Four eyes but cannot see

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Toomsuba, MS – When we were kids we used to ask the riddle “what has four eyes but cannot see?”, and the answer was “Mississippi”! That’s where we have spent most of today, after we cleared the outskirts of New Orleans and crossed the miles-long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain.

Once again we passed neighbourhoods that had been hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina. On a nice street of modest, trim houses, there would be one with boarded-up windows, a caved-in roof, or siding still bent back from the vicious winds. Most people had repaired and rebuilt, but some have yet to fix the damage.

Shortly after we crossed the state line, we stopped at the Mississippi welcome center, where a charming lady named Temisia offered us free coffee and enthused about the many places of interest in her home state. We didn’t have the heart to tell her we were just passing through, but we saw quite a few things we’d like to come back and check out on another trip.

For example, Leland, on the west side of the state, is known as the hometown of Kermit the Frog. Creator Jim Henson was born there and there’s a museum dedicated to him and his Muppets. Vicksburg, also on the west side, is a historic town where thousands of Civil War soldiers, both Confederate and Union, are buried. Star is the hometown of country music great Faith Hill. Meridian, located just a few miles from this KOA campground, is where the “father of country music” Jimmie Rodgers came from.

As we traced a diagonal line from southwest to northeast across the state, we noticed the tropical jungles of the south disappeared, replaced by forests of tall pine trees. It was delightful seeing the forest trees starting to bloom. Some saplings were sprouting small yellow flowers, and we spotted a number of fruit trees dressed in blossoms of white or pink. On some stretches of highway we could have been driving through Ontario. Except there still wasn’t a single flake of snow!

The other thing we didn’t encounter was rain. When we checked in at the KOA, the host told us it has poured for days, so we considered ourselves lucky with this perfectly beautiful day. I was also glad, since we were assigned one of the farthest sites from the main building, that I didn’t have to lug my hamper full of laundry to the washing machines in the rain.

While I got caught up on laundry, Val prepared the barbeque for a home-cooked supper that was delicious and simple. While we’ve enjoyed tasting the exotic Louisiana cuisine for the past few days, it’s nice to return to plain food that hasn’t been deep-fried in fat!

We are surrounded by woods, and we spotted a couple of bright scarlet cardinals nearby, as well as robins looking for worms. As the sun descended to the horizon, a chorus of spring peepers somewhere nearby started up to serenade us.

Alligator tastes like chicken

Friday, March 8, 2013

New Orleans, LA – Tonight our supper came out of Styrofoam boxes from several recent restaurant visits. We’ve been trying to sample as much of the local cuisine as possible – gumbo, jambalaya, po’boys, Andouille, grits, boiled crawfish – and then there are the desserts, such as pecan pie, hot bread pudding and key lime pie! A tough job but somebody has to do it!

For the second time, our direction today was westward, away from the big city, to visit two more plantations in the area. Oak Alley is a five minute drive from the Laura Plantation that we saw yesterday, but looks completely different. It’s the plantation everyone thinks of – the grand white pillared mansion and the straight road leading up to it, flanked on either side by huge live oak trees that form a canopy overhead. You can just picture guests riding up in their carriages for a grand ball, hosted by Scarlett O’Hara’s family, although Gone with the Wind was not filmed here. Dozens of movies, TV shows and commercials have been filmed on the grounds.

Val and I sampled mint juleps, served on the ground floor verandah, before going in for our tour. Val’s was the real deal, complete with bourbon, while I had mine minus the booze. Very refreshing! Our guide, dressed in a fancy hoop-skirted dress, showed us through the restored rooms, complete with period furniture, paintings and personal items that might have been used in the old days.

One of the other plantation buildings was repurposed as a restaurant, where we went for lunch. Since this was likely our last chance, we ordered alligator bites for an appetizer. The deep-fried crunchy nuggets really did resemble chicken, if slightly rubbery! Don’t think we’ll order it again, but we tried it!

After a stroll through the lovely gardens and down that oak-lined alley, we headed on to the San Francisco Plantation on the north side of the Mississippi, somewhat closer to New Orleans. The effect of this location was tempered somewhat by the presence of a lot of industrial buildings with chutes and cranes connected to ocean-going ships on the river. We couldn’t see the ships because of the high levees; these would have been much lower in earlier years.

