{"id":15969,"date":"2026-02-11T15:04:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T20:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=15969"},"modified":"2026-02-11T15:05:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T20:05:32","slug":"carnival-liberty-day-1-lehigh-acres-fl-to-gretna-la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/11\/carnival-liberty-day-1-lehigh-acres-fl-to-gretna-la\/","title":{"rendered":"Carnival Liberty Day 1: Lehigh Acres FL to Gretna LA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Carnival Liberty<\/em> Day 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Unlike every other cruise we have taken, this one started with an all-day drive to the port. It was 805 miles via FL 884, I-75, I-10 and US 90. It included a short detour to drop off Becky in Ft Myers where she will be cared for by a friend (and will socialize with another small dog). The trip, door-to-door, took just about 13 hours, thanks to two bio\/food breaks (breakfast and lunch) and a 20-minute delay for a nasty accident near Pensacola. But it was a smooth trip, thanks to the new tires and front-end alignment on Marlene’s Toyota Camry. The weather was good and the traffic was not bad, except for the accident backup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marlene had packed a lot of hard-boiled eggs, chicken salad and crackers. We had those for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And we each brought a big mug of coffee. No tolls and no meal costs, so the total cost for Day 1 was gasoline. And even that wasn’t bad. The Camry averaged over 34 miles per gallon and the price of gas at our fillup was $2.62. Not bad at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our destination in Gretna was the Econolodge<\/a>. This is a hotel which shows its age. It isn’t luxurious (e.g., the toilet seat was cracked). But it is well-maintained, the bed was comfortable and the TV had a lot of channels. And they agreed to keep our car until we returned for the low, low price of $10 per day. Not bad considering this was Mardi Gras season – the busiest time of year for tourism in New Orleans. I didn’t realize it but the festivities start a couple of weeks before Fat Tuesday. There was a big parade in New Orleans before we arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlike every other cruise we have taken, this one started with an all-day drive to the port. It was 805 miles via FL 884, I-75, I-10 and US 90. It included a short detour to drop off Becky in Ft Myers where she will be cared for by a friend (and will socialize with another … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[114,41,62,106,19,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise","category-fl","category-food","category-hotels","category-places-la","category-routes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-49z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15969"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15973,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15969\/revisions\/15973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}