New Orleans - Post Mardi Gras

We rolled into New Orleans (NOLA) on February 24th, having timed our arrival to ensure we avoided NOLA's infamous Mardi Gras celebrations.  While it would have been awesome to see the parades, Krewes dancing and hear all the music, the crowds would have overwhelmed us.  We found a RV park about 6 miles out of the French Quarter along a boat canal that was quiet and spacious.  In addition to seeing some yachts and smaller boats come in from the Intercoastal route, we got to see rowing crews from Tulane out on their early morning practices.  The park offered a regular, inexpensive shuttle into the French Quarter, which allowed us to avoid driving the Rv into the city.  Fergus liked the RV park because it had a big, fenced dog run and he could play ball several times a day.  Oh, happy dog.  

We went into NOLA each day for several hours (time-limited due to the dogs being left inside the RV) and explored various parts of the city including the Garden District and the French Quarter.  On our first day, we took the 'on-off' tourist bus that drove us around several areas of the city and gave us ideas on where we wanted to explore.  We devoted one day to visit the National World War II Museum, which was both interesting and overwhelming.  My father fought with the 29th Infantry and was part of the Normandy invasion on D-day, so the visit felt 'personal'.  Wish I knew more about his service in France, Belgium and Germany during WWII.  

We enjoyed the sights, food, the architecture, people watching, and the music of New Orleans.  We always headed back to our RV park mid- to late-afternoon, so our visit was most likely subdued compared to many other folks.  Weather was perfect, too, so no complaints other than that drivers in NOLA gave no credence to the law requiring they stop for pedestrians in marked crosswalks.  (We note that several of those drivers were from Texas).  

We had thought about spending a little more time in the Slidell - Covington area of Louisiana across the Lake, but decided to head west and north to Natchez and Vicksburg, Mississippi. This involved a drive across Lake Pontchartrain via the 23.8 mile Causeway - the longest bridge in the USA.  One source on the internet noted that for 8 of it's (almost) 24 miles one cannot see any land in any direction.  We can attest to that - a tiny bit unnerving!  Speaking of bridges, we forgot to mention in our previous blog that enroute to New Orleans, we drove over the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge.  That bridge, at 18.2 miles, takes the I-10 freeway over the Atchafalaya River and the largest swamp in the USA.  Who knew!?   And now, more adventures await us in Mississippi.

  Jackson Square & St. Louis Cathedral

 The French Market - French Quarter

 Dat Cat Cafe - Garden District

 Tomb sculpture - Lafayette Cemetery - Garden District

 Tomb of Orphan Boys with offerings

 Garden district house

 Mansion in the Garden District

 The French Quarter - St. Peter's Street

 Shuttered window with flowers in French Quarter

 NOLA Streetcar

 Mansion in Garden District where movie "Benjamin Button" was filmed

 French Quarter

 Voodoo shop window

 French Quarter architecture

 Jim's suggested choice for Lynne's lingerie (hahahaha!)

 Natchez Paddlewheel Boat on the Mississippi

 Redneck Limo in the French Quarter

 French Quarter cafe

 Door detail in the French Quarter

Cajun Country explorations

We made a brief stop in Opelousas on our way to the Lafayette area.  Opelousas is the self-proclaimed Zydeco Capital of the World and the Spice Capital of Louisiana.  Who are we to question those claims?  We drove through the historic downtown, then stopped at Le Vieux village, a collection of authentic and historic buildings from the area.  The old train station housed the Louisiana Orphan Train Museum, which we toured, guided by a nun who's father had been on one of the orphan trains to Louisiana.  Although we knew about the orphan trains, we didn't realize those children, who were not all orphans, were distributed to almost all the states between 1854 and 1929.  

We skirted into and out of Lafayette (should have avoided it entirely, but once again, I got us lost!), and found our RV park on the outskirts of Breaux Bridge.  This town was initially established in 1829 along the Bayou Teche.  Its name originates from the Breaux family who built the original bridge(s) across the Bayou.  The Louisiana legislature officially designated Breaux Bridge as the "Crawfish Capital of the World."   It is said that crawfish étouffée was originally created in this little town.

