We finally left Texas on Sunday 1st February; with the sun shining it seemed a good sign. We were heading east on I90 and pulled up at some lights. A family was sat in the back of a pick up truck with a big sign saying ‘Free puppies’. They were 7 weeks old and the most delicious things ever. The kids were begging and begging and Charlie even cried as the man held one up to us as we drove by and raised his eyebrows expectantly!! It was worse than supermarkets putting sweets next to the check out!!
We immediately fell in love with Louisiana. I had read somewhere that it is one of the only places in the USA where you can go and feel ‘abroad’ and I completely agree with that. It felt new and different to everything else we’d seen so far. Our first stop was to Steamboat Bill’s restaurant in Lake Charles. Donna and Lonnie had told us about it back on the ranch as THE place for crawfish and catfish. We pulled up outside at midday and saw that it was so popular it had parking attendants. Pretty impressive for a semi fast food restaurant. (Well in that you order at the counter then it is table service). The food was delicious, gumbo and boiled crawfish were incredible. Immediately noticed the difference in the people around us – the accents, language. So free and chatty, always laughing! Everywhere we went in Southern Louisiana we saw the signs “Laissez les bons temps rouler” – let the good times roll – and everyone there seemed happy and upbeat and in a party mood regardless of the time of day or night. You’ve got to love a place that has drive through Daiquiri Bars. Apparently if you keep the lid on and don’t put a straw in it is perfectly legal. Brilliant!! (The drive through thing here is the States is crazy. Drive through post boxes. Drive through pharmacies. Seriously why can’t you park and get out of your vehicles people!!)
We spent the Sunday afternoon driving the Creole Nature Trail through Louisiana’s ‘outback’. It covers 180 miles of bayous, marshlands and shores along Gulf of Mexico and was one of the first national scenic byways in the USA. It claims to be home to over 400 species of bird, 28 of mammals and 35 amphibians. The only one we were interested in was getting our first glimpse of an alligator. We walked a few of the trails with signs everywhere warning about the alligators and saw not a peek of one.
We crossed the Intracoastal Waterway, which stretches, from Brownsville Texas to New York City at one stage, which was a crazy thought. Part of the trail goes through the Sabine national wildlife refuge, with a boardwalk into the heart of marshland. Despite there being a section called alligator alleyway we still didn’t spot one.
Once we were down onto the coast we went through Holly Beach, which looked like a brand new village. We soon realised these were possibly rebuilds from Hurricanes Katrina, all of them on stilts with fish cleaning stations underneath. The further we drove the more visible damage from Katrina there was. Concrete foundations of houses no longer there. Driveways off the road that led to nowhere. Some of the concrete pads have trailers parked there obviously still serving as makeshift houses. Really terrifying and sad to see the lasting effect still 10 years later. Although at 4′ above sea level it’s easy to understand how it caused such devastation!
We had to take the small ferry over the Calcasieu ship channel where the massive freighter and rigs dwarf the tiny shrimp boats alongside them. We watched porpoises riding the wave from the ships, which was an incredible sight.
Scott and Philip, who we had met back at the ranch and who live in Lake Charles had introduced us to the most delicious sausages called boudin – pork, rice and spices. We had all loved it so they’d told us where to head to get some of this Cajun specialty. So we arrived in the little town of Scott only to discover it was the Boudin Capital of Louisiana. While in the post office I asked them if they could tell me where to find the butchers we’d been recommended – Best Stop. This innocent enquiry for directions ended up in a full discussion between the nice man behind the counter, 3 ladies in the queue and the postman just on his way out the door…. Yes Best Stop does do the best boudin BUT only when they are on form and they are inconsistent…. Now Billy’s Butchers do great boudin but it can give you heartburn… But Bob’s… yes Bob’s was always good but not quite as spicy as Best Stop’s…
What to do?! We decided to stick with our original recommendation and headed to Best Stop – hoping this was one of the day’s when they were making their best!! The car park was full. The line inside was about 20 people long. Most of the people in the carpark were sat eating boudin straight out of the paper. There were 5 people working behind their fresh meat counter. This was definitely the place. We took 5 packs of frozen boudin as well as a huge bag of hot ready to eat – it didn’t last long enough for us to drive out of the car park. Luckily we hadn’t refilled our empty freezer after the repairs so we had plenty of room. Yummy!! 
