Thanksgiving in Lafayette, LA

We stayed the week around Thanksgiving in Lafayette, LA, Tim's hometown.  We are going to do our first review of the Lafayette KOA Holiday plus update you on our Thanksgiving activities and all the friends & family that we got to see.  We finally got a few days of the weather that we signed-up for in retirement, clear skies and shorts/t-shirt weather.

...but did have one BIG rain storm.

After running several errands, we arrive at the campground in the dark...AGAIN.  We are still working on our schedule to get to our destination on time.  Since we don't have a car, we try to do the grocery shopping and other tasks during our relocation trips.  We have planned shorter trips in the future, so we hope to get our travel days into daylight soon!  It was not raining for setup this time and we were pretty efficient.

Review of the KOA campground in Lafayette

We had actually stayed at the Lafayette KOA one night when we moved the RV from storage in Florida to storage in Texas so were generally familiar with the layout.  Our site last time was along the east side of the large pond but this time we were on the north side which was parallel with I-10.  It was amazing how much louder the traffic noise is when you don't have the buffer of several other RVs between you and the highway.  We turned our phone white noise apps (Pat had planned to get a new battery-operated alarm clock but he added the noise machine to the features he wanted).  This campground is pretty large with 185 sites.  It has a very nice pond (almost a lake) in the center with kayaks and paddle boats available.  They even have a miniature golf course along with the other children's playground equipment.  Our site had a concrete slab to park the rig and gravel for the picnic/gathering area.  The laundry is larger than most but there is only one, so some campers have to drive to it.  They have a few "store" items in the office but not a real store.  They have propane gas available, and we filled up for the first time as we left.  We would definitely recommend this campground but suggest sites 115-124,  144-151 or 171-177 to avoid the traffic noise.

Thanksgiving Activities

We got to do lots of organizing around the RV since we were in town for a whole week.  Our first Thanksgiving traditional activity was the Camellia Crossing Gleaux Run on Wednesday night.  Before the race we got to visit with Tim's childhood friend (best man at our wedding), Steve, who was in town for his family's Thanksgiving.  Tim has retired from running this race and Pat retired from running at birth, so we staked out the post-race gathering spot with our nieces, Lexie and Cierra, and waited for the competitors.  Our nephew, Brandon, arrived first after running his personal best 5K.  He was followed by Tim's brother and sister-in-law, David and Jessica, and Tim's sister and her best friend, Christine and Adam.  We ate and drank until the restaurant closed and even ran into our friends Lindsey and John out with their family celebrating Lindsey's 40th birthday.

On Thursday, in addition to the racers, a few more family members were at Tim's mom, Sugie's, house including Sugie's brother (Uncle Bobby), more of Tim's siblings (Cindy & Brian), lots more cousins and spouses (Toby, Barry, Brandi, Joel, Blaine), our nephew, Josh, plus our great-niece, Hope.  The menu included lots of roasted and fried turkeys, ham, roast beef, rice dressing, cornbread dressing, mac & cheese, cranberry sauce, corn, green bean casserole, rolls and a bunch of pies.

Sugie had all five of her children there!

Setting Up Our Home

On Friday, we went to our storage unit in Baton Rouge to pick up things that we moved in the moving van that were RV useful and store a few things we forgot in the van and had to pack in our luggage for our "last" flight from NYC.  It was a long exhausting day and Tim was sure that we would never be able to fit all these items in the RV comfortably.  The RV felt a lot more like home once we got these items in place.

We went to Sugie's for leftovers every night and even have some turkey in the freezer now.  It was great to see all of the family, we are still overwhelmed with all the organizing/packing but are starting to feel the transition from assembly/organization to actually living in the Windsport.