Feb 28th to Mar 2nd - MS, LA, TX

Feb 28th - Sat - Picayune
Some chores this morning including putting dinner in the crock pot and then Terry & I went back to the Hollywood casino in Bay St Louis (Terry was bored!). Not much change in our (bad) luck but Terry did get back $20 when we had to leave so he didn’t have a chance to lose it.
The reason that we had to leave was that we had invited the others to dinner since we are going separate ways tomorrow. I made a chicken/black bean/corn/salsa main dish, Carie brought hummus and rice and Lauri made salad with shrimp so we had a great dinner.

Mar 1st - Sun - to Kinder LA
We left this morning without a definite destination - we just had to stay in Louisiana for one night to get the last state on our map. While we were driving, I found an RV park beside a casino (Coushatta) just north of Kinder that advertised “pay for one night, get one night free”. Can’t turn down free so we got off I10 and stopped for diesel before getting to the park. Terry noticed that the tires on the right side of the 5th wheel were almost touching each other. When he had a look, he could see a bent bracket holding the rocker arm that holds the springs.
We checked into the very nice RV park and got a phone number from them for a welder in Kinder. Of course we didn’t expect to contact anyone since it was Sunday so we left a message and went to the large casino. I think our negative mental state because of the 5th wheel acted on the slot machines as we didn’t do well at all! Back in the rig we had a choice of 3 terrible programs on TV so I finally got my pictures sorted out, labeled and ready for the internet.
Across the lower part of Louisiana on I10 are many miles of elevated highways (“bridges”) over swampy areas. As we traveled west, more green in grass and trees started showing up along with lots of yellow flowers.

Mar 2nd - Mon - to Beaumont TX
It got very cold last night (heavy frost on the hood of the truck) and we ran out of propane in one tank so Terry had to go out and switch tanks so we could warm up the rig enough to get out of our nice warm bed. The welder called back just after 8 and said to come in at 10. I had time to finish posting pictures to the internet. It was about 10 miles away and even with careful driving we were there early but he was ready for us.
They had to remove the tires to work on the part and the lug nuts were difficult to remove - glad we didn’t have a flat on the road somewhere. I sat in the truck and read while the work was being done and kept seeing dollar signs as each half hour passed. They finished just after noon and Terry got a very pleasant surprise when he asked how much he owed - $80!!!! Terry gave him $100 and said thank you very much!
We decided not to go back to the casino for our free night and headed for Texas. Billy & Lauri were going to stay for 2 nights in Beaumont so we called the Gulf Coast RV park and joined them.
The weather is still cool and breezy. The forecasters keep promising that it is going to warm up - I guess it will sometime!