After exploring Breaux Bridge, we drove south to St. Martinville, which was settled in 1765 and incorporated in 1817.  It is noted as 'the birthplace of Acadiana" and was made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1897 poem "Evangeline".  Neither of us ever remember having read nor heard of it.  Regardless, we stopped at the Longfellow-Evangline State Historic Site which had a lovely interpretive center that explained the history of the Acadians, their expulsion from Nova Scotia (by the Brits) in 1755 and their subsequent arrival in what was French Louisiana in the late 1700's.  The park also contained the Olivier Plantation Home,  built in 1815, which was nicely restored and furnished with period pieces.  

The town of St. Martinville has a lovely town square in which the church of St. Martins de Tours dominates.  There are several historic old buildings that line the streets surrounding the square.  It also hosts a lovely old oak tree called the Longfellow Evangeline tree along the BayouTeche. We decided to have lunch here and enjoyed crawfish étouffée with grilled catfish and shrimp gumbo - all of which was delicious.   

On Sunday, we drove south through Lafayette to Avery Island in order to visit the Tabasco Factory.  We spent about 3 hours there, touring their museum, the factory and the "Jungle", a lovely garden area created by the McIlhenry family many years ago.  As it was Sunday, the factory wasn't working, but we learned much about their process of making their famous hot sauce.  On our Jungle tour, we got to see alligators, lots of snowy egrets, bamboo, beautiful, huge cypress trees with their lovely Spanish moss and lots of camelias in bloom and some azaleas in bloom.  We missed (??) seeing any bears or cougars, which was just fine since the dogs were allowed to walk with us.  We kept them on a short leash and far away from the lagoons with alligators.  We enjoyed lunch at Tabasco's cafe - and sampled several sauces new to us, before buying a couple of bottles of sauce and heading back to Breaux Bridge via the back roads again.  We drove through New Iberia that had quite a lovely historic downtown area and an antebellum mansion (closed on Sunday), providing a scenic exit to the area.    A nice day along the bayou - again.  

We ended our bayou visit with a stay outside Baton Rouge.  The weather turned bad and it was pouring rain when we drove through the capital city.  Aside from quick stops at Louisiana's only Trader Joe's store and a Costco stop, we decided to skip a visit to Baton Rouge.  We went directly to a KOA campground in Denham Springs, about 8 miles east of Baton Rouge - just in time to hear about potential tornado weather predicted for the next day, February 23rd.  

On that Tuesday, we listened to the heavy rain and NPR when the weather service listed Denham Springs as being part of a tornado warning. We packed up all our electronics, a can of dog food and a single bottle of water ('duh' in hindsight), leashed up the dogs and headed towards the KOA office.  Along with two other couples, we waited out the storm, grateful when the storm passed without an actual tornado touching down in our immediate area. Later in the day, however, we learned that a tornado did touch down in a trailer/RV park and killed at least two people.  The evening news confirmed that 9 tornadoes touched down around several areas that day.  

Once again, we were grateful to have been spared.  It was interesting that we determined our  electronic devices and the dogs were the most important things we wanted to save.  We didn't bother with bringing any clothes, thinking if there was a disaster, the Salvation Army or Red Cross would help us out.  (Isn't that why we send them periodic donations?) It was a helpless feeling, knowing that Tiny Tin, our 'home', could have easily been destroyed - and I'm convinced that the KOA office would not have offered sufficient shelter for anyone had a twister touched down there.  We were shocked, too, that this area didn't have any sirens to alert folks about tornado warnings, but perhaps that's old technology these days?  We did learn, however, that our cell phone issued an alert and advised evacuation.   As Luddites, we didn't know it would do that!

We're now in New Orleans, getting ready to see the 'Big Easy', post Katrina.  

Opelusas' Hall of Fame

 Opelusas' Orphan Train Museum

 Opelusas' LeVieux Village

 The bridge in Breaux Bridge

 Historic Downtown Breaux Bridge

 Mansion in Breaux Bridge

 St. Bernard's Catholic Church - Breaux Bridge

 Olivier Plantation - St. Martinville

 Longfellow - Evangeline Oak - in St. Martinville

 St. Martin de Tours - St. Martinville

 Historic downtown St. Martinville

 The Tabasco Factory - Avery Island

 Tabasco Art (ala Warhol?)

