunner Chronicles!

Stephen Foster at the State Park

Besides being a very nice State Park, there are some great things to do here at the Stephen Foster Culture Center State Park.

We like this place and here are some reasons why:

The camp site:

- Plenty of space
- Easy to get into and long enough to actually maneuver a bit so we could get our TV dish pointed in the right direction without trees.  Baseball and NFL game possibilities.
- The campground is clean, tidy and well maintained.  Nothing like having a good first impression that lasts.

Another item about the park is the hiking trails.  There are some service roads/trails in the area that are a good way to get in a little hike.

And down near the Swanee River the trails join up with the Florida Trails

The Trail and Stephen Foster Culture Center State Park is near White Springs

which is about 1/2 between Tallahassee and Jacksonville just north of I-10.

I wanted to see the Swanee River.  The area down near the Florida Trail was also a canoe/kayak boat access area that we checked out first.

There was no real good place to view large sections of the river.  The area had a lot of brush and trees lining it.  But down near a primitive camp site we saw a little bit of an opening.

Like some other rivers in Florida, this is known as a Blackwater River that gets its dark color from the vegetation lining the river which decays and turns the water black.  It did not look too inviting.

The park is also known for the Culture Center which has a quite a few items about Stephen Foster in the museum.

The museum also includes a number of dioramas depicting scenes from his songs.

Interestingly enough, Foster was from Pittsburgh and only visited the South once during a honeymoon cruise down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

Of his more than 200 compositions, some of Foster's famous works include:

• Oh! Susanna
• Camptown Races
• My Old Kentucky Home
• Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair
• Old Black Joe
• Beautiful Dreamer
• Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)

Among the displays, we learned he only lived to be 37.  Tragically, he fainted in his room during a period of illness and broke his wash basin and gauged his neck.  He lay bleeding for three hours until he was discovered and died a few days later.

He is known as the "Father of American Music" and his works were most popular in the mid 1800's although they continue to generate interest 150 years later.

On the grounds, the State of Florida built a large Memorial Carillon to commemorate.  I didn't even know what a carillon was before we saw this.  It basically is a 200' tower with large tubular bells - the largest of its kind in the world.

Throughout the day in the park, portions of his songs are played from the automatic electric player.  Throughout the day you can here the pleasant tones throughout the campground.

At the base of the structure, there is another large room that has more artifacts.

I think my favorite was a display and model of the inside of the 97 - bell carillon.  It was built in 1958 at a cost of $500,000 by the State of Florida.

The high cost of maintenance of the bells led to silencing them in the 1980's.  They were partially (32 of the 64 bells) turned on again 1993 after funds were raised.

It was a nice visit to another great Florida State Park!

Thanks for joining us today on the Roadrunner Chronicles.

Summer Concert Evening in the Park - New Holland

Yesterday we left our three week stay in Fort Meade, MD for Lancaster County and a new campsite at Beacon Hill Camping.

We are on a level site, with full hook ups, good cell service and internet.  And we are across the street from a large Amish farm.  They have horses and cows and dogs and guinea pigs.  And farms smells which add to the experience.

The campground in on the side of a steep hill.  Its a nice cardio walk to the top where there are some great views of the farms down through the valley.  To get a good view and some pictures, we'd have to walk on a driveway or two so we didn't do that.

We arrived in the afternoon, got all set up and then went over to friends Mike and Sue's place in New Holland.  After dinner, we then went over to see the summer evening concert in the city park.  The Nomads are a Oldies Band that was simply GREAT!

We got there as the show was starting and it was crowded.  Usually 200 people for one of the evening concerts is about average.  Tonight, there were about double that number.

These guys were really good.  It was fun to hear the music and kind of join in on some of the songs (you have to know the words to really join in...but that has never stopped me from giving it a go).  It was a toe tapping, singing, hand-clapping good time!

A few got out there and danced quite a bit and that was fun to see them have fun.

It was a couple of hours of a great time.  I can just imagine the same thing has happened across hundreds of cities and towns this summer -- evening concerts in the park.  Have you been to any this summer in your part of the country?

It was a great start to our stay in Lancaster County.  We'll be here all week so more to follow!

Thanks for joining us today on the Roadrunner Chronicles!

New Year's Weekend

We are enjoying our time here in Eagle Hammock Campground in King's Bay Submarine Base (Georgia). We are only a few miles from the Florida border and about 30 miles from Jacksonville, FL.

A tail light bulb burned out so Pam tracked it down and replaced it.  Not sure why but we have had a recurring issue with the tail lights and paid hundreds of dollars over the last 18 months dealing with it.

The drinking water was tasting funny, so while she was doing that, I replaced the water filter.  Wish I'd done it a little sooner, it was pretty gross (see new and old filter at lower right portion of picture) and there was no question it was time for a new one.

Then we got on the road to Jacksonville.  We took a look at the Pelican Park RV Campground Mayport Naval Air Station (NAS).  We heard it was a good place to stay and put it on our list.  It is right on the water and ships come and go with in a 100 yards of the campground.