Louisiana has won the prize for the state with the worst road surface. The van shuddered and creaked as we hit pothole after pothole. It was so bad it bounced a coke can out of its holder 3 times!
We spent the day on Avery Island owned by the McIlhenny family and home of Tabasco. Very interesting place! They found the first rock salt mine in the USA here on the island in 1862, which is as deep as Everest is tall. Edmund McIlhenny started making the sauce here on the island with the salt from the mine and some capsicum peppers from his vegetable garden, which he mashed up and left to sit for 30 days. That was 140 years ago. The sauce is still made here. Only now they leave the potent mash for 3 years. Supposedly a family member selects the seeds for each of the plants used to grow the peppers (not all here on the island now) and then the pickers use the Petit Baton Rouge which serves as a guide to the exact shade of red the peppers should be!!
We toured the factory and sniffed the ‘mash’, which was eye watering. Great stories about the clever marketing of this famous sauce. They placed a miniature bottle in the ration packs for all soldiers during the Vietnam War and it always goes in the NASA food packs up into space. We then sampled at least 20 varieties including ice cream, which was delicious.
The McIlhenny family still live on the island and Edmund’s Great grandson, Paul is president of company. Edmunds’ son was a naturalist. So the other attraction on the island is down to him. They have a Jungle Gardens and Bird Sanctuary a 170-acre garden with semitropical foliage & abundant wildlife. He built an aviary here over 100 years ago to prevent snowy egret from extinction. They were being hunted into extinction for their plumage so he captured and raised 8 wild egrets. Raised hatches then freed them to migrate. They came back in the spring and have done every year since. Again there were big signs warning about alligators. Not a sniff of one – despite dangling Charlie over the edge.
On Tuesday we went to the National Park Service’s Acadian Culture Centre. They have 6 or so different centres across the area that highlights different parts of the Acadian culture. This one tells stories of the origins, migration, settlement, and contemporary culture of the Acadians (which is where the word Cajun comes from). Highlight for the kids was discovering that the beautiful Spanish moss that hangs from all the trees round here used to be used as loo roll!! Its other uses include being mixed with silt to make bricks and as a mattress stuffing till after WWII they got rubber!
We had lunch in a mad looking place on the side of the road called Spuddy’s Cajun Restaurant. It was basically Spuddy’s house. We went into the toilets and it still had a working bath in it!! But the food was great. Gumbo – Yumbo!!
That afternoon we visited Oak Alley Plantation. Close your eyes and picture it… white-pillared house, standing in lush gardens and trees dripping with Spanish moss?!? Yep that is the one. It is EXACTLY how I thought a plantation estate would look. There were over 150 working plantations along Plantation Alley, the Great River Road, from Baton Rouge to New Orleans along the Mississippi River all working sugar plantations.
The one we visited was actually named Bon Sejours. It was nicknamed Oak Alley by the boat captains that made their way up and down the river between these 2 cities and used the houses as markers of distance. They called it this because of the avenue of oak trees that leads to the front of the house. The house has been used in countless films, including Interview with a Vampire.
On a very grey and drizzly day we took the tour around the house and grounds, which includes a recreation of the slave quarters, as they would have been. A stark contrast in the accommodations was just the beginning of an insight into the horrendous injustices and cruelty that took place here and in countless other estates in this area.
Here they had 198 slaves with a total ‘value’ of $1.3 million. One slave was ‘gifted’ his freedom after the death of the mistress of the house. He continued to work so save up to ‘buy’ his wife for $350. But even then they remained on the plantation, as their sons were still slaves there. Aside from a an exhibit of shackles and ‘tools’ and a series of newspaper clippings which seem truly incredible in their content, much of the reality of slavery is glossed over here. But not so much that the boys didn’t come away incredulous and questioning us endlessly on the subject for days afterwards.
Inside the house, costumed docents walked a tour group round explaining how life would have been for those lucky enough to be born in the house! Now I can’t be sure I actually heard her right but I’m sure she said at the time folks were smaller. 5’4” was typical for men and 5′ for women… No idea why this was of particular interest to me…
They told stories of the intolerable heat here and we saw the ingenious ways they came up with to keep cool. Including the shoo fly fan, operated by one unlucky 10 yr. old boy slave who got to stand inside operating the fan throughout meal times cooling the guests without putting out the candles – great job eh? Or the 2 hours per bed it took to roll out the Spanish moss filled mattresses each day to plump them up suitably for the guests to snuggle down in at night. (If they needed to ‘rest’ during the day they would use a day bed – the family that is NOT the slaves that rolled out the beds!!).
