After New Orleans, we drove south to Louisiana’s only barrier island Grand Isle. Before this trip, I didn’t realize how much there is south of New Orleans. We drove a solid two hours to get there. Unfortunately, there is only one way down, and it requires an expensive toll: $11.25 for us.
Grand Isle is an interesting place. It reminds me a little of Edisto Beach in South Carolina. It is pretty laid back like Edisto but more industrial. Like many of the areas we have seen on the gulf, Grand Isle is very susceptible to hurricanes. In fact, the island has been impacted by a hurricane every 2.68 years since 1877.
For most of the week, we had the campground to ourselves. As soon as the weekend rolled around, it filled up fast with families. Our last night there, we met Mike and Marcia of RV BBQ Trail. Mike is a certified master bbq judge, and they travel all over the country to competitions. They had us over for a fun evening of shrimp tacos and margaritas. We hope to meet up with them again.
RV Projects
In a couple of weeks, we will be doing our first extended stint of boondocking, so we completed a couple of rv projects in preparation. The main project was adjusting our workspaces. We have three solar panels, which should be enough to help power our office equipment during the day. We also have a 2000 watt inverter. However, the inverter makes a ton of noise when we run it. My plan was to install step up converters to convert our 12v to the 19v our monitors require. In doing so, we’d run our monitors straight off of the battery and avoid using the inverter. I made the updates, and everything seems to work well. We feel we’re in pretty good shape now for working off grid without having to run the generator or inverter. (Update: This did work well, but we eventually updated our inverter to this and we definitely recommend an updated inverter as opposed to using the converters!)
Cycling in Grand Isle
Grand Isle is in the middle of nowhere, and there were actually some good places to ride. The main road through Grand Isle had a little traffic, but it also had a good shoulder. Old LA-1 had amazing marsh views and hardly any traffic. I saw several pink spoonbills also.
Gas Station Food
Our friends in New Orleans highly recommended eating at gas stations. During almost all of my rides, I tried different boudin balls at the gas station on Old LA-1, delicious! On our way out of Grand Isle, we stopped at Jo-Bob’s Gas and Grill to pick up some chicken for the road. It sounds crazy, but that was some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever had! I’m sure we’ll have plenty of other good food on our next stop in Cajun Country!
