Saturday, February 12, 2011 (Sam Houston Jones State Park, Lake Charles, LA)

It had been another cold night last night....the temperature outside was 26F/-3C when I got up this morning. Not wanting to risk frozen lines again this morning, Steve had put some water in the tank last night and disconnected and drained the hose and filters. He had even plugged in the block heater on Buster...that was a first for our truck!

We thought we would take a drive into Lake Charles today and see what there was to see there. We drove along the north shore of the lake...

...and then finally found what we figured was the historical district. We parked the truck in an empty parking lot...it seemed pretty darned deserted around here. We wandered around...Steve taking pictures...

This is the Historic City Hall...

Across the street is the Calcasieu Parish Court House built in 1911...

Looking for someplace to stop for a coffee and use the restroom, we stumbled upon a neat little place called Luna Bar and Grill. It was just opening as we walked in to see if we could just get a coffee. We sat down and soon the place started to fill up. It was going on 11:30 and after just having a bowl of cereal for breakfast, we thought we’d stay for lunch. It was obviously a popular spot. They had an interesting menu, with lots of really good-sounding sandwiches. So after a delicious lunch, we continued our walk back to the truck. We decided that there really wasn’t much to Lake Charles...but had learned that Hurricane Rita had hit them hard and they were still recovering from that. 

It had turned out to be a beautiful afternoon...the sun had really warmed things up! Much to Steve’s dislike, we needed to do some grocery shopping so we stopped at a Super-Walmart that was on our route home. This Walmart also had a gas bar...and it sold diesel as well so we fuelled up before continuing on home. We paid $3.32/gallon (with the discount card that I applied for) and then saw another station with diesel at $3.28...sheesh!

After unloading and putting the groceries away, we sat outside in the sunshine. It was so nice! And as far as I can tell from the forecast, the weather is supposed to improve as we head west into Texas...should be in the 70’s by next week...YAY!