Entry #89 – LOUISIANNA – March 17 – 21, 2022

We arrived in Louisiana on Saint Patrick’s Day – a day after our original plan. A case of food poisoning delayed our departure from Mississippi the day before. Life happens & you just do whatcha gotta do.

The campground we stayed at was on the Barksdale Air Force Base just outside Shreveport. It was pretty confusing to get to but we managed & the site we were assigned was nice & large. Convenient to the city, too!

The base had a spectacular open air museum where so many planes from many different conflicts & wars were displayed. Unfortunately, the “inside” museum was closed on the Saturday we planned on visiting. No matter, we enjoyed our walk through the rows of aircraft outside without interruption. I took pictures of most but not all of them.

The museum was closed on the Saturday we planned to visit. But we did take lots of photos of the many aircraft displayed outside as well as other displays throughout this very large base.
B47 Stratojet – 1951
Blackbird SR71
P51 Mustang
B17 Flying Fortress
WWII B24 Liberator
C47 Skytrain
Both the pix above & below are Bomber Trainer aircraft
F111 Aardvark
P80 Shooting Star
This is a neat picture of the cockpit of the plane below.
B52 Superfortress
B2 Bomber
Both the above plane & the one below are B52 Stratofortresses
This is a close-up of the plan above for a look at the artwork.
LMXT Strategic Tanker Aircraft
A beautiful memorial along the path.
The propeller at the top of this monument was recovered from a downed bomber.
In Memoriam …
In Memoriam …
In Memoriam …
A Squadron Headquarters
Another Squadron Headquarters

On Sunday, we drove into downtown Shreveport to wander about the city streets. Their city skyline was impressive! We picked up our new Garmin GPS at Best Buy that was advance ordered when we were in Mississippi. How convenient! Now to figure out how to operate it!

The Shreveport skyline from the Interstate.
LOTS of bling in this giant hotel!

According to our trusted Roadside America app, the mural below is the largest in the country. 30,000 sq ft on 2 sides of the building. And it took over a year to complete with many different artists involved. The detail was awesome!

This mural (above & below) was on two sides of a single building.
We found random wall murals throughout the city.
This one is labeled “All There is …” Singing the Beetles tune now?
This one is titled ”Give Enough Rope” Kinda harsh?

The few people who we did encounter downtown on this Sunday were a bit scary! The worst was a guy in a dark car who was literally following us as I climbed out of our car to take a picture of Elvis & a cool building (below). He moved forward to forcefully tell me we were breaking the law & he was NOT going to go around even though it was two lanes with not another soul in sight. He honked at Perry to get him to move & yelled at me out his window. I continued with my quest, jumped back in the car & we turned the corner. We spotted three police cars with officers having a mid-day pow-wow so we parked in that lot for a few. The scary guy sat at the corner, exactly where he said we were breaking the law, for several minutes. But when one of the officers broke away from the group & the guy saw him, he departed. What exactly he had in mind is a mystery. Another encounter was a woman with combat boots on, a Mohawk hair cut (kind of stylish, in my opinion) that was carrying a heavy backpack. She was having a full fledged convo with herself so I made sure I stayed out of her way while I positioned for the perfect photo shots. Then there was the guy at McCalister’s Deli, cleaning the tables, & talking very loudly to an unseen companion. We thought he was likely on his cell phone but there were no ear buds involved & his phone was in his back pocket. All in all, Sheaveport had some interesting things to see. It was still a bit of a weird experience.

Really nice statues of James Burton & Elvis Presley in front of a Civic Center, maybe?
Really neat bike racks!
Beautiful Civic Center – I think – with etched stone at the top saying it’s Dedicated To Those Who Served In The World Wars.
Another unique downtown building.
A gorgeous STRAND theater!

A large block plus was occupied by a lovely Asian Garden. Below are several pictures of it’s various venues.

And then there was the 2 story tall dog statue. No signage. I’m thinking he looks a LOT like the RCA dog but I’m not positive. Cool none the less.

Every night as I get all comfy in bed, I look over at the wallboard my granddaughter Lily made for us before our travels began. She has changed it up a couple of times, added more graphics & pictures, but the sentiment is still the sweetest. I miss her & her parents while we are on the road & I cherish our phone & FaceTime convos. We are so looking forward to seeing our people in the flesh in a couple months during a family adventure! All that to say … we love full-time RV living but it can be hard in so many ways.

And that was it for our few days in Louisiana. Last year we were stranded at a hardware store south of here with a broken drive shaft. The owner of that store turned out to be … well, just “Bless his heart” & we won’t elaborate. We got close to being arrested I guess but goodness & silence prevailed & we got to laugh about the situation for days after. The encounter made us skeptical about Louisiana only to have our faith in the folks who call this state home restored through our visit to Shreveport.

And on to Texas!

Not All Who Wander Are Lost! #whereswaldocamping

LIVE A GOOD STORY!