Wednesday evening we took the ferry, for a whole dollar, across the Mississippi River, to Bernard State Park. We spent Wednesday and Thursday evening in this pretty park.
Live Oak Arch St. Bernard Hwy, NO
Thursday morning we were up bright and early, stopped in at the French Quarter RV Park and booked 2 days in dry dock, meaning no electricity or water hook-up, but we had access to showers and laundry facilities within the park. We initially were not going to stay here, but it was within walking distance to the French Quarter, and close to the uptown parades, so instead of trying to find a $60 per day parking spot, we decided it would be well worth it.
We knew that parking the RV for the parades was going to be an issue, thus we arrived a few hours early to secure a parking spot, which turned out to be only 1.5 blocks from the parade on St. Charles St. Armed with folding chairs and beverages we headed out to the already packed parade route. We found a spot between a large group of people whom had many chairs set up, a tent and lots of food and a telephone pole. It was the perfect spot, front row seating.
Arriving at the parades
The people beside us were a great group, they offered us food, drink, advice, and info on the various parades. Another gentleman from Chicago, who was here visiting his daughter, turned out to be in the Maritimes at the same time as us and just loved it there. He kept returning to us to talk about his travels. We were entertained even before the parades started. We saw 3 parades that evening, Babylon, Chaos and Muses. The first parade started at 5:30, but since the starting point was quite a distance from us, it took 45 minutes to reach 8th Ave and St Charles St.
Each parade had anywhere from 16 to almost 40 floats, and each parade had a theme, such as THE DIAMOND JUBILEE or MORPHEUS CRUISES THE STREETS OF NEW ORLEANS, and “throws” correspond with the theme. Between each float are marching bands from Louisiana and even out of state, and probably walking close to 15 miles. The throws include such items as medallion beads, small plush toys, doubloons, light –up beads, rings, tiaras and much more. If you are lucky you may get some of the bigger prizes such as large stuffed toys and collectors medallions.
Krewe of Hermes float
Mardi Gras Capuchons
Jefferson Highschool Band
Carl and I got caught up with the rest of the revelers, and came back with our own prizes. Waving your arms and screaming at the people on the floats was a must. I had a sore throat by the end of the evening. Beads were plentiful and easy to catch when thrown into the crowd. If you wanted a certain item, the trick was to make eye contact with the person throwing the item and hope that they hand it to you. Sometimes they will and sometimes not. If you were a pretty young thing, you probably came back with a lot of good stuff, because most of the people on the floats were men.
Muses is the first all female 1030 member club with a 26–float procession. There is a huge waiting list to join this club, and the fees aren’t anything to sneeze at. The Shoe employs start-of-the-art fiber optic lighting, and The Bathtub, a giant bubble-filled bathtub full of bathing Muses were 2 feature floats of this parade.
Krewe of Muses Float
Krewe of Muses float
‘Flambeaux’s’
Traditional parade lights
The FLAMBEAUX are dispersed along the parade, and are symbolic holders of the lights. Today the lights are kept lit with propane tanks, but in the past, candles did the job. Parade attendees would give money to the men with these lights. Nowadays they have no real function, just a reminder of the past.
We left halfway through the last parade because we wanted to beat the traffic out of the area. It didn’t really matter, there were still traffic jams, and driving the RV through the narrow streets was no easy feat, but we eventually made it back to the RV Park.
The next morning we woke up to a dead battery, we had left the RV lights on again. The second battery made it easy for us to boost the dead battery, thank goodness.
Today was only Friday, but we decided to get a feel for the streets of Mid-City, the parade we were going to watch on Saturday. We definitely made the right decision. When we arrived there, hundreds of people had set up tarps and chairs for a parade. Initially we thought there may have been a parade today, but after asking one of the people sitting and waiting, we were told that they were getting ready for the parade 30 hours from now. Many people were actually camping overnight. Endymion was the most popular parade, with floats 2 or 3 times bigger and more spectacular than many others. It is comprised of 2,850 men and has had celebrity marshals as Dolly Parton, Chicago, The Beach Boys and Kid Rock, in the past. We had no choice but to set up a tarp and a chair and hope it was still there when we came back tomorrow.
From Mid-City we drove back to Uptown, where today’s parade was taking place at 6:00ish. We took a drive through the Garden District and were in awe of the beautiful old houses located here. The north side of St Charles St, where we had been parking, is a lot less affluent and kind of sketchy. The first time we’d parked there I was a little concerned, but since everyone else also parks on the north side, I figured it had to be fairly safe. We did not want to park on the Garden side because we would have to cross the parade route and that would be a nightmare.
Finding a place to park was a little more difficult today, there were definitely more people at this parade. We ended up parking our chairs near a young couple who gave us the names of some good restaurants and were generally just a lot of fun to talk to. We took a walk east down St Charles St and couldn’t believe the number of people here. Families, students from a nearby University and tons of other people were crowded onto the streets. This just happened to be where the washrooms were, and believe me, getting to them was an adventure.
Today’s parades were Hermes, D’Etat and Morpheus, a total of 71 floats. D’Etat was a lot of fun as they continued their tradition of a satirical-themed procession. This year they poked fun at Toronto’s Rob Ford, New York’s Big Gulp decision and an Aryan Brand -100 % White Sugar Float manned entirely by African American women.
Mayor Rob Ford Satirical float, Krewe of D’Etat
Krewe of D’Etat satirical float ‘Aryan 100% Pure White Sugar’ manned by all black female members
Krewe of D’Etat ‘Big Gulp’
satirical float
Again, we left this parade early because we did not want to be caught in a traffic snarl. We thought getting out of here was difficult yesterday, but it was far worse today. We couldn’t go down all streets because they were too narrow or else vehicles were blocking the way. We had to make many a detour, but finally made it to a Walmart. The GPS was pretty useless, it kept on taking us around in circles and we finally just gave up on it and consulted the map.