I could feel the humidity before I ever even opened my eyes, and I knew we were in the South. All we had really thought about doing in Louisiana was seeing the French Quarter. I am not a huge fan of crowds and big cities at all, and the mere thought of going to Mardi Gras kind of makes me twitch. But it was just a regular day, we would be passing right by it, so why not see it and say we'd been there. Other than that, we had no desire to even be in Louisiana, let alone stop for anything. How wrong my preconceived notions were to be.
This is a parked train. This dirt section is someone's driveway. The whole road just before Avery Island was like this...the train tracks separated the houses from the road, and cut through each driveway.
We had spent much of the previous 2 days just moving to make up distance. We were only going 2500 miles total, but we wanted to see and do a lot. But now we were in the South, and close to home. We had talked to a friend at the wedding we went to the night before we left, who is a huge Tabasco fan. He carries a bottle with him in case a restaurant doesn't have it, and puts the stuff on everything...wouldn't surprise me if he put it on his Capt'n Crunch. He had mentioned wanting to go to the Tabasco factory in Avery Island, LA. Well, since we were ready to sightsee a bit, we thought that sounded good enough. Hell, he said they give tours, so there must be something to see.
Wow! This Island is nice! Took the tour of the factory. Being a Friday, the workers were mostly off except for the tour guide and the store workers. The processing plant was closed (they work 4 10-hour days Mon-Thurs). But the tourguide told us all about the history of this Island, which was also a massive salt mine. The family was already well-to-do with the salt business. Someone gave a pepper tree to one of the family long ago, and he tinkered around with it until he created Tabasco. It's been a family business for several generations.
They buy the barrels from Jack Daniels (they once use them once, for 1 year) to let the sauce cure in there for 3 years. I am pretty sure they said they reuse them several times before finally chopping them up to make charcoal starter out of, but I forget exactly.
They make it with vinegar and salt from their mine...otherwise just their special peppers that can only be picked once they get to be the color of a little painted stick each picker carries (called a Baton rouge, or red stick...they do a lot of this French thing in LA).
Several generations back, since the hotsauce thing had done pretty okay for the family, one of the family decided to bring in all sorts of exotic flora and fauna, to make a jungle paradise. That was one of the highlights of the trip, aside from the gators in their ponds. They had bamboo from everywhere, a canopy to drive through, a once stolen Buddha statue about the size of a Hummer 1, and a bird sanctuary. It was a very nice, self-driven tour...take as long as you like.
Gators:
I'm not sure this is a problem specific to Louisiana, or the whole South:
Then we headed to New Orleans. We weren't looking too forward to it, as I said about, but we figured what the hell, at least we will drop in, take a couple quick pictures, be out well before dark and then say we'd been there, if even for 5 minutes. Turned out it was pretty damn interesting, and we stayed for about 5 hours.
We had wanted to see a NOLA cemetery, saw one on the way in, but counted 3 different gangs within a block of it, so we weren't gonna park there. Tourguide in the French Quarter told us not to go there alone, and which streets not to go down.
We signed up for a Ghost Tour with Ernie, our guide. But it wasn't to start for a bit. So we asked for a good place to get real Cajun food, and were directed to The Gumbo Stop. Had a bowl of Jambalaya and one of Gumbo, but I can't recall which of us had which dish. We both picked things with no red meat or bird, so Maria could eat both and we shared. Both were good, but I don't know how it compares to other versions, as it's the only time we've had it. I loved the inner courtyard of the old building, though.
One of the main reasons we both loved it so much was because of the architecture. It is definitely an unusual place in 2007, and they seem to have done well to preserve the buildings, even though they've been modernized a bit. The "Ghost Tour" was as cheesy but as fun as expected, and we got to see a few things we would have missed meandering on our own. I could posts several hundred pics here, but the place should really be seen, so I'll just post a few here.
My buddy from NOLA told me afterwards that this is the first apartment building in the Western Hemisphere.
This guy was cool:
Only Maria's photo eye could make me look this good:
Maria got our palms read, and it was a fun little experience, overall. I definitely want to go back and explore more of the history of the city. It really is fascinating. We were there with no plan, on a Friday night, and the Police were warning the palmreader and other street vendor types that they had to be gone by midnight because a tropical storm was headed that way. So we made our way back out of town.
We stopped in Slidell for a Pizza, and then went on the rest of the short way to Gulfport. We had hoped to visit some friends, but they were up in Ohio racing that weekend, so we just hunkered down in a motel off the freeway to ride out the Tropical Storm.
Total miles traveled this Friday were only 242, but we spent most of the day enjoying the Louisiana coast! We will definitely go back! Louisiana proved to be our biggest suprise of the trip, as we both enjoyed it immensely!
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