Not only that, but once we got to the plantation grounds, we encountered a huge collection of tented concession stands all over the lawns in preparation for a big arts and crafts fair on the weekend. The ticket lady told us they were expecting thousands of people at this annual event, so we were glad we came when we did. We actually had a personal tour – probably no one else thought the building was accessible today with all the hustle and bustle outside it.

The homestead was the most opulent one we’d seen, with frescoed ceilings and beautiful draperies in the ornately decorated rooms. The structure had two towers on either side that were cisterns for rain, gathered from the roof and piped into the house. There was even refrigeration from ice imported from the north that was stored in earthenware jars buried in the ground. It was interesting to hear the family stories that were so closely linked to these remarkable homes.

Plantation life

Thursday, March 7, 2013

New Orleans, LA – This morning we played the waiting game for a few hours. We had asked to extend our stay at the KOA here because there was more we wanted to see, and the management said yes, but it would mean changing sites. So we had to wait until checkout time for the party in our new spot to leave, as well as batten everything down for the move 10 sites down the way. We also took the car out to get it washed, which it sorely needed, and picked up a few groceries on the way back. So we put our time to good use!

With all that accomplished, we had a bite of lunch and then headed out for a visit to one of the plantations in the area. This one was about 40 miles west of New Orleans, and on the other side of the Mississippi River, but it was a lovely day and the drive didn’t take long.

The Laura Plantation belonged to a Creole family that raised sugar cane on the banks of the Mississippi starting in 1805. The succession of ownership of the plantation went through the women of the family, and Laura’s detailed memoirs, discovered in the national archives in France, have provided a full account of the family business, the life of the enslaved people who kept it going, and events and customs of the time.

The grounds are lovely, with ancient live oaks shading the big house, and flower and vegetable gardens adding colour beside it. The house itself is a restoration because it was partially destroyed by fire only a few years ago, but when it was done, they reverted back to its original appearance based on early watercolour paintings. Creole homes were always brightly painted and in its last iteration prior to the fire, it had been painted white, so the new old house is now yellow with red and blue trim.

Elmore, our guide, explained the architecture of the house, which followed the construction method of the Senegal slaves who built it – pillars of brick extending eight feet into the ground and the same height above ground, on which the house rested, to allow it to withstand seasonal flooding from the river. The rooms opened into one another without hallways, each with a set of French doors to the outside to allow breezes to flow through in the hot weather.

Up to 180 slaves lived on the plantation in wooden houses with only one or two rooms. Several of these houses were still standing. The slaves worked the fields from age 13 onward, while the younger ones helped in the kitchens. Elmore said one job of the youngest slaves was to ring the large bell that woke everyone in the morning; sometimes it rang at 3 am.

In the 1870s a professor of romance languages from New Orleans collected folklore stories from the slaves at the plantation, which became known as the Br’er Rabbit tales. I remember the stories of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby from my childhood, and this is where they came from!

Fun on the bayou

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

New Orleans, LA – For the first time since Georgia, I donned my winter jacket this morning when we arrived at Cajun Pride Swamp Tours. It was sunny but the brisk wind was too much for my light jacket.

School kids in a high state of excitement were scampering all over the picnic area next to the waterway. Fortunately, we were ushered on to the adults-only swamp boat, with Captain Tom at the helm. The long, shallow boat moved very slowly along the water so we could get up and move about when someone caught sight of something interesting.

Cypress trees, live oaks, palmetto shrubs and dead stumps lined the shores of the bayou, some dripping with grey wisps of Spanish moss and others overgrown with dead vines. The maple keys had emerged, bright red, on bare branches, and small white flowers were blossoming on the blackberry bushes – some of the first signs that spring was on the way, according to Capt. Tom.

Great white egrets waded in the shallows, as well as blue herons that took to flight when we got too close. Before long, we sighted our first alligator, a little guy only three feet long nestled in the bright greenery at the water’s edge where the sun could warm his body.

Tom’s lifelong contact with the flora and fauna of the swamps was evident in the multitude of facts and stories he related about our surroundings. He told us how alligators are hunted (only for a month in the fall), how best to bag one (shoot him in the eye or ear so the hide is not damaged) and how much a good hide can garner on the market (several hundred dollars for a nice spotted one). He also said not to believe everything they show on the TV program Swamp People!

