March 17, 2008With winds at 20 mph and forecast to strengthen, the Minnie became a little hard to hold in the road. I stopped in to visit John Ball and his family in Pensacola. His kids and wife have been trying to convince him to get a dog, so they all enjoyed playing with Holly for a little while. What a nice family and John is an excellent painter. I would have liked to stay and paint with him, but due to the weather I could not stay long. The storms were building up in Texas and moving northeast bringing threats of tornados and hail so I decided not to go too much further. I got off at the first exit in Alabama where there was an RV park. As luck would have it, it was called Hilltop and that's exactly where it was. It would have been good to have one called 'Valley' given the forecast. But this was a nice place and there were no trees to fall on anything so I settled in. It would be my home for 3 days until the storms completely cleared out. Fortunately we got strong winds but the severe weather was to the north. March 20, 2008
It was a short drive to Mobile where I got directions to the Garden district. I drove down lovely tree lined streets absolutely convinced that one of those branches was going to claim my air conditioner but I arrived in one piece at Oakleigh House and got permission to paint on their lawn.My master plan was to head directly to Louisiana and save painting in Mississppi for the northern part of the state, so I drove through the small strip of MS with a quick stop at their welcome center. (They win the welcome center contest hands down, with lots of info and free soda and coffee) I arrived at Slidell, LA, at 6 PM and made plans to go to New Orleans the next day.
