Day Five

Today was a beautiful day, weather-ise and otherwise.   We drove into Mandeville, the next town over, still this side of Ponchetrain Causeway--I've loved Mandeville for fifty years.  It's changed a lot since we first rode through it all those years ago, but it's still very special to sit in the gazebo beside the lake, sea gulls and geese flying over.

From Mandeville, we went to Madisonville, a tiny little town we loved. Here we are at a road house by the lake--I stopped because the building was adorned with a beautiful necklace of crab trap floats, strung together:

We had yummy dessert at a restaurant in Madisonville--where we met adorable pink-haired Lily who advised us to drive thirty miles to Abita Springs, her hometown.

Abita Springs was beautiful, pristine, friendly.  A woman we met there told us about a restaurant back in Covington where we had Betty's early birthday dinner.  If you're ever traveling through this area, be sure to dine at Chimes--where this is the swamp view from the patio and the grilled catfish is super good!

"I wonder," Betty mused.  "Why is it you are always the one with three cameras and I'm the one who remembers an umbrella?"

These are the kinds of philosophical questions we have been having for at least sixty years!