R and J in the USA

If there is any experience in these United States that is worth a “People Along the Way” post, it’s Mardi Gras, baby.

Mardi Gras is the ultimate people watching, people interacting, people along the way experience.

We put significant effort into getting ourselves in New Orleans to be there during the famous festival. Instead of driving from Texas through the rest of the Gulf States and then zig zagging our way back up north, we took a loopy route, swinging up from Texas through Arkansas and Oklahoma to Missouri and then over through Tennessee into the Carolinas and down through Georgia and Florida and then BACK west to Louisiana…all so we could end up in Louisiana in early March. 

We just didn’t think we could travel all of these 50 states and miss Mardi Gras.

In our original itinerary (come to think of it, version 2, 3, 4 and 5 also) we were going to be in New Orleans for four days of the Mardi Gras festival. In our necessary research (being from New York State, all we really knew of Mardi Gras was its reputation, no real details) we learned that the biggest and best days to be there for the parades and celebrations was the weekend before Lundi Gras (Fat Monday) and Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). As our itinerary started to draw out, first in Hawaii and then a few more days here and there over the next 8 states, we realized we were running late for Mardi Gras. We made one more rearrangement and decided to go right from Florida to Louisiana (as opposed to our original plan which had us stopping in Alabama on the way) to get there in time for the festivities. Even with that change, we didn’t arrive in Louisiana until March 3rd, on the afternoon of Lundi Gras. That meant we would have exactly one day to take in the famous festival – but, if we were only going to be there for one, this is the one we would choose – the actual Mardi Gras – Fat Tuesday itself.

And it did not disappoint.

When we arrived at our RV spot, we were already excited for a special 50 states tour luxury that awaited us. It was a minimum 3-night stay and we were looking forward to every single one of those nights. 3 nights in the same place is a true and rare treat on this trip. We were even more excited when we found out that our RV resort that was about 15 minutes north of the French Quarter had a shuttle that went to and from the French Quarter and had a special schedule for Mardi Gras day, with the first shuttle leaving bright and early at 7:00 AM. The first parade of the day, the Zulu parade, was meant to start at 7:00 AM, though, thanks to a strong wind advisory for the day’s weather, they actually started at 6:30 AM.

This is when we realized how truly seriously New Orleans takes Mardi Gras. We’d never even heard of, let alone been to, a party that starts at 6:30 AM. They do not mess around in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. 

Our shuttle bus driver was Adam, a lovely gentleman that was smart enough to realize he could make a full-time living offering shuttle service from this RV resort to the French Quarter.

One of the neat parts of Mardi Gras, we learned first thing in the morning. 

Mardi Gras is a team sport.

When the 8 of us RV park folk got in the shuttle for our trip to the French Quarter, there was an instant feeling of camaraderie, like we were going on a shared adventure, despite the fact that we had never met each other before that moment. 2 folks in the shuttle were from Amsterdam. 3 were from Maine, 1 was from Pennsylvania and then there were us 2 folks from upstate New York. And, of course, Adam, our fearless leader in the driver’s seat. By the time we had gotten in the shuttle, we had already had about 10 minutes to chat with Art, a gentleman from Pennsylvania. We enjoyed talking travel, Mardi Gras, and life adventures as we waited with him for the shuttle. It turns out, Art knew his stuff. He got us set up with the parade app so we could keep track of what parades were happening and where and when. We chatted about geographic regional pronunciations with our new teammates from Maine. They could tell a foreigner (meaning, a non-Mainer) right away when they heard mention of the town of Bangor. We pronounced it “Banger”, but folks in Maine pronounce it “Bang-gore”. (And Mainers really wish you’d get it right.)

By the time the shuttle dropped us all off at the French Market, we had become like a little Mardi Gras krewe, ready to take on the day as a unit. With Art’s leadership, we all made our way to the trolley.

When it was time to get off the trolley, the vibe turned into a slightly awkward to navigate mixture of loyalty to the group thanks to our shared purpose – to have a blast at Mardi Gras – and our united RV park origins coming into contact with the reality that we were, in fact, all strangers and had come here with our independence and autonomous intentions.  We had all only just met each other 20 minutes ago and none of us traveled all of this way to spend Mardi Gras with each other specifically. Eventually, the independence won out as we all, fairly unceremoniously, drifted off in our own individual directions to have our own experiences in this grand festival.

And a grand festival it was! Where to begin to describe the people along the way through the parades and festivals of Mardi Gras?!

There was the couple from Ohio that was just next to us at our first stop to watch the Zulu parade. It was their first time at Mardi Gras too, though they had clearly been there for days as they fit right into the parade scene. 

