I will do a long post with some nice photos tomorrow. Once I shut down this morning I won’t have connectivity until Saturday afternoon. I made it into Mandeville, Louisiana yesterday, took care of some family business with my brother, and enjoyed a couple of cold beers at the Old Rail Brewing Company which is actually new – it was opened about nine months ago. I am staying at the MarVilla Guest House, a charming old house within sight (from the corner) of Lake Ponchatrain. We prefer this place because it is within walking distance of multiple restaurants as well as the lake, close to my brother and sister-in-law’s house and is charming in that old house way. Oh yes, and of course I took my brother and sister-in-law to dinner at Novolari’s, one of the nearby restaurants that we very much enjoy.

I’ll leave shortly to head north for my aunt’s house up in Sabine Parish and arrive there at some point this afternoon. I’ll visit with that branch of the family and stay overnight before I then make a very short drive to Natchitoches. By the way, Natchitoches, where we lived from when I was in the 4th grade until I graduated from Northwestern (now a part of the LSU system), is one of four town that I used to create the fictional town of Wallington, GA for the Small Town series of quilting novels. It is also where the movie “Steel Magnolias” and others were filmed. Okay, time to post this and get packed up for the next leg of the trip.