Evenin' Campers!
It's Silver Cliche' checking in with you tonight from St.
Martinville, Louisiana. No… I'm not sure that is on any map. It is,
however what the State Parks Department lists as the site of Lake
Fausse Pointe State Park.
I took the day off
yesterday as we were enjoying New Orleans and the French Quarter. We
started the day with a stroll to Cafe du Monde, a French Quarter
landmark. There we ate beignets (rhymes with the sports cream
“ben-gay” and comes out “ben yea”) and drank coffee served
the New Orleans way… with chicory in it. If you've never had
either, beignets are best described as square French doughnuts and
chicory is a plant that is related to the dandelion and adds a flavor
to coffee that is best described as… well, it's not exactly
“earthy”… and it's not quite “floral”… I'd have to say it
tastes “French”. Here's a picture of our breakfast:
Note the powdered
sugar. Cafe du Monde produces beignets at about the same rate the US
Congress and the White House combined pump out bulls**t. I'm not sure
where it's parked, but somewhere nearby is a tanker truck of powdered
sugar with a big pump or compressor or something to move the sugar
onto the stream of beignets at a rate generally only achieved by snow
making machines at major ski areas.
So we ate, shopped,
looked around and got hit by a rainstorm of biblical proportions. I'm
happy to report that the French Quarter smelled much, much better
after that bath. I'm not saying a scrubdown with a giant brush and a
Superdome size container of Sani-flush isn't still needed… it is…
however God gave the sanitation department a head start with a
meaningful rinse. Thanks, God!
So this morning we
pulled up stakes and continued west. New Orleans was worth seeing and
having an RV park within walking distance of the French Quarter was
good, but we left with a deeper sense that our purpose and joy in
traveling it to get away from cities and congestion and see the small
towns and open spaces of America. That makes our planned stop in
Dallas in 4 days a little less to look forward to, but we'll figure
that out in 4 days.
I asked Mrs. C' to
indulge my curiosity as we left NOLA. After all, I had indulged hers
yesterday with time spent on retail therapy. I had scoped out the
restored plantations on our route and had chosen one to visit. It's
Oak Alley Plantation about an hour west of New Orleans. We were there
by shortly after 11:00, paid our $20/head (ok… $18 after senior
discounts) and headed in. We decided not to get stuck on the 45
minute “big house tour” and instead did what I wanted to do…
walked the grounds. We first came upon six recreated slave shacks
(there are very few surviving, original slave shacks anywhere in the
South and Oak Alley is no exception. As one might expect, the real
deal was not built to last, was cherished by nobody and not
maintained after the Civil War. Whatever General Sherman didn't
address was taken care of by time and termites.) Here' a pic of three
of the six shacks. Each has two halves and each half housed four or
five people. You may write the rest of the story after digesting
that:
Then we focused on
the big house, or more importantly the way the big house is set on
the property. It is a 3 story ante-bellum home of great splendor.
Imagine that at the time it was built it was essentially a farm
house. Some farm! The house sits about ½ mile from the Mississippi
River and faces it. The River itself is not visible from the house
because there is a 20 or 30' tall levee along the River. From the
house we could hear both the horns of maritime commerce and even the
engines of what must have been tugs pushing barges up river. At the
time Oak Alley was a sugar plantation being worked by 130 slaves the
River would have been the way material arrived and farm products left
the plantation. River frontage must have been essential to the very
survival of the people on the plantation. As a visitor walked from
the River to the big house, here's the site that would have presented
itself to tell the visitor just what type of place he was
approaching:
After walking the
gauntlet of oaks, the house itself welcomes the visitor:
After our tour and
pics we went to the trailer and someone made grilled cheese
sandwiches to go with the cold drinks from the fridge as a way to say
thanks for the indulgence. We like taking our house wherever we go.
We thought about nap time, but headed on instead.
The route
alternatives from Oak Alley to Lake Fausse Pointe State Park were
two. Choice 1: the shorter (by distance) southern route on state
roads through Thibodaux and Morgan City or 2. the shorter (by time)
interstate route through Baton Rouge. I picked 2 after looking up
Morgan City on Tripadvisor to see what was hot. The top 10 things to
do included the Offshore Oil Museum (#1 according to TripAdvisor), a
public park and the convention and visitor's bureau along with 7
bars. The most common adjective used to describe bars in Morgan City
was “biker friendly”.
