DAY 16: Mobile, Gulfport, New Orleans, and Lafayette

Monday, October 8th, 2012: Mobile, AL, Gulfport, MS, New Orleans, and Lafayette, LA

After a great nights sleep, we woke up early and started heading west.  Our first stop was Mobile, Alabama.  

We couldn't find a single food truck on any of our food truck phone apps and we couldn't find anything by just driving around the city, so (even though we were STARVING) we decided to keep driving west towards New Orleans.  It was a cool city, so I'm sad we could find anything :(

Driving along the coast in Alabama.

Crazy tunnel under the city in Mobile, AL.

As we were driving along the coast, one of our planned stops was going to be the Biloxi/Gulfport, Mississippi area, but since I couldn't find any info on my phone about food trucks in that area, we discussed by-passing it and just continuing to New Orleans.

As we were coming up to the exits for Gulfport, we decided to pull off anyways.  It was such a pretty area, so we at least thought we could go down by the Gulf and walk around.

Turns out, since it was Colombus Day, there was a huge classic car show going on by the beach!  There were food stands everywhere, so we knew it was meant to be.  We parked the camper and walked to the car show.

Gulfport Beach....holding a mini-Belafonte.

Mitch loves old trucks like this!

We found a food stand and ordered some food (I was SO HUNGRY at this point, I think I would have eaten anything).  

'Southern Flavor' menu.

What we ordered:

Sausage Jambalaya

Shrimp and Sweet Potato fries basket

Regular Fries side

Margarita

Water

Total: $25

SO HUNGRY!

Shrimp and sweet potato fries.

Sausage Jambalaya.

I'm not sure if I was just really hungry or if this food really WAS as good as it tasted, but we were happy with everything.  Nothing fancy, but everything was delicious.

We walked around and looked at classic cars for a little bit, then got back in the car and started heading to New Orleans.

The drive was so beautiful!  Louisiana coast coming up to New Orleans.

New Orleans skyline.

I found several food truck vendors on the awesome phone app call 'Eat St.' (Shout out to my friend Erica for the recommendation!  Such a great app.)  We picked out an area that had a few good-sounding food trucks and made our way to the east side of the French Quarter.

Eat St. phone app.

Once we finally found parking (NOT easy in the Big Easy, hee hee...), we walked around a bit.  We were just in New Orleans last March for Mitch's 30th birthday, so it was fun to see everything again.

I had to get a picture of Mitch by Pirates Alley since I didn't get to last time were there.

Jackson Square - New Orleans, LA

PEACE

Unfortunately, none of the food trucks were parked where they said they'd be parked on the food truck app.  We walked around for over an hour trying to find SOMETHING, but NOLA is a big city and it was getting late, so we were unsuccessful.

We still had fun just walking around - if you've ever been to New Orleans, you know that there is plenty to see/look at!  We finally got back on the road and started heading to Lafayette, LA where we had our campsite reservation.  We decided we would just make dinner there.  We considered eating at one of our favorite places in NOLA called 'Coop's Tavern', but it was super busy and there was a wait.  Plus we'd be breaking our road trip rules if we ate at a real restaurant!

First in line at Coop's :)

The drive to Lafayette was about an hour and half.  Mitch made a delicious dinner for us at our campsite (way better than any restaurant food we could have gotten!).   I did some homework, then we watched a movie and went to bed - super excited for Houston and Austin tomorrow!

Vegan Mac n' Cheeze with caramelized onions and green tomatoes.

Food truck/food stand spending: $25 (under budget)

DAY 15 Spending:

Gas: $138

Food truck/stand food: $25

KOA campsite in Lafayette: $35

Scratch-off lotto ticket: $8 (no winners unfortunately) :(

TOTAL: $206 (lil' bit over budget)

Leftover from our $6000 budget: $3406.50 (We're doin' pretty good so far!)

XOXO

Mitch and Laurel