Then, there were all of the policemen and national guard folks with big guns standing their posts throughout the parade route and up and down Bourbon Street. They looked serious and focused, but would also easily crack smiles as they took in the scene themselves. Julie made sure to say, “Thank you,” as we passed each one. Reading the news over the last, well, 30 years, it’s hard not to be aware that a joyful and famous gathering of a lot of people in America is something that can turn into a tragic target for the angry and disaffected in this world. We were reminded of that when we visited the Louisiana State Museum in Jackson Square and saw the memorial for the 14 people killed only months before in New Orleans at the city’s New Year’s celebration. We were grateful for those making sure that this raucous and festive scene was as safe as possible. 

Then, at our second chosen spot on the parade route there were the two girls next to us that caught just about everything that came our direction from the floats passing by. For those that don’t know much about it, the Mardi Gras parade is a spectacle. There are marching bands with dancers followed by dozens of floats – big floats pulled by tractors, ornate floats with statues and banners and streamers and thrones. They are multi-level thrones. Not only are the floats spectacular and filled with spectacularly costumed people, those spectacularly costumed people are throwing spectacular amounts of STUFF into the whooping and hollering crowds! That stuff includes strands of Mardi Gras beads in multiple colors and quantities. Gold. Purple. Green. Black. Single strands, handfuls of strands, sealed packing bags with dozens of densely packed strands and they fill the trees and the streets in addition to being hung around the necks of those that catch them. There are painted, hollowed out coconut shells, one of which Ryan got smacked with right on the noggin…but caught it nonetheless. There are wiffle ball bats, mini footballs, frisbees, toy swords and just about anything you can think of that could be hurled off of a moving float into a crowd of eager hands stretched out from the throngs of people gathered along the parade route to catch them.

These objects passing from float to crowd created a physical connection between the people in the parade and the people on the ground, making the people part of the parade. That’s part of the magic of a Mardi Gras parade. You’re not watching it. You’re in it.

We had done our research and brought bags to stuff things in. Some folks brought rolling wagons for all of their spoils. 

Catching goodies was a huge part of the fun. And it was striking how well it worked. There are reams of human sardines packed along the parade routes and goodies just flying through the air. It is like a constant foul ball in the stands at a baseball game. Every item that flies through the air has a pile of hands that lean in to get them. You would think this could and maybe even would devolve into fights and tugs-of-war with so many people and so much excitement and a collective case of the gimmees.

Well, you can add this into the pile of “hope for humanity” list. It was about as civil as could be.

There were many things that landed in more than one set of hands, but folks were cooperative and generous with each other, at least where we were standing. 

The girls next to us that were so good at catching and grabbing caught a big bag of beads. They opened the bag and offered us half of their newly claimed beads. This was our very first bit of loot and we were super excited to finally make it official and become adorned in Mardi Gras fare. Up until that moment, we had been in a desert of loot despite it flying every which way above our heads. 

Now, with a few beads around our necks, thanks to the girls’ generosity, the magical Mardi Gras switch had flipped and, all of a sudden, we started catching stuff too! Ryan got clocked in the head with a coconut, but he still managed to snag it. And before we knew it, we were getting to pay it forward. There were two little kids with their family to our left and, every once in a while, we saw their hands reaching towards something we caught. The vertical odds were against them and we made it a point to be their wing people. We’d catch some things and swing them behind us to this little boy. His elation at each bit of loot we nabbed for him was worth way more than whatever plastic toy we were transferring to him. And we still had no shortage for ourselves. 

Generosity aside, when Julie saw those stuffed animals flying through the air, she started salivating.

“I want one stuffed animal and a hula hoop.” Julie said to Ryan with greedy focus.

A small stuffed animal shot our way and Ryan’s hand met with the woman’s hand in front of him. This particular woman was a little more cutthroat than the rest. She came to get some goodies. Ever being the gentleman, Ryan let the woman have the stuffed animal that they both had hands on. It turns out, Ryan’s act of generosity became partially responsible for the climactic moment of Julie’s day.

Before too long, Julie looked up and saw a HUGE white bear soaring through the air in all of its teddy-bear glory overhead. And it was coming right for us. Julie’s eyes bulged with excitement and she reached up her hand and got a hold of the belly of the bear. There was a teenager next to us that had gotten a hand on its foot and that woman in front of us that Ryan had recently surrendered that small stuffed animal to had gotten a piece of the bear’s hand. 

There was a short moment of tug on the beautiful white bear. In the moments that followed, the unspoken rules of Mardi Gras catching were executed with a judicial precision that was awesome to witness. Julie’s grip was clearly the most central and complete. There would be no arguments from any outside witness who was the rightful catcher of the bear and Julie knew it. The teenager to the left struggled to surrender the tremendous prize. Her mother popped in and made it clear that the unspoken rules must be honored. The woman in front of us had two rules working against her for the take. She had only a peripheral claim on the bear, and she had just been the recipient of the last double gripped surrender from Ryan. 

