On the road with Discoveries...America
Mardi Gras!! The odyssey continues.

Fat Tuesday is only a memory now…well, at least for those who can remember it!

The “Discoveries…America” production team filmed Texas after leaving Utah. This is a big, big state, but we managed to capture a flavor in a couple of weeks, visiting a longhorn cattle rancher, whooping crane tour along the coast and Goliad, which is an important historic fortress and mission south of San Antonio…Of course the river walk in San Antonio and the Alamo can’t be missed.

Next stop…Louisiana for Mardi Gras in the heart of Acadiana, Eunice.

Here was a party of extraordinary proportions, the highlight of which is a 15 mile “Mardi Gras Run” through the farmlands surrounding Eunice. When we talk about a run in the northwest we’re referring to our own two feet, sweat and muscle. Not so with this “run”.

3,500 people dressed in the outlandish, wild and colorful costume of Mardi Gras parade the countryside on flat bed trailers and horseback (1200 or so), celebrating the end of winter, entertaining their neighbors…begging for chickens and other ingredients for the finale’s big gumbo pot in town (a dinner to which everyone is invited) and generally having a great time…

There are two or three wagons with bands strategically placed in the caravan…many stops for dancing and beer refills. The group consumed about 1,700 cases of beer, plus a wide variety of other adult beverages. The following morning Kelly and I, since we were working, were sure we felt better than about 99 percent of the others who made the “run”.

BETTY'S RV Park in Abbeville, La.…This place is a hoot. We pulled in there after traveling the Creole nature trail, looking for a little quiet, cable TV and a leisurely dinner. HA! Betty has 13 spaces and she had another 4 or 5 boondocking. When we pulled in they were in the midst of a pre-Mardi Gras barbeque and dance with a live Cajun band. Betty is this vivacious lady who loves a party and runs a fun RV park…needless to say we gladly gave up the quiet night for something a bit less so.

Louisiana is an excellent state filled with music, good food, and extremely nice people… we enjoyed it; however they may have the worst surfaced roads of any state we’ve traveled so far. It seemed worse than Highway 40 through Arkansas. We did find a couple of nice campgrounds in Louisiana; one KOA near New Orleans in Kenner even had high speed wireless Internet (a key in our search for campgrounds around the country).

Kelly is hosting a new television series for Comcast Cable’s INHD high definition channel called “INHD on Tour”. This is also the channel that broadcasts the Discoveries…America series. First location, one of New Orleans, “cities of the dead”, St. Louis Cemetery #1, the oldest of the above ground burial sites there. This is the jib shot opening scene.

After Louisiana…we continued the “Discoveries…America” odyssey in Alabama…about a week into the trip we had to fly down to Chile and Argentina to film another show for a couple of weeks…while we were gone our trusty little Snowriver truck camper magically turned into a Montana 3255RL 5th wheel trailer. Wow!!! What a difference!

We started doing a little research on our filming habits and found we were stopping in places for 2, 3 or 4 days, dumping the camper and filming the area with our crew cab pickup, so once we decided we didn’t need the agility of a truck camper…it was an easy decision, though a little costly.

Of course, Alabama, may be the worst place in the U.S. to trade in a truck camper…everyone there seemed to be into motor homes or trailers. One dealer flat refused to take a truck camper on trade, but fortunately Dandy RV in Birmingham agreed to take it.

We told the salesman how many miles we were traveling each year…30k or more and he allowed as how Keystone Industries’ Montana would hold up to the punishment. It will be interesting to see how it goes. Next summer we may be taking it to Alaska. That should be a hoot.

We had the dealer take out the hideabed, and we built Kelly a desk…a couple of file cabinets with a pine top. Imagine trying to run a million dollar business from a truck camper. She deserves a huge “star” on her chart for every time she had to dig through her files buried under the Snowriver’s dining room seats.

We also installed a full-blown High Definition, on line, edit suite…it’s based on a dual processor Mac, and has a raid array of 720 gigabytes. Editor Sterling Noren is still finishing the shows in Seattle, but I was able to give him a very tight rough cut of the Chile/Argentina show, which should save a week in editing. Same for the Alabama show.

