The Wrap Up

 The Wrap Up

 I had two goals for the trip – genealogical research and reliving High School memories. I accomplished enough of each to make the trip worthwhile. I learned quite a bit about where various family connections lived, visited graves of some I knew & some I didn’t, and discovered the name of one of the 2 sons my great-grandparents lost as babies. I saw my old haunts around Lake Charles, and visited with my HS BFF. I did get some good pictures on my side-trip to the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The low point was food. I couldn’t find any Cajun food (gumbo, etc.) that didn’t include sausage – which I need to avoid because of testing positive for alpha-gal. I tried Popeye’s chicken and discovered it’s fried in beef suet and ended up with the trots. Mexican chicken dishes are generally safe, but the places where I dined weren’t very good. I doubt if I would voluntarily return to most of them.

 

I stayed at three Holiday Inn Express hotels, one Comfort Inn and one Quality Inn. All were acceptable; the best was the HIE in Opelousas. The HIE in Lake Charles and the Comfort Inn in Idabel were undergoing renovations. The HIE I canceled in Tahlequah looked relatively new and modern.

 

Lodging costs for 6 nights at HIEs was 119,000 points, the equivalent of a bit under $100 per night. The other two nights cost about $120 each. Food cost about $125 and gas under $150 (a bit under 8 cents/mile). Boarding 1 cat cost almost as much as food & gas combined. I also wrote a $200 check to help support my high school’s memorial.

 

Ratings:

Best Roads: Louisiana, surprisingly enough. Every major road was 4-lane, and most of the others were straight.

Worst Roads: Mountain sections in Oklahoma & Arkansas, although the ones in OK were scenic.

Best food: No awards given

Worst food: Have you ever had diced chicken cubes in a Mexican dish?

Best scenery mountains: Oklahoma

Best scenery water: Rutherford Beach, Cameron Parish, LA