To show off their enormous wealth a pineapple would be placed on the bed of all guests to the house upon their arrival. Guests ended up staying weeks or months so to get rid of them they would place another pineapple on your bed when they wanted you to leave.
That night we drove to the campsite we’d found as our base for our few days in New Orleans itself. Doreen was flying out to join us for 10 days in order to celebrate her 80th birthday – conveniently on the same day as John’s birthday. So we’d had to find somewhere with RV sites for us and a cabin or motel rooms for her. This place was on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain and we drove in past the dockyards, which looked horrible. However, we were pleasantly surprised. We were right on the edge of the lake and Doreen’s cabin was a converted shipping container, which looked fantastic. Better still they had a Bar and restaurant with live music every night for local aspiring musicians.
Wednesday 4th February Doreen was due to arrive but we had all day before her flight was due in. It was absolutely pouring with rain as we took the Shuttle into town. It looked like an amazing city – well what we could see of it!! However, it was very quiet in the rain – the shuttle driver had told us there would be no one about on a day like this!! We did our best to ooh and ahh at the architecture through the rain then gave up and went to Cafe du Monde for breakfast. Apparently world famous it is open 24 hours and day 7 days a week serving only Beignets and cafe au lait. Yummy.
We wandered into the St Louis Cathedral and saw they were setting up for something. I asked the rather scary looking security lady who told me that it was the day of the annual free concert put on by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and that they were due to rehearse at midday. So we passed a bit of time in the Jazz National Historic Park. The smallest and strangest of the NPS centres we’ve visited. The kids did a ranger program and basically earn a badge for saying we knew who Louis Armstrong was!! Jazz Pilates was about to start and the room was filling up with a series of weird and wonderful characters so we decided to give it a miss.
We went back to the cathedral and watched the rehearsal. Truly awe inspiring and incredibly moving. Such a treat to be sat sheltering from the rain watching these wonderfully talented musicians. A young Mexican pianist by the name of Abdiel Vazquez was stunning. In his jeans and a string of Mardi Gras beads he filled the cathedral with the most beautiful music. We sat there for about an hour thinking how lucky we were. As we left Charlie said “If you saw those people waking down the street you’d just think they were ordinary people” – very true!
We visited the Museum Presbytere next door, which had an exhibition downstairs about hurricane Katrina. Lots of interesting if utterly depressing exhibits about the ongoing issues of River control and the levees which are a constant task here and were the cause of so much devastation and heart ache after Katrina. New Orleans is fascinating and mind boggling in equal measure. The 1900’s advanced drainage system dried up the swamps sufficiently to allow building in an area 200 sq. miles. Half of which has now sunk below sea level and so the city sits. The flood of 1927 left 627000 homeless. They built levees after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 but with such a lack of urgency that 40 years later when Katrina struck they still hadn’t been completed.
The exhibition had one room dedicated to the system of levees and pumps, and how they failed. There were endless exhibits with pictures, signs and statistics, but most poignant were those with first-hand information. A room with taped stories by survivors—hospital patients, rescuers, people that were stranded on the bridge. There was one film that showed Cameron County, which we had driven through the other day on our way through Holly Beach. There were just so many tragic tales of lost families and people struggling to rebuild their lives afterwards in a community already made vulnerable by poverty.
The inadequate response was a strong theme here. The supposedly false reports of civil breakdown and looting which delayed the arrival of emergency aid. The pictures and film inside the Superdome where 35,000 people sought shelter in horrendous conditions where part of the roof blew off offering little shelter from the heat and overwhelmed bathrooms led to illness. It appeared to symbolise the failed emergency response systems echoed in the news reporters asking, “Is this America?”
But what really stood out here was the incredible resolve and community spirit of those that worked together in this time of crisis and afterwards. The stories of fishermen and local boats men who worked to rescue some of the 65,000 people trapped by floodwater from Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, stuck in the wreckage of their homes, who were nicknamed the Cajun Navy. We got a loud message of recovery and faith in making New Orleans as great as it was from everyone we spoke to who said the city was not the same but ‘it was getting there’!