We continued on to St. Augustine for a lunch date with Ed and Candice.   We hadn't seen them in a couple of years and they drove over from Orlando.  It was our first time at St. Augustine and it is a neat place to see.  The narrow streets, the Spanish heritage and the history make it a  very interesting place.

We had lunch at the Columbia Restaurant and spent a long time talking and catching up.

Our time together was too short before we said our goodbyes.  We took the long way back to the car and saw some more of the city.

We had dinner back at the RV and fixed some snacks to take to the New Years Eve Concert at the campground.  The Allegheny Sting Band played.  They were REALLY good.  They are a family band with Joe and Mary on the fiddle (and banjo and mandolin) with Beth on the guitar (and mandolin).  Dad (Peter) plays the bass but I didn't get the right angle to get him in the pictures.

These kids are amazing!  Joe and Mary have taken violin lessons for a few years but each taught themselves to play the banjo (Joe) and mandolin (Mary).   They have been together as a group about four years.

They have played at a lot of RV campgrounds, especially in the mid-Atlantic and southeast.  If you want to book them, contact their manager Jackie (mom) here.  You can also check them out on YouTube.

Saturday we went over to the pancake breakfast and enjoyed meeting some couples.  We appreciated the effort folks put in here to keep make this a 'happening' campground.  

It was fun and a little later we went out to Trident Lakes Golf Course.  The great thing about this was that we only had to pay for the cart ($12 each).  Because we are staying on base at the campground, green fees were free!

It was a warm and beautiful 75 degree day.  The course was in great shape with bermuda fairways and rough (hence the dormant look) and very white sand traps.   

A highlight there was meeting Mike and Milly who are from Raleigh, NC.  We joined up with them on the back time and had a good time getting to know them.  They run the Swinging Golfers Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) chapter that has a lot of  golf rallies in Florida in the coming weeks.  They are RVers and have a Tiffin Phaeton motor home.

Thanks for viewing the Roadrunner Chronicles today.  We appreciate it!

Motown Museum and Memories

Thoughts of yesterday are still spinning in my head.  We visited the Motown Museum in Detroit and it brought back a lot of memories from songs of the 60's and 70's.

The museum was modest by most standards but so full of incredible thoughts of the 'Motown Sound' of years ago that this has been one of my all time favorite museums. We found the museum easily.  I was expecting it to be in a ramshackle old part of downtown Detroit.  Wrong.

It was very well maintained and in a busy area on Grand Blvd.

The parking lot is small but it fools you.  10 million visitors have come through the doors since the museum opened in 1985.  The museum is really two homes that were used as Berry Gordy, Jr's. home, recording studio and the early Motown offices.

Unfortunately, no pictures or video cameras are allowed so a lot of these are from the official website and elsewhere.  The $8 price was well worth it.  The first thing I noticed was how nice the you people were who conducted the tours and ran the ticket counter and gift shop.  They were polite, poised and immediately gave you a good impression.

We went first to the little movie room and saw a film of the history of Berry Gordy and how it all started.  He came from a hardworking family with 8 children.  His dad owned a construction company and his mom sold life insurance.  Every child was expected to work in high school.  Berry Gordy worked and also boxed.  He was a professional boxer before he got drafted in the Korean War.

After the war, he returned with his wife and three children and worked for a time at Ford Motor Company.  He was writing songs and found enough success to where he thought he do it for a living.  In the late 50's he wrote 'Lonely Teardrops' that became one of Jackie Wilson's greatest hits.

He borrowed $800 from the family co-op (bank) and had to pay it back at 6% interest.  I was very impressed with how influential his family was.  It seemed like they were a very strong family, hard working with strong character that they instilled in their children.  That was in 1959 when he bought the house that became the focal point and where it all began.

After the short film, we went up to the top floor of the house and wandered through rooms that were turned into galleries.  The pictures and momentos were amazing.    All the pictures and gold records on the walls ~ it was really really something.  It was fun to just read about all the artists and how they were groomed for success.

Motown had a Personal Development group where the artists were taught how to carry themselves and learned the basics of common courtesy and respect and how to talk to royalty and presidents.  They had a dance studio and a choreographer who came up with the signature moves of the Temptations and the 4 Tops and the Supremes.

At the last part of the tour we went to the recording studio that was very basic.  It was converted from the garage and was small.  It had enough room for a piano some drums and a small band they called the Funk Brothers.  These guys were 'hourlies' that got paid $8.50 an hour to play background and accompany the singers.

All the Motown greats recorded in what became known as Studio A:  Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, the 4 Tops, Rare Earth and Gladys Knight and the Pips to name a few.

It was really a great place to see.  Afterwards, a people were taking pictures outside since none were allowed inside.   If you ever have the chance to see it, you'll be glad you did!

Hope you are having a good week and thanks for joining us today on the Roadrunner Chronicles for a trip down memory lane...