Even the
northern/urban route showed how important oil, gas and the
Mississippi River are to Louisiana. There were terminals all along
the levee on the south (west) bank of the river. These are, I
believe, the places where petroleum products from the offshore rigs
in the Gulf of Mexico are loaded onto ships and barges in the River
and from there delivered to anywhere in the world a ship or barge can
reach. There were about two terminals per mile and these were not
small facilities. After that came the refineries. I think “Louisiana”
may be “New Jersey of the South”. The sights reminded me of the
New Jersey of my youth. Granted, modern industry smells better than
it's counterpart of the 1960's. Kids today don't know what they are
missing. The intense smell of hydrocarbons mixed with sulfur
compounds can stick with a person for life.
We crossed the River
several times today. We saw all variety of commercial shipping from
vast flotillas of barges with massive River tugs to major ocean going
ships of a range of types including container ships, bulk carries and
tankers. It's one thing to have your seventh grade geography teacher
(mine resembled Ben Stein from “Ferris Buhler's Day Off”.
“Anyone?… class…”) say “The Mississippi River is the most
important transportation artery in the United States”. It's another
thing to actually see it. It's impressive.
On to the
campground. Google Maps decided to take us on a shortcut. When you
drive something the length and width of a big rig Google Maps doesn't
always choose wisely. We had a wonderful tour of rural Louisiana
including an area of “fish camps” (it sounds better than what
they actually are… drinking shacks in the woods) every one of which
had a name. Many times the sign by the road with the name was better
looking and better maintained than the wreck of a 30 year old mobile
home that it pointed to. We saw “the happy hookers” (with fish
hooks!), the Recovery Room and many more.
At the end of fish
camp row was a bridge. It had a weight limit that we just cleared. I
mentioned that we are the length and width of an 18 wheeler. I
didn't mention height. We are 9' 6” according to the manual. This
bridge listed it's clearance as 9 ½ feet. I crawled across it
watching my mirrors to see if I cleared. It looked good as I passed.
Nevertheless when we stopped at the camp office 30 minutes later I
took a close look to see that the AC unit was still in place atop the
trailer. It was. Immediately after the bridge the road crossed a
levee. This levee kept Bayou La Rose from flooding a small community
that many people might have thought were prime for the flooding. But
the levee was there as a sign that the government felt otherwise.
Anyway, levees are steep up and steep down. When the truck reached
the top of the levee I came to a complete halt. From the driver's
seat I saw sky and a gravel road running along the top of the levee.
“Crap” I said (edited for family reading time). “What?????”
screamed Mrs. C' (edited also). “This isn't a road” I said. “Yes
it is” she said. “It's straight ahead of you and goes down the
hill to that major road”. With her assurance I drove truck,
trailer, the two of us and two dogs into what appeared from my seat
to be open space. It wasn't . The hitch cleared the crest of the hill
without detaching the trailer from the truck and down we went.
When we got to the
campsite we saw what we had been seeing all day. Water. Everywhere in
Louisiana appears to be about 6” above standing water. Our campsite
is no exception. Although we are parked on pavement 6” above swamp…
er… ah… bayou, adjacent to the paved strip is a rectangle formed
by four pieces of 2x8 lumber each about 8 or 10 feet long set on
their edges. The outside of that box has standing water. The inside
is filled with dirt. In any other part of the country this would be
called a “raised planting bed” and would be filled in the summer
with tomato plants, zinnias and pole beans. Here is Louisiana it is a
“Tent Island” (ok… I made that up… but its a perfectly
descriptive term even if not a proper name). Its the place you pitch
a tent so you wake up wet rather than soaking wet. A few steps away
is a small dock and 6” below the dock surface is… you guessed it…
water. Here are some pics from our campsite including the Lake (or Bayou or whatever the main body of water is) and our own private "tent island":
I was going to put
some burgers on the grill tonight. Seeing the campsite, I offered to
cook indoors. We like bringing our home with us wherever we go. The
locals (we call them “Swamp People” just like in the TV show…
hey, that's set in Louisiana, too!) think we are strange.
Tomorrow on to Lake
Charles Louisiana and Sam Houston Jones State Park. No plans for
sightseeing, but in Louisiana who knows what we'll see!
Later 'gators!
SC'
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