In any other instant, and in every other instant, in such double grip cases, Julie had always immediately surrendered, enjoying the act of giving more than the act of claiming, and often giving away what she caught to those more vertically challenged than she. 

But the second she had laid eyes on this big white bear, it was clear, there was a line where her generosity would stop, and this was it. As long as she could claim it in good conscience that she was the rightful catcher, Julie was holding onto this bear.

Anyone who knows Julie knows she LOVES to give gifts and that much of the loot we caught at Mardi Gras, the whole time, she was thinking of all of the friends and children in her life that she was looking forward to passing the goodies onto.

You better believe that bear wasn’t going to anybody else.

For Julie, it was like every single unmet childhood desire was, in one fell swoop, satisfied by the surprise and the synchronicity of that flying cuddly white bear. Every instance where her mother had (wisely) denied Julie a sugar cereal, every moment where she had to (rightfully)share a treat with her sister when she didn’t want to, every audition she didn’t (justifiably) win in her early theater days, every childhood whim unmet that lived somewhere deep in her cellular memory, in that moment, was washed clean and officially laid to rest. Every adult should have such a moment of such pure and childlike satisfaction and joy. Perhaps, if it were possible to shower the world of adults with such magical moments of flying teddy bears, or whatever version of that would suit them, it would seem that the world filled with its squabbling might instantly settle down. Sometimes, it just seems like a decent portion of what goes on in the world between people might have their roots in that pile of childhood pains and unmet whims. Who knows. All we know for sure is, Julie was happy.

Then there were the people in costumes. After the Zulu parade was over, we, like many other folks, headed towards Bourbon Street. There was a mass exodus as people gathered up their bags of goodies and wagons of spoils and headed to Bourbon.

And, on Bourbon street, the party continued with vibrance. There were people on balconies throwing down beads. So many people and so many fun and fantastic costumes. Everywhere you turned, there was some kind of art to be seen or music to be heard.

As we wandered the rest of the day through Bourbon Street, enjoying the wild sights of the crazy costumed folks passing by, we eventually realized that Julie was just as much of a sight worth laughing and gawking at – the grown ass woman holding and cuddling a teddy bear that was about ¾ her size. And Julie loved every single second of it. 

Though Julie had started out the day as decked out like Rosie the Riveter as she could manage with the few costumey items she had on hand, at one point, she disappeared into a shop and emerged transformed and Mardi Gras’d out.

Then there were the religious folk on their microphones encouraging salvation for what we assume they perceived as a den of sin. Having arrived ourselves at 7 something in the morning, we didn’t see much sinning that needed salvation. 

Then we went in and grabbed some New Orleans lunch and, even just that short pause in the action was enough to make the difference between the morning and the afternoon crowd. 

By the time we left our lunch spot and reentered the flow of traffic up and down Bourbon Street, we noticed a subtle, but distinct increase in the debauchery quotient. It was barely 1PM by that point. We had enjoyed our innocent morning fun and are not the types to be as enthused by the raging debauchery we were certain was not too far into the future. There are plenty of family friendly parades and times during Mardi Gras. According to our research, Bourbon Street on the actual night of Mardi Gras is not that time. We had already seen enough nipple glitter by 1PM and we had gotten fully into the clean Mardi Gras spirit and, with almost 7 hours of good times under our belts, we were ready to call it a day before the scene devolved into the more lascivious tones we were sure were on their way as the hours creeped on. 

We headed back to the French Market for our shuttle pick up with big old NOLA smiles on our faces and the Mardi Gras spirit in our hearts.

Adam would be returning for shuttle pickups between 2PM and 4PM. It turns out, he actually arrived early and, by the time we arrived at the pickup spot at 1:50, he had already come and gone with his first shuttle full of people to take them back to the RV resort. He wouldn’t return until 2:20 for his next load.

What is funny is, the group of people that gathered for that random 2:20 pick up – it was our entire group from the morning! And we all reunited like we belonged in one group – each updating everyone on our day’s adventures. 

We’ve been on many shuttles and boats and group endeavors over this trip. And, it is not uncommon to form a group identity in short order as part of the shared experience. But, never before had it occurred quite this quickly and in quite the same way as it did that day in Mardi Gras.

Of course, there was one more seat taken in the shuttle on the way home, thanks to our new travel companion, Mardi G.

We got back to the van and were elated to have the entire rest of the afternoon to sack out and do a whole lot of nothing in the van. Nothing else on the itinerary, no driving, no nothing. Check out Julie’s sweet post-Mardi Gras hula hooping skills.

Knowing we had already had the experience of a lifetime by 3:00 PM, we had no problem sinking deeply into a post-Mardi Gras blissful and slothful stupor. Indeed, sloth would be our only sin of the day, and we enjoyed every second of it.

That’s Mardi Gras, baby!