Journal Pages

03-18-2004 St. Pat's and Ajax, LA

We headed up Hwy 171 north to Emerald Hills Golf Resort in Florien, LA. It sits right across the road from Hodges Gardens, a beautiful public garden that is one of Bob and my favorite memories of a trip we took in the Casita a few years back. We wanted to play the golf course at the time but had to get back (to work, can you imagine?!) before we had the chance. Anyway, I never knew, but one of the brochures calls the gardens and the golf course, The Beauty and The Beast! It must be karma for us to come back!

This course has a slope of 124 and 123 from the White (Bob's) and Red (Rita's) tees, meaning the course is a bit more challenging at 6307 yds and 5432 yds, respectively. Bob played well, and to quote my sister's husband, Michael, I stunk up the place. But golf is a strange game, you always live to make a fool out of yourself another day. In my defense, the greens were over seeded with about a half inch of sparse grass over lots of sand. Very bad, for you non-golfers out there. Emerald Hills was a fine resort at one time (probably back in the 50's) but it needs some tender loving care now. It's in a gorgeous setting and we had a great 76 degree day with clear skies. On the way home we were famished so we stopped at the 7 Bridges Cafe in Anacoco, LA. I have no idea why they call it 7 Bridges; I didn't even see one bridge. We ordered hamburgers, even though the owner was pushing the spaghetti special. How could she know we had Phyllis's secret sauce back home in the frig? Great burgers but the place itself was a dive.

Back at home, we got a burst of energy and put our new Escapee Club Member stickers on The Beauty. We get discounts at member RV parks, they are handling our mail forwarding, and fellow members help you out if you have roadside troubles. Bob swept off the roof in anticipation of our move tomorrow. I snapped a picture of our tight campsite between the trees. Then we both headed for Shady Lake to try our luck fishing. I fared better at this sport than I did at golfing earlier. Caught my first 'fish on the road' about a 10 inch bass on a buzz bait, which I always think is fun. Bob caught some nice crappie and bluegill. After we got back to the RV I went across the street and put some 'thank you' postcards in Phyllis's box for her and her grandkids. I always like to give postcards to the young kids. Our hobby needs the next generation of collectors in order to preserve these treasures. They were not home yet as they spent the day at the zoo in Alexandria, LA.

We made it out of our campsite and out of the RV park with no trouble and were on our way north on Hwy 171 to Many, LA, where we headed east on Hwy 6 to catch I-49 north to Ajax, LA. Just off the Interstate is Country Livin' RV Park, 1115 Hwy 174, Marthaville, LA 71450, 318-796-2543. We paid for three nights, Thurs, Fri, Sat. at $16.00 per night with our Escapees discount. There are seventeen sites here and our prayers were answered. We got a pull-through site with no obstacles to dodge around. We set up quickly and easily by 2:00 p.m., and just in the nick of time as a whole group of RVs pulled in after us and the place completely filled up. The owners, John and Linda Abel, we very helpful and gave us lots of brochures for Natchitoches (Nak-a-tish "better seen, than heard" according to the locals.) We'll check it out tomorrow. They had two dogs in the office, Prissy and Max, a Papillion.

All I needed to do for a delicious lunch was to boil up some spaghetti noodles. Phyllis's sauce was outstanding. She had big tender chunks of pork and huge meatballs in her sauce. I never tasted a sauce so hearty. She said her family took all day to let it simmer. Now all I have to do is hope she'll share the recipe.

We walked up and checked the laundry. It turned out to be the best one we've seen so far. So since it was early I decided to do the bedding since the machines were very large capacity. Bob went down to check the pond on the property and caught two fish. I read my book on the park bench on the porch of the laundry house and watched the construction workers come home for the day. There's a guy from Pennsylvania in a huge fifth wheel pulled by a tractor trailer cab. We decided he's "in the trap" because even when he unhooks his monster rig, he can't go anywhere in town with that truck since he can't park it anywhere.

We got a kick out of John, the owner, in the office. He was trying to tell his wife about the guy next to us complaining of breaker box trouble that turned out to be a malfunction in their refrigerator. She asked him "who was that?" and he said "you know, Mr. Eleven" (meaning the number of their campsite.) So we laughed and Bob said "does that mean I'm Mr. Twelve?

Well, we have been downgraded from 42 channels of cable to 8 local channels, of which we can only get 2 that are very fuzzy. But that's okay, my book is getting exciting and of course I have to update my journal. There's a library in Natchitoches but of course I hold out no hope of us being able to bring our laptop in. This campground actually had a modem access in the office, but our ISP has no local number here in Ajax, LA. Can you imagine that! Hang in there all of you faithful journal readers, eventually I will get on-line!