Ruby's Rocky Adventures: New Orleans

We had to high tail it to Louisiana because Carl and Kristi were flying into New Orleans to meet us for a few days :) The drive was uneventful and beautiful as we started to see flooded swamp lands. We spent one night in Alexandria to break up the drive.

The city of New Orleans is unique, I especially loved the architecture. The food was heavy for us, but we all loved beignets!

It was great to see the muddy Mississippi. This video is a woman playing an organ which is steam flowing over the tops of bottles!

Bourbon street was only kid friendly (sort of) during the day!

This swing was in the courtyard of our hotel, the Maison Dupuy. Kristi and Carl took turns spending the night in the hotel and going out on Bourbon St. with me. The unlucky adult each night got the rv park next to the highway and lit up bright as day with the lottery billboard!

On Friday we went on an awesome airboat swamp tour! We all held a baby alligator, even Kristi!

After the tour Carl and I ubered to Whole Foods and got groceries to bbq by the rv park pool :)

Kristi and I hit Bourbon Street and collected some beads that night ;)

On Saturday morning we walked around Audobon Park. I never realized that Loyola and Tulane are right next to one another. They have this beautiful park right on the edge of their campuses. After much searching we found the Tree of Life, planted around 1710!!

This isn't the Tree of Life, there were hundreds of beautiful old oak trees.

Ella counted over 200 caterpillars on our walk!

Ella is amazingly good at catching lizards. I remember always trying to catch them as a kid, without much luck. She pretty much can always catch them!

Our park adventure was a little longer than we had expected. We had our uber driver bring us back to the rv park to drop Ruby off and then she brought us to the Jazz Festival. We found it to be very similar to a state fair: crowded, hot, and full of over-priced underwhelming food. There were some great art vendors. We bought a cool vase.

Ella and Carl danced to Alabama Shakes.

It was a cool experience, but a reminder that our kids don't love this kind of thing, and we prefer small venue concerts!

That night we were all exhausted, but we wanted to take one more walk across the French Quarter to see the Mississippi. We had dinner at Cafe Beignet. Apparently the jambalaya had crab in it, and I spent the rest of the night sick so Carl and I didn't get to go back to Bourbon St :( The kids and I took a bicycle cab back to the rv park while Kristi and Carl walked Ruby back.

On Sunday morning Kristi and the kids met us at the hotel for a scrumptious breakfast. Then we all rushed back to the rv park to try and back everything up before the storm hit (there was severe rain and tornado watches coming our way). We finished just in time and it was pouring as we left. Apparently everyone else in town had the idea of going to the WWII Museum to stay indoors, the line to get in was around the block. So, we went to the aquarium instead. We had to park two blocks away. We got soaked running those two blocks, we literally looked like we had gone swimming in our clothes. We bought the kids dry t-shirts there and even tried the hurricane simulator to dry us off (it didn't work). The aquarium was good, all of us agreed that the best part was the IMAX movie: Hurricane on the Bayou.