Fontainebleau State Park

3/11/2020 Elevation 7  Miles driven 123

We arrived at Fontainebleau State Park, Mandeville LA around 2:00. We’re just across Lake Pontchartrain ( Really BIG lake) north of New Orleans.  For the most part it was an unventual drive. We’re staying for 2 night, this CG is petty big, we can’t stay any longer, like over the weekend because it’s sold out——FULL. I’m not really complaing, after arriving here and seeing how big the CG is, if it’s sold out, it’s going to be a madhouse over the weekend. On our drive around the CG it looks to be about 1/2 full now so the campers will really be rolling in on Friday.

Obviously it’s a very popular park and looks to be heavily used. The park was a Plantation at one time, under some of the trees pictured were the slave cabins, 20 double cabins.

The park has several large old Oak trees covered in Spanish Moss, the grounds are well kept with large grassy areas  and lots of picnic tables, it has a sandy beach but some teenagers walked out a good long ways and the water was only about waist deep at best.

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We did make 1 unplanned stop today. Off and on, ever since Mary’s driving class RUBY would be slow to air up and sometimes stopped at around 75 PSI, enough to release the parking brake then once we started moving it would build the up to normal 125 PSI. Well this morning while stopped at a stoplight we lost pressure down to around 100 PSI, she shouldn’t do that.

So, driving down the road with my thinking cap on, the one vented out the window to keep the smoke alarm from going off, I decided to have it looked at. As I’m coming to this monumental decision this fire truck lights flashing, siren blaring pulls up beside me. They had seen all the smoke and thought we were on fire but once they pulled up beside me and seen the thinking cap and the smoke was coming from that they gave me a thumbs up and went on their merry way.

Don’t faint but like I said I came to a decision to have it looked at, so I noticed one of the Loves signs along the expressway along with they gas they had truck and tire service. The srvice manager crawls underneath to see what the problem. He says well it looks to me that maybe Bigfoot might have been nibbling on the air line to the brakes, he said looks like he was inturupted before he could chew all the way through, it was just a small air leak, knowing how cunning they can be he asked if I have seen any lately, I told him no then went on to tell him how we have been looking for one. He said that I probably got to close to finding one of them and he decided to try and knock us off before we discovered their secret hiding place.

Anyway, they replaced the air line and an hour later we were on our way.  We were never in any danger, apparently bigfoot didn’t know that airbrakes un like a car if something happens to your brakes they lock up, air pressure is what makes the brakes release, loose air pressure and the brakes lock up.

Part of the story you just read is true, I’ll leave it up to you to to separate fact from fiction.

We had hoped to take an airboat tour while we were here but the better, closer one, that looks like the better tour was sold out for Thursday, the only day we had free. Next time maybe. It’s winter and any gaters we would see, just like over at Wakalla Springs State Park they, would’t be very active, they would just be laying on the banks and not moving much.

3/12/2020 AM

We went for a walk this morning, we walked about 3 miles total, we were going to take this one trail but after following it for a  1/2 mile it was most boring, it was wide and flat like all the trails are in flat areas, on this one all you could see was brush on either side of the trail, it might have had something to see at the end but we with the heat and humidity cranking up, we decided to look for a more interesting trail.  It was call Alligator Marsh Boardwalk trail but I think the name was just a gimmick because we didn’t see any warnings about gaters.

By the time we came out of the woods I was—- ICK, I was sweating. It’s hot and muggy down here, it’s going to get to 76 degrees and mostly sunny this afternoon, I might even need to turn on the air conditioner. I’m hoping you folks stuck in the frozen north have sympathy for me for being hot, Mary says I need all the symphony I can get:)  I don’t know what she means by that!

Can’t find the movie Creature from the Black Lagoon on Netflix? Amazon Prime? I know you looked for it, it’s on YouTube, for rent $3.99 or buy for $15 I think.