Upstairs in the museum was the infinitely more cheerful exhibition of Mardi Gras! Glittering garish costumes on display alongside facts and figures on this most famous of parties!! It brings billions of dollars worth of commerce to the city year round. The success of Mardi Gras used to be measured by the amount of trash generated – in 1997 was 800 tons. Apparently it’s no longer a good judge due to recycling. Liked the fact that the Police department (NOPD) because of their experience with crowd control trains other departments across the country. They traditionally have King cakes – decorated in the Mardi Gras colours white purple green and gold with a plastic baby on top. The baby used to be hidden INSIDE the cake but due to people choking on them they are now placed ON the cakes. The baby represents Jesus and if he’s in your slice you get to hold the next party. Excellent.
On our way to the bus stop we walked through the infamous Bourbon street where the kids got to see a range of fascinating characters including a semi naked woman in the entrance way to the kind of bar we WOULDN’T be visiting – their eyes were out on stalks. Well this is supposed to be an Educational Adventure after all…
We had a lovely reunion with Doreen at the arrivals gate at the airport then took the worlds most expensive taxi back to our campsite. However, Tootsie, our fat black lady driver was hilarious and we would probably have paid $100 just to spend an hour with her listening to her tell story after story about New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, homeschooling her 5 kids etc. etc.
Thursday we had a very busy tourist day planned as we wanted Doreen to see as much as possible in the one day she had in the city. The sun was shining and New Orleans was like a totally different city to the day before. With street artists on every corner, Jackson square was heaving; musicians everywhere competing to be heard and draw the biggest crowd. We did a really interesting walking tour of the city and learnt lots about the history of the city and the European settlers that had that dictated the architecture and cultural influences that you see all over town. Lots of the buildings had the underside of their porches painted in what they call Haint blue. It was actually Haunt blue (pronounced Haint in their accents) and was to humour the slaves who believed that to keep evil spirits away there had to be water around a house.
Lunch was the delicious sandwiches known as Po’boys. Which is how the cooks would refer to the ‘Poor boys’ on the street for whom they would make up a sandwich of leftovers.
That afternoon we took a paddle steamboat along the Mississippi, which was great.
Reluctant to leave the party that was just starting up late afternoon in Jackson Square we hung around and watched various groups ‘Jamming’ – our favourite was a family of buskers – twin brothers, 2 girls and a mum – fantastic tunes!! We had seen them the day before when they were the only people brave enough to face the rain!!
We couldn’t leave the Crescent City (so named because it was built about a bend in the river) without having a few drinks. So we headed to a bar to sample the famous Hurricanes. Valerie and Craig had warned us about how strong they were – saying they actually thought they might have been drugged as the effects were so long lasting!! We found a place where they were freshly made and not from a mix (which is apparently what makes them so potent). Completely delicious and far too easy to drink even for the usually tea total Doreen – we managed to get her drunk!! The children found her giggling hilarious and loved her interactions with the one armed concierge who hailed us a taxi (brilliant) and we assured her that if you couldn’t have a few drinks on your 80th birthday road trip when could you!! We went back to the campsite bar where we joined in the bingo night – William winning a round – then watched a great jazz band!!
Friday we were leaving Louisiana and heading to Florida. But first we had booked to do a swamp tour. We were really keen to get up close to the incredible bayous and marshes that we’d been seeing. Finally we understood why we hadn’t managed to see any alligators – hibernating for winter, they only surface after a stretch of very warm weather. Day 2 of the sun wasn’t enough to lure them out. Disappointing but we did see some other pretty interesting swamp wildlife. Finally understood the difference between a Swamp (flooded forest), a Marsh (flooded prairie) and a Bayou (Waterway). Just as we’d imagined moss hanging from the trees and hunting cabins along the waters edge. We fed raccoons and wild pigs marshmallows which was great and despite not seeing a single alligator as we got off Charlie said, “”That was good!” – it was too!!
The guide was born and raised here and called himself a Swamp Rat – years away at college and yet he’d felt compelled to return here. Which is what we heard from so many people we met here – they just couldn’t leave New Orleans, and I can see why!! We absolutely loved Louisiana and are just sad we couldn’t have stayed here longer. But we had sunshine and birthday celebrations planned for Florida as well as a surprise visitor for the kids….
Wickenswanderings 