Do You Know What It Means.....

To Miss New Orleans? As the song goes... Well we ended up staying about 2 and a half months in New Orleans and that's a long stay anywhere for us. While we don't "miss" the town yet we both agreed we were not burnt out and could have stayed longer. We also agreed we were both ready to go boating again.

The last few weeks topped off our stay with the annual Jazz and Heritage Festival. This is 7 days of music and food over the last weekend in April and first weekend in May (including Thursday the 2nd weekend). Weather was mostly great and we started off with a visit from our friends Ann & Grant. They got in Thursday afternoon and we headed right to a free kick off concert in City Park.

The concert had 3 great acts including Paul Sanchez and his Rolling Road Show.

In the crowd this night I spotted a familiar "hat" from the last post. I had to go introduce myself and let him know how "famous" he was having made the Chasing 80 blog!!

Next morning we headed to the fairgrounds for the 1st day of the fest which included a stop at a local bar and kick off Bloody Mary's.

One stage we visited was the Gospel tent to get our church on for the day. While there we saw a cop that reminded me of Jake Blues when he "saw the light".

Sunday morning we awoke to find severe storms approaching New Orleans and decided to just drive into the Quarter and let them pass. We later got the notification that the fest opening was "delayed"...good call. The storms were pretty wicked but moved out about 1:00 so we kept an eye out for an opening time which ended up being at 3:00. Pretty amazing considering the record rain that fell. We headed back to the boat and gathered up our tickets and Ann & Grant dropped us off at the fest on their way to the airport (damn, that was a quick visit!!).

Once at the fest we saw a sign that left us a bit disappointed but we went in anyway...

Turned out OK though since the crowd was light and we got to see the act I had been looking forward to the most. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers put on a great show on their 40th anniversary tour!!

After a few days rest we were back for the second weekend and the weather was perfect. The crowds were back too but we were able to get around pretty well.

The attendance totals were announced this week and came in at 450,000 for the entire fest. I figured out that we had seen at least 33 acts between the 2 weekends. everything from singing Mardi Gras Indians....

....to up close with Buddy Guy!!

All in all we had a fantastic time and really enjoyed being there for the whole fest. And, in the interest of full disclosure, yes....we have fest hats too.

So, we are now on the move again. We left New Orleans this past Tuesday and took advantage of great weather to cross Mississippi sound in 2 long travel days. We are now back in the more protected ICW in Orange Beach Alabama heading east. The plan is to take about a week getting to Carabelle FL where we'll decide if we want to take the long Gulf crossing to Tarpon Springs or the "scenic" route around the big bend. The bend route will take 3 days but eliminate the long overnight trip. Weather will decide as usual.

On the Mississippi Sound we were happy to see the dolphin escorts return to our travels. We take this as continued good traveling omens.