A baby racoon crept out of the bushes to check us out, and snatched up, in his little claws, the marshmallows Tom tossed his way. There are also white-tailed deer and wild boars in the bush, he said, but they weren’t visible today. We did see several turtles, and a diamond-back swamp snake sunning itself on a log.

The biggest alligator we spotted was about six feet long, resting on the muddy bank and still as a statue. Tom showed us the grooves in the riverbank mud where they slide in and out of the water – an easy indicator for visitors on the lookout for wildlife.

We saw signs of human presence in the swamp as well – a rudimentary graveyard, fenced around with rotting wood and an archway with “1915” marked across the top. Tom said the remains of hurricane victims were buried there when people finally found their bodies in the devastated bush.

A tiny shack from a similar era stood on another riverbank not far from the cemetery, with a tin roof and outhouse complete with a half-moon on the door. Tom said it had been flattened by the recent Hurricane Ivan, but he and other staff members put it back together to preserve a part of swamp history. I was much happier being a visitor to this fascinating environment than a full-time resident!

A city of resilience and revelry

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

New Orleans, LA – Sylvester was the name of our guide and bus driver for the combination city and Hurricane Katrina tour that we took this morning. He spoke with a wonderful lilt and in terms that demonstrated a love for his city, despite her excesses and trials.

We covered a lot of territory and learned so much more about the geography, history and character of this unique community. Passing houses still heavily scarred by the two hurricanes of 2005 that lashed into the region within a month of each other, we realized the extent of the devastation caused, not so much by the vicious winds, but by an inundation of staggering proportions that followed them. Neighbourhoods were plunged under 12 feet of water that remained for three long weeks, and left homes filled with mud, mildew and mold, if they weren’t flattened completely to begin with.

Sylvester explained the far-reaching consequences of the disaster, such as the sharp downturn for business owners whose customers disappeared for months, and the reduced tax revenues that ensued. People had to decide whether to refurbish or simply walk away and start over somewhere else. Thousands did leave, but the majority remained and rebuilt.

Our tour continued with a visit to the city of the dead, one of several cemeteries built in the Spanish style – large stone boxes above ground where entire families are interred over the years. Some were topped with angels or crosses, and ancient ones mingled with newer structures along paved streets were cars can actually drive through.

More upbeat sites included a drive through the huge city park with playing fields, band shells, a storybook playground and majestic live oak trees that date back to the Civil War. We also saw the garden district where we passed scores of huge antebellum mansions, each different from the other, with columns, gingerbread trim, sweeping staircases and gracious verandahs.

Flowering shrubs and palm trees decorated the gardens and the wide boulevards down the centre of the avenue. It was jaw-dropping to see such an endless array of showpiece homes!

Back at our starting point again, we set off for some hot café au lait and beignets, a light pastry heavily dusted with powdered sugar. Our next stop was the Louisiana State Museum, with a multi-media display about Katrina on the ground floor and a homage to Mardi Gras upstairs, complete with elaborate costumes and floats, plus explanations of the origins of all the revelry that surrounds those celebrations. There is a whole vocabulary and culture we never knew about!

It was a marathon day, as we had decided to taste some of the jazz scene after dark, so we went for supper at the Gumbo Shop, a well-known French Quarter eatery, and strolled along Bourbon Street as night began to fall and the bars started filling up. After lining up for an hour to get into Preservation Hall, an ancient hole-in-the-wall jazz venue, we were treated to traditional New Orleans style music with trumpet, sax, clarinet, double bass, piano and drums that made the rafters ring.

The Drunken Catfish Ramblers

Monday, March 4, 2013

New Orleans, LA – This is one big city! It took us about half an hour to drive in to the French Quarter from our camp ground, and we went through suburbs, industrial sections, past skyscrapers and finally into the quaint streets of the old town, with narrow buildings crowded next to one another, decorated with wrought iron balconies where flower pots dripped ivy over the edges, and strings of beads, left over from Mardi Gras excesses, still dangled from the railings.

After checking in at the visitor centre, we found a spot to park our little car, and set off on foot toward the river’s edge, where we were told we could book a tour or two. Getting an overview of a new city is our usual pattern, but when we got to the kiosk, we found out the three-hour tour was about to leave and we needed to eat lunch first!

