It's roughly a 7 hour drive from New Orleans to Galveston, TX and that's more than we wanted to tackle, so we stayed half-way near Lake Charles, LA... in the middle of nowhere.
Quiet Oaks RV Park was named appropriately. We did absolutely nothing for three days... which turned out to be a refreshing change. The weather was warm and sunny most of the time so we played catch, soccer and the girls rode their bikes.
Our first night there we went into "town" looking for something to eat and realized that we had a screw in the Jeep tire and it was almost flat. We got some air in it and turned around and found some dinner on the way home. Fausto's Family Restaurant was descent but overpriced.
The second day we headed into Lake Charles to get a tent for the girls (we had apparently left the tent poles somewhere) and get the tire repaired. We pulled into a Midas and they fixed us up in a jiffy. The owner was awesome! Apparently he'd gone public with his trucking company and retired at 44 (about 30 years ago). He built a 50' RV with a 31' trailer on a Peterbuilt chassis and just traveled the US. We stayed well past closing time getting tips on places to go.
Afterwards, we took his suggestion for dinner at Harry's Restaurant just up the road. He wasn't joking when he said all the locals eat there. When we told our waitress that this was our first time here, she replied with a shocked look and said, "we don't get new people in that often". It was actually a great recommendation. The portions were huge, the food was great and the prices were reasonable.
On our last night we headed back to Wal-Mart to get the girls the tent we had promised and picked up a pizza on the way back. After dinner Hali and I ran through some JavaScript programming lessons on her Kano before setting up the tent. All three girls spent the night in the tent despite the weather dropping in the mid-50s. The next morning we packed up and headed to Galveston around noon.
Dates: December 1 - December 4
RV Park: Quiet Oaks RV Park, Kinder, LA
