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Blaine Kern's Mardis Gras World

After having been to New Orleans on several occasions, it took our British friends to recommend a place to see. Blaine Kern's Mardis Gras World was something we had never heard of before. Across the river from New Orleans in Algiers, is where some of the major float building takes place for the parades leading up to Mardis Gras. (Fat Tuesday) Since 1947 Blaine Kern has been the renegade float builder of New Orleans. With his makeshift krewe (club) known as Alla (Algiers, LA) they broke into the closed world of the Mardis Gras builders. They've been building floats, renting tractors to pull them, and on occasion even renting the floats to other krewes.

We have never had an interest in attending Mardis Gras in the past, but since we took the tour through the warehouses of Mardis Gras World, and saw some of the floats up close, we now have a hankering to see at least one. The Fiberglas and foam figures that sit on the floats are fully recognizable as either cartoon characters or caricatures of real-life people. There were some "leftover" heads on the shelves such as John Wayne, Mark Twain, Louis Armstrong, etc.

We were also impressed with the amount of merchandise that's thrown from the floats during the parades. Each float may throw up to a quarter of a million dollars in "stuff." during the 2 weeks of parades.

Our second stop of the day was to Riverwalk, downtown New Orleans, on the banks of the Mississippi. We were looking for some authentic Cajun food. After about a two block walk, through the indoor Mall, we stopped at a place called Messina's. I had a combination Seafood Plate and Sharon had Spicy Cajun Chicken. We always enjoy our Louisiana stays for the food and the sites that can be taken in while here.

"BLACKLIST"...........You're Kidding Right?

A misunderstanding with the management of a campgound in Johnson City, TX caused us to be placed on their "Blacklist" for future visitations. It didn't seem to matter that prior to the blacklisting, we had already told him we were never coming back anyway. Perhaps this story should be told from the beginning.

3 days prior to "the event" we were assigned to a campsite where we could not get the motorhome level. Because we, and 2 other motorhomes, were the only campers in a 78 site park, we decided to move to another site. (No problem yet) After we were set up we realized that the new site had no water. The office also told Sharon about it when she went to tell them we were on a new site. There was still no problem because our water tank was full and we were only staying a couple of days anyway.

For those of you who know about the kidney stone, it's at this point it reared its ugly head. For 2 days I didn't know if I was on foot or horseback. That's dangerous in Texas. To make a long story short, it was stuck and wouldn't pass on its own. Damn! At this point we decided to move the motorhome to Fredericksburg 30 miles away. (Where the hospital is) We packed up and started to leave, and realized we should refill our water tank, not knowing where we would be parked for the next couple of days. In directing me to a faucet with working water, SHARON DIRECTED ME to cut across the grass and avoid the overhanging tree branches which hooked, and bent, our TV antenna on our way in to our site. We crossed 20' of their brown, dead, neglected grass in violation of the posted signs. (Can you hear the s___ starting to hit the fan?)

Shortly afterward, the campground flunky made his appearance on a riding lawnmower. How ironic since there was nary a live blade of grass to be found anywhere. He informed us of the problem we had created. We informed him of the TV antenna we had bent on his overhanging branches. He didn't care. We didn't care. We were now using HIS faucet to replace the water we had used for the last 3 days because there was no water on the site. He didn't care again. To end this saga, SHARON, a lovely person was getting us thrown out of a campground. We did think of a dozen things we could have told him as we exited the park.