So, being our flexible selves, we opted for the paddlewheel cruise along the Mississippi River, leaving just a few minutes later, but where we could find a meal as well. The Natchez was painted white with red trim and featured two black smokestacks and a huge red paddlewheel at its stern. It had three deck levels with plenty of seating to view the scenery on either shore, and throughout the cruise there was a running commentary about what we were seeing.

In the dining room, we were served a classic New Orleans meal of fried catfish, shrimp creole, okra and tomatoes, red beans and rice, cole slaw, bread and, for dessert, warm bread pudding. After we helped ourselves to iced tea we looked around to see where to pay for the meal, and the server told us it was included with our cruise ticket! What a pleasant – and tasty – surprise!

Before we came here, I always thought New Orleans was perched on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, but in fact it is 100 miles from the gulf on a great curved section of the Mississippi. That curve has prompted the nickname “the Crescent City” to a place that also gets called NOLA (New Orleans LouisianA), N’Awlins and The Big Easy!

Once we got back ashore, we started off on foot toward the St. Louis Cathedral, set off by a large fenced park. On the outside of the fence were hawkers offering tours, artists who had hung brightly coloured paintings for sale on the fence, and a string of horse-drawn carriages looking for customers, but it was lovely and peaceful on the inside where there were benches to sit on and stretches of green grass. The cathedral was beautiful inside, with colourful stained glass windows and frescoes on the ceiling.

More streets of the French Quarter beckoned to us, as we made our way toward our car. We stopped twice to listen to groups of musicians who sat down in the middle of the street to blast out some lively honky-tonk tunes – with banjos and tubas and one trombonist who produced a “wah-wah” sound with the rubber cup from a toilet plunger! It was impossible not to tap a foot or wiggle a hip in time with the music! People put contributions into a guitar case where one group’s name was posted: The Drunken Catfish Ramblers. I especially liked the one with a bushy red goatee, playing the washboard.

Three days, four states

Friday to Sunday, March 1-3, 2013

New Orleans, LA – Here we are in the Big Easy! We’ve only driven in to our KOA camp ground, west of the city, so we haven’t really seen anything outside the approaches, but that will change as of tomorrow.

To backtrack a bit, on Friday we left our friends Scott and Mary Jane and drove west for 45 minutes to Navarre, where we stopped for lunch and a visit with Darrell and Sharon from Nova Scotia. Darrell was a former boss of mine and we visited them south of Tucson when we took our Arizona trip two years ago. It was great catching up on their news, but we weren’t able to stay for long, as we wanted to avoid rush hour traffic on our way to the Big Lagoon State Park, at the farthest western reaches of Florida.

“The real Florida” is what the state parks system calls places like Big Lagoon. It is surprisingly natural and rural, being so close to the city of Pensacola. Our site was entirely surrounded by bog, and, to our delight, a mockingbird serenaded us from a neighbouring tree with its amazing vocabulary of bird songs!

We had had a pretty cold night without the furnace; even our poufy duvet failed to keep us completely warm. Our hot breakfast beverages were very comforting the next morning!

The National Naval Aviation Museum was only a short drive from the park and had been recommended to us, so we spent the next morning exploring it. Scores of airplanes of many vintages were displayed on the ground and suspended overhead, and visitors could imagine what it was like to fly them in several motion-based flight simulators. There was another display that took you to a flight briefing on an aircraft carrier and then to a mock-up of a windswept flight deck where we could watch planes taking off and landing. We also watched an IMAX movie about the Blue Angels, who practice their aerobatics on the grounds here starting a week or so from now.

This morning we headed for New Orleans, following the gulf shoreline along Highway 98 and then turning north to join Interstate 10. In three hours or so of driving, we left Florida and crossed a stretch of Alabama, then Mississippi and into Louisiana. We saw quite a bit of farmland, with horses and cows, and roadside stands selling boiled peanuts, an apparently popular food in these parts!

When we drove past the shipyards of Mobile, Alabama, we caught sight of the crippled cruise ship that had been towed in a couple of weeks ago after it lost power in the Carribean for several days. Guess the cleanup was still underway.

On our way in to New Orleans, we saw what appeared to be lingering damage from Hurricane Katrina, which took place in August of 2005. After reading more about that devastating hurricane, it was understandable that some of the highways were still in rough shape in places, considering the extent of damage that occurred. Our KOA host told us our site has the only tree in our section of the campground that wasn’t blown down by the storm.