We left home last Tuesday morning, heading south. We drove down through Eastern Oklahoma and the northeast corner of Texas just across the state line into Louisiana. Spent the night at a nice little RV park just off Interstate 20. On Wednesday we headed south again and arrived around noon at the Paragon RV Resort in Marksville, Louisiana. This is a part of the Paragon Casino complex which is owned by the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe. We are here for the Monaco America Fall 2011 Rally. We are expecting a total of 59 coaches for this rally, which does not actually start until next Monday.
After arriving here yesterday the rest of the day was used setting up the coach, cleaning the bugs off the front and greeting the few others early arrivals. There was five coaches here by the end of the day yesterday. A few of us got together and drove over to another town to an all you can eat catfish restaurant. More coaches came in today. There are about a dozen or so here now, including most of the club officers.
In keeping with my newest adventure of grave hunting I went out this morning to a nearby cemetery. Actual
ly, it is just next door to the Paragon Resort. This is the St John Community Church Cemetery and is connected to a local predominately black church. I checked the Find A Grave website and found only nine graves had been entered into the data base. It appeared to be a small cemetery so I decided I spend this morning photographing the headstones and then get them all entered into the Find A Grave data base. The cemeteries down here are deceiving about their size. Almost all the graves down here are above the ground due to the high water table. Most places in Louisiana it is impossible to dig a normal grave because after a couple of feet they hit water. Before I was done I had taken 203 pictures. There were actually more graves than that because several headstones listed several family members buried in the same tomb. Also, about 50 or 60 of the really old graves did not have any marker or it was so weather worn that it was unreadable. Before these pictures can be entered into the FAG data base they must be reduced in size. My camera does not have a setting to reduce the resolution so I have to go into Photoshop and manually reduce each picture. (I do the same thing with the pictures I post here on the blog.) Anyway, I now have a list of almost every person buried there, have all the pictures reduced in size and have the basic information entered into the FAG data base. Now all I have to do is go back to each individual person's memorial page and upload their headstone picture. Like I've said before this Find A Grave stuff can become very habit forming. Did have one casualty while at the cemetery. While moving some flowers so they would not throw a shadow on the headstone I found there was a nest of yellow jackets in the flower pot. Got stung on the end of a finger. Got to be more careful next time out.
Tonight a few of us, including my brother Bill and his wife Nancy, went to a local restaurant, called Nanny's, for dinner.
Most of the folks ordered local specialties but I decided to order a steak. It was a big mistake since it was not one of the better steaks I've had. Of course, coming from Oklahoma beef country it is not hard to be disappointed with steaks in other parts of the country. The restaurant did have one diner that appeared to have been there too long. Were not sure if it was the food o
r the long wait for service but he was looking pretty worse for wear. We dubbed him Charlie and introduced some of our other rally members that came in to him. More coaches will be arriving tomorrow and through the weekend. If this rally is like most of the ones we've held in the past almost all of the coaches will be here by Saturday. As the club Treasurer I get fairly busy once everyone starts showing up. I spent a big part of this evening making up a couple of Rally Packets for some late applications. Actually, I have not even received the last two applications. They arrived at the UPS store where the club mail box is located after we left home on Tuesday. They were to forward them to me here in Marksville yesterday morning. Hopefully I'll receive the tomorrow. So, more to come as the rally unfolds over the next few days.
1 comment:
Gosh, I had to look at a map to figure out where you are - in the big middle of Louisiana, that's where! I have family in Shreveport and I'm desperate to show Bill New Orleans - before the next Katrina. Mom lived there for a while in the early 40s. Looking at the map, I'm reminded I have an old friend from OKC in Baytown and Bill needs to see Galveston one day...and he'd probably want to see Port Arthur as well - Janis Joplin was from there....We could use a motorhome in the US!!
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