This is a snapshot of Lago Ilanquihue in the lakes district of Chile’s Patagonia. It’s a beautiful country and there are even a few RVs down there. Mostly travel trailers, however there is a lot of tent camping. Their economy is strong so it’s ripe for an RV “invasion.”

We spent quite a bit of time in Gadsden, Alabama, north of Birmingham about 50 miles. Our choice there was River Country Campground, since (again) they have high speed wireless Internet.

One of the last stops in Alabama was the Coondog Cemetery, just outside Tuscumbia in the Northwest part of the state. Yes, this is a cemetery into which only the best coon hounds are allowed to enter. We interviewed a couple of old coon hunters who are the caretakers here. It was in better shape than a lot of “people” cemeteries we’ve seen. September 4th, 1937 was the first burial here…Coondog “Troop” will be fondly remembered for being the first resident in the only Coondog cemetery in the world. Now he has about 175 neighbors. Tuscumbia, incidentally is Helen Keller’s birthplace. The community, though small, 7,000 or so residents, boasts more antebellum homes than any other in Alabama.

We’re in Virginia now, at the end of the first day filming. It was a terrific day with some down home old style country music with guitar maker and recording artist Wayne Henderson. His shop is just out side the town, of “Mouth of Wilson,” on the Crooked Road Music trail. He was just installing the strings on a guitar he finished and once strung had to take it on a test run, picking several old time favorites. It brought goose bumps!

One thing I haven’t addressed writing these articles is the responsibility we feel to the folks with whom we make our programs. They open their lives to us...sharing their hopes, dreams, successes, celebrations …a window into who are these folks.

Wayne epitomizes the heart, intelligence, wisdom, soul and spirit of the mountain people in Virginia. He’s a famous, talented artist, who spent his entire day with us. He has 6 CD recordings released, a national heritage award winner who has played in more countries representing the United States than we can count..a well traveled, brilliantly talented, humble man, who loves his art, life, and those who surround him…which really adds up to his music…you’ll love this show!

So with that piece of our emotions out of the way…back to the mundane, but real, issues of “life on the road.”

As we’ve been traveling with the new trailer we’re learning and becoming a bit less nervous…wide turns and planning ahead is key. Kelly likens pulling the fifth wheel to rowing a drift boat through white water…you have to plan about 50 strokes ahead…

The wide turn aspect was reinforced when a fellow in a similar unit pulled into the campground near us with a rather large divot taken out of the left side of his trailer…turned too short around a light pole…that was just after he had ripped off his awning on a car door. That definitely qualifies as a bad day, but was a good example for fifth wheel nimrods like us.

We’re finding we can unhook and set up faster than we could dump the truck camper, so that’s nice and the space is wonderful. When you consider we left mid-January and won’t get back to Issaquah, WA until November it was a necessary change. We’re pretty well full time in it. We even had one of those Italian washer/dryer units installed. Our comment to the dealer was that we wanted the shortest 5th wheel possible, and still be able to get a washer/dryer unit inside. We have spent one too many hours in a sleazy, smoke/drunk- filled laundromat with screaming kids running wild, when the campground machines were full or not working. Incidentally…why would a campground with 100 spaces have only 2 washers & dryers?? I guess the answer is fairly obvious.

After Virginia, the next stop will be Delaware. This unit came with only one pretty small battery for rough camping, so as soon as we find a large RV dealer we need to get a set of double golf cart batteries. The one we have will only run lights a couple of hours. I don’t think folks do a lot of boondocking in Alabama, the way this particular 5th wheel was set up.

On our way “West” we plan on stopping at Keystone in Indiana, just to say hello, and perhaps film a segment on their factory. The RV business seems to be growing exponentially. It’s a good story editorially and even though all the networks chase the “18 to 27 year olds” we all know where the power and money lies!!!

Judging by the DVD sales of the “Discoveries…America” series the ‘boomers” are taking a lot more interest in our country with fewer air trips and more driving and camping vacations. “On the road” is a great way to see America…especially if you stay off the Interstates.

“Discoveries…America” programs on each state are released monthly so new shows are constantly being added to the list of available DVDs. To purchase a copy of the Discoveries…America series on DVD, visit Bennett-Watt eStore or contact us. Or if you have access to High Definition television and cable, tune into INHD.