Ducks, Drives, and Everything in Between

Belle Chasse, LA (About 20 miles south of New Orleans)
Hello Friends!

Greetings from the Pelican State! I write to you from another room in the long line of Navy Inn's I will be staying on this tour. I am happy to report that I have not seen nor been stung by a wasp since arriving on this installation. Things are looking up. Let's back track shall we.

Friday after rehearsal Mandi and I headed into Memphis, TN to see the sights of the city. The sights of Memphis being Beale Street and the Peabody Ducks. For those not familiar with the Peabody ducks, the short story is as follows: back in the day two drunk hunters thought it would be fun to put live ducks in the fountain of the fanciest hotel in Memphis. When they staggered out of bed the next day the ducks had drawn quite a crowd and the rest is history. Here is the long version. It was a lot of fun to see a packed lobby and an entertaining Emcee tells us the history of the ducks and their lives, and sure enough, at five o'clock the ducks walked the red carpet and were escorted to an elevator and taken to their duck palace on the top floor. It was rad.

Beale street was only a block away and little did we know that it is was s smaller version Bourbon Street. The sidewalks were lined with with beer vendors while restaurant barkers tried to coherse us into their establishemnts. Every place had live blues of some form playing and police were everywhere (this was around 5:30 on a Friday night and things were starting to get busy). We didn't stay too long and choose to eat elsewhere. However it is defianetly a place I would like to experince when I can stay for awhile and not have a cast of a children waiting to work with in the morning.

Our first week of Beauty Lou and the Country Beast went very well. Mandi did a great job on-stage for her first outing as Buckaroo Bonnie (I will be Buckaroo Bob in a few weeks, that's going to look great on the old acting resume!) and the kids, while a very young cast, did quite well. Mandi and I enjoyed a nice evening of pizza and Tim Burton movies on TV but not before I was stung AGAIN! Ugh... wasps...

Sunday we headed to Graceland (it was on the way), home of one Elvis Presley. It would have been $35 each for us to go in. So we went to the free gift shop and promptly left. I recommend you do the same.

We then went south on I-55 to New Orleans and ultimately Belle Chasse. I have been to Louisiana before and I am still amazed at how different the landscape is down here. A good chunk of 55 (and I-10) in Louisiana near New Orleans is on an elevate highway over bayous, it is wonderful. Our contact meet us at the gate and we got settled in our rooms nicely, we even got nice SWAG bags full of goodies such as mints, a coffee mug, totes and so on. SWAG standing for Stuff We All Get that is usually associated with expos when you collect a lot of free stuff, I have had to explain the term a lot these past few days (The more you know!) It made us feel very welcome and with one day done, the week is off to a great start.

This week we will be going to the Big Easy and seeing the sights and experiencing some wonderful thunderstorms and Cajun eats and we even may see our first sights of some oil spill. Anyone heard about this?

The Adventure Continues - ML