Eastward Bound: Fontainebleau State Park – Mandeville, LA

Our next stop along our eastward repositioning into Florida was actually one planned in a bit in advance.

We had been keeping in touch with our dear friends Forrest & Mary who wintered in Florida this year. They’d be on their way to volunteer at the CARE continued assistance facility at the Escapee’s Rainbow Park in Livingston, TX later this month.

We compared schedules, and it looked like a quick rendezvous in the New Orleans area would work out best.

We had routed a bit more north of I-10 to Martin Dies, Jr. State Park outside Jasper, TX in part to avoid anticipated road closures due to the flooding of the Sabine River at the LA/TX state line. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision, as I-10 did indeed get shut down.

Even Highway 190 was closed for a bit, but re-opened up just in time. Barring that, we had mapped out a crossing over a dam road just a bit further north.

The routing for this segment looked like this:

Fontainebleau State Park

On previous passes through NOLA, we have stayed at the wonderfully located (but very pricey) French Quarter RV Resort and the lovely & peaceful Bayou-Segnette State Park down in Westwego which offers semi-easy access to the Big Easy via ferry.

Since our buddies would only be able to stop in for lunch, and Slidell offered the easiest options for RV parking right off I-12 for them – we opted for trying out Fontainebleau State Park (our review) on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain.

After a long tiring driving day, we pulled into our reserved spot in this popular state park.

The next morning, we drove out to meet up with Forrest & Mary for lunch.

We hadn’t seen them since we parted ways last spring and we cherish every moment we get together. This visit was way too short, but definitely worth setting intentions to intersect and catch up in person.

New Orleans Explorations

One of the advantages of this park is the easy access via The Causeway over Lake Pontchartrain into New Orleans. The Causeway holds the world record for longest continuous bridge entirely over water at 24 miles long.

 

Read that again… 24 miles long.

Meaning when you are at the center point you can not see shore due to the curvature of the Earth.

Meaning that when you’ve gone the length of the famous 7-mile bridge in the Keys of Florida, you still have 17 more to go.

That long causeway came in quite handy.

On Saturday morning, I made an appointment at the Metairie Apple Store to have my iPhone fixed yet again. Yes, the one I just replaced via a battery swap out in Austin recently.

This time, my fault – it slipped out of my pocket and the screen cracked. Ironically, a kind blog reader had gifted me a screen protector on the old phone, which wasn’t able to transfer. I hadn’t gotten around to replacing it.

Grrr. I think it’s time for me go back to something like a Lifeproof case, I’m obviously a klutz.

I was full of anticipation to make the bridge crossing. The first few miles were very exciting, especially as the shoreline disappeared out of site and we realized we wouldn’t see it for quite some time again.

Pretty eerie when you’re driving a vehicle!

But I gotta admit, the excitement simmered down after reaching the mid point. It was the same view for miles and miles until Metairie began to appear on the hazy horizon.

But definitely a unique transit experience, that provided low-traffic access to the south shore.

We set off with intentions of doing the screen replacement and then heading down to the French Quarter for some exploring.

The screen replacement was fairly painless – in and out in under an hour, and for about $100.

However by the time we were done, it was raining. And that just didn’t inspire us to wander around town on foot, especially when we have both done it many times before (Chris used to live in NOLA during his college years).

Knowing we had a drive-thru daiquiri bar right near the entrance of our park may have tipped the scales to returning home. (In this area as long as you don’t put the straw in – it’s not considered an open container, so totally legit to drive.)

So back over the 24-mile causeway we went (the views didn’t change much.. so just refer back to the pictures above) picking up daiquiris to enjoy with the pitter patter of rain on our roof for the rest of the day.

So, that completed our exploration of the Big Easy. Not too exciting.

In the future if we want to visit New Orleans itself, we’ll stay closer to town – maybe even back at the French Quarter RV Park where we can walk stumble back from Bourbon Street.

We’re just not the type of RVers who like to venture far from home. Instead, we move our home to where we want to be.

Exploring Mandeville

But we did really enjoy Fontainebleau State Park and the surrounding town of Mandeville.

The park has an older feel than Bayou Segnette, and the RV spots not nearly as well designed. But it was certainly adequate (next visit, we’d try harder to get a pull-thru site – they’re much more private feeling).

There’s a waterfront area to explore with a pier right within the park. We didn’t get a chance to hike any of the trails, it was just too muddy and wet during our visit.

The weather cleared on Sunday, and we got the folding electric bikes out to hit the Tammany Trace multi purpose trail (a Rails to Trails project) that runs right through the park and town.

We wanted to put the range of the bikes to the test and see how far we could go on a single charge. Our eJoe Epik SEs are rated for 30 miles under ideal conditions. During our tune-up in Tucson last month, we had switched to Tannus Solid Bike Tires (never having a flat again!) which were anticipated to have some reduction of range.

We both rode in the lowest pedal assist mode the entire way, and the trail was pretty much as flat as flat can be. We already had 5 miles on them from a previous ride, and Chris added another 18 – for a total of 23.  With his heaver weight, we were pretty happy with that. I was able to complete 22 miles, for a grand total of 27 on this charge.

It was a lovely ride on the trail and along the waterfront. This is exactly the sort of adventures we had been hoping to add to our visits by acquiring the bikes. And whew, don’t let pedal assist mode fool you – this isn’t like riding a scooter, we still got quite a workout!

We intend to get a post up about the bikes soon, including our decision process that lead us to this particular model. Unfortunately, all of the rain and driving days have severely cut into our content creation inspiration.

All and all.. a great visit in the area!

What’s Up Next?

We crossed into Florida last week (finally!) and found a great place to spend Spring Break and Easter weekend without all the chaos. We’ll get you caught up soon, but for now – we have one final long driving day before we’re in Central Florida.

By the end of the week, we’ll have made it to our destination – Spring Hill to visit family. We’ll be bouncing around a couple other spots in April to visit friends, and then we’re off on our cruise up to Montreal.

We’re now figuring out how we’ll be back to Florida in mid-May – and are contemplating taking the train (we love trains!). This would put us in NYC at least overnight – so if you have overnight ideas or couch surfing invitations, please do be in touch.

Catch our recent Podcast Interview

We were recently interviewed for The RV Entrepreneur Podcast by Heath Padgett (if you’re not following him and his wife, Alyssa – you should, they’re an inspiring young couple who set out to work hourly jobs in all 50 states as their honeymoon, and are about to come out with a documentary about their experience).

Our episode, RVE 009: Technomadia on Mobile Internet, Self-Driving RV’s, and the Nomadic Career, just went live. It’s rather fun – we talked about our path to mobile income, struggles of work/life balance, self driving RVs and the evolving nomadic community we’ve witnessed over the past 10 years.

There’s some other great inspiring interviews in the series, so subscribe and tune in!