 Tabasco Art - outsize bottles of hot sauces

 Alligator at Tabasco's Jungle Garden

 Snowy Egret and turtles at Tabasco's Jungle Gardens

 Snowy egrets - Tabasco's Jungle Gardens

Bon Temps in Louisiana!

One of our strategies on this adventure is to use the internet to find possible destinations to figure out where we should visit, and things to do and/or eat.  Thanks to Google, we discovered the small town of Natchitoches near the center of Louisiana.  Contrary to our guess, the town is pronounced "nack-a-tish", although we occasionally heard it pronounced "nack-a-tosh". Anyway, the moment we drove into it's historic downtown, we both said, "Wow!"  It was nothing less than charming and beautiful.  

Natchitoches is touted as the oldest city in Louisiana, part of a French colony founded in 1714.  We also learned the town was the setting for the movie "Steel Magnolias".  It is situated  along the banks of the Cane River and Lake.  When the city  was founded, it was on the banks of the Red River, however, in the 1830's, there was a massive log jam which made the river un-navigable.  A flood occurred during this time and caused the Red River to change its course, leaving a 36 mile-long oxbow lake now called the Cane River. This isolation from the newly navigable Red River apparently helped to preserve the charm and diverse culture of the old city of Natchitoches.  

We enjoyed exploring the historic downtown and tried out the meat pies for which Nachitoches is famous and other Southern food (crawfish etouffe, red beans & rice).  We even shopped a tiny bit during a major storm that presented thunder, lightening and heavy rain that lasted about an hour. (nothing like ducking into a shop during the rain and feeling obligated to buy something!)  My favorite shop was the Kaffie-Frederick store, a hardware or general store that is also touted as the oldest in Louisiana.  Hardware and grocery stores are always our favorite places to shop!

We meandered around the town, seeing some of the lovely old homes - including a couple used in the movie.  Many of the larger historic homes are operating as B&B's.  We also made a quick stop at the American Cemetery, which is - you guessed it - the oldest in Louisiana.  We spent another day driving down the Cane River road to see several old plantations, although only three were open to the public.  The Oakland and Magnolia Plantations are actually part of the Creole National Historical Park and the Melrose Plantation is privately operated by the local historical society.   We also stopped at the St. Augustine Catholic Church.  The Melrose Plantation and St. Augustine's were both founded by 'persons of color', i.e. the children of slave Marie Therese Coincoin.  Ms. Coincoin had 14 children, 10 of whom were African-French blood.  She and several of her children were later sold to Thomas Pierre Metoyer who later freed her and her children.  She and her sons later received several land grants and one of her sons built the Melrose plantation and St. Augustine's church, which was the first Catholic church in the USA built by and for 'people of color'.  

We had mixed feelings about touring the plantations - the history of slavery in our country is so horrible and shameful, but it is our history.  We sometimes felt the ghosts of the past as we walked around these properties, especially when Jim reminded me that Cliven Bundy was noted to have suggested that African-Americans were "..better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things.." a frightening suggestion for most of us.  


We have been struck by the open and welcome friendliness of virtually everyone we've met since our arrival in Louisiana.  They're curious, friendly and quite chatty!  In less than 5 minutes after arriving at our Natchitoches RV park, we knew our immediate neighbor, John, his occupation and where he worked and who our other neighbors were, who the RV park owner was and then gave us several recommendations on where to eat!  

Next off to Breaux Bridge, in the heart of Cajun country.

The Rocque House - on the banks of the Cane River

A view of downtown Natchitoches from the Cane River

A side street downtown Natchitoches

The Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception

Trinity Episcopal church

The Laysone Cafe (famous for meat pies)

The Kaffie-Frederick hardware/general store

Beau Jardin - along the river

Front Street (the main downtown street)

Front Street

A view of Front Street from the south

The Taylor House (used as a location in Steel Magnolias - now a B&B)

Old oak trees with 'resurrection ferns' on them at the Oakland Plantation

Interior of the Oakland Plantation store - opened after the Civil War for sharecroppers (former slaves)

Sharecropper's home at the Oakland Plantation

St. Augustine's Catholic church on Isle Breville

African House - on Melrose Plantation

Yucca House - first structure built on Melrose Plantation

The Main House - Melrose Plantation

HUGE Live Oak in front of Melrose Plantation