Louisiana, Convent - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - River Road Ride

I looked on line to find out about things to do in St. James Parish which is where we are located.  A scenic drive was shown that encompassed the River Road on both side of the Mississippi River.  Sounded great since it went by a couple of other plantations and it mentioned a visitor’s center at exit 194 off of I-10 where you could walk their boardwalk through the swamp (there was the possibility of alligators).

So, we headed to exit 194 via state route 641 which ended at exit 194.  No visitor’s center was in sight so we got on I-10 went to the next exit and doubled back.  All kinds of signs indicating visitor’s center at exit 194.  We got off at exit 194, still no sign of the visitor’s center.  We gave up and just rode back to the river to see what was available along the River Road.

We thought we had found the visitor’s center, but it turned out to be a VFW post.  We went ahead and stopped because I wanted to get a picture of this structure.

 

Coming up the second weekend in December will be Festival of the Bonfires along the River levee.  As I understand it the structures all used to look like this, but now they have people and corporations building all kind of custom structures looking like trucks, airplanes etc. in addition to the ones like this.  They do have some regulations on how big they can be.  From what I’ve read on this celebration it must look like the whole parish (county) is on fire when they light these things, 100-120 of them.  Might have to plan to come back and see that some year.

Notice the construction of the VFW post building – up off the ground.  Most of the older homes and many of the new homes are built like this.  They use concrete blocks, precast concrete pedestals, or very nice square brick columns to raise the house from what looks like maybe a foot to three feet off the ground. 

The weather was great, in the 70’s, sunny and bright.  This is my view looking forward.  For those of you that don’t know, Greg’s helmet looks like a giant eyeball – I can always find him in a crowd if he’s wearing it.

I tried taking pictures going down the road without much success.  By the time I realized a good picture was coming up, it was by us by the time I got the camera up and ready.  Not only did I miss the picture, I missed even getting to see things properly while I was trying to get the picture.

Lots of sugar cane, in fact it’s the only crop we have seen in this area.

 

Trucks like these are all over, taking the cane to be processed

I took this by mistake, but thought it was kind of neat.

We stopped at a couple of the plantations, but I wasn’t willing to pay the $20 per person required to get an official tour.  The first one we stopped at was Laura, a Creole Plantation.  This home was built in 1805 and is still surrounded by sugarcane.  There are 12 historic buildings, gardens and the slave quarters where the West African folktales of the legendary rascal Br’er Rabbit were recorded.

This picture of one of the buildings was taken from the parking lot.

 

We stopped at Oak Alley Plantation.  This plantation is known for its spectacular quarter mile of 300 year old live oaks at the front of the mansion.  We took a back path that led to the on-site restaurant and managed to get a few pictures of the back of the property which is truly beautiful.

 

 

These trees look like they would be such fun for kids to play on.

All kinds of flowers and trees are in bloom down here now.

Tugboats are busy on the Mississippi River.

The trees hung with Spanish moss are so pretty.  I wonder if the moss hurts the trees?