Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Stuart Lake Rec Area (NFS), Pollock, LA - Nov 17-19
This pretty primitive CG is located about 20 miles north of Willie's cousins and our friends Joe & Marilyn Black, who live in Pineville, LA (right next to Alexandria). The sites all were located deep in tall pines, so we decided to try camping in a parking area with more solar exposure. The clouds were so thick it was hard to tell if it would help. We hoped it would be permissable to camp here since there was no ranger to ask and no way of finding one. The weather turned really bad that night, and the next day we learned that a tornado had touched down quite close by. We had hoped we were out of "tornado territory"! We had a wonderful visit with Joe & Marilyn, enjoying their company and also the fabulous Chocolate Pie that Marilyn is famous for. We did some interesting sightseeing, visiting the River Oaks Square Arts Center in Alexandria, with works of local artists on display, plus studios where you can see works in progress. We also took a lovely drive past Kent Plantation and Tyrone Plantation, plus some lovely newly constructed "mansions". We got a private tour by a friend of Joe & Marilyn's of the unusual Emmanuel Baptist Church -- unusual for several reasons. First, it is in a Gothic style, and secondly, it has figured stained-glass windows -- 27 beautiful stained-glass windows with antique glass imported from Scotland. There is also a full pipe organ which was demonstrated for us.Unfortunately, just as the sun came out and we verified that we would have good solar in our "illegal" parking place, we got word from the ranger (by way of a very sweet note from Bobby Joe Ray, an assistant to the ranger) that we would have to move. Since our battery had not had time to get fully charged, we did not think it would last two more nights in the woods, so we had to give up and move to electric hookups.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 11:27 PM 
