The whole trip originated to celebrate Hope and Tom's 50th wedding anniversary. Since Tom's family had always spent a lot of time in New Orleans, that was a very natural place for all the cousins to get together.
Ron flew first to Huntsville to spend a day with Uncle John and Lil. Lil rented a car so that Ron and Lil could take the first leg of the trip to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. There we met up with Gary Grubbs and his wife Glenda at their home. Gary is a well known Hollywood actor known for the recent Parklands and my favorite No One Lives. Glenda is known in the south for being Miss Mississippi 1972. Gary showed us around Hattiesburg which was known as the Hub City of the South in its time, because of the railroads that went thru it. Gary just happened to get notice of a movie audition while we were there so he did it right from his home. Glenda spoke "off stage" to Gary. Lil held up cue cards for Gary. Ron took some movies of his own.
Since Gary had some further auditioning to do in Hollywood, he drove with Lil and Ron to New Orleans and showed us around a bit before we took him to the New Orleans airport.
Finally Lil and Ron met up with the cousins. We had Hope and Tom Olson. Also Cindy Kramp and her daughter Tina. Tina brought her kids Simon and Kayla. And of course Barb Hill. We all stayed at hotels on St Charles street which is a couple of miles away from downtown New Orleans. We were there about a week before the official Mardi Gras season but they do lots of Mardi Gras like parades long before the regular season. During the day we all mingled around Jackson Square with its many eating and art attractions. At night we took in two of the Mardi Gras type parades.
Ron left a day before the rest of the crew. He needed to rest up for a day in California before his next trip to South America!