Louisiana, Shreveport - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - Diamond Jack's Casino

Last night Greg and I and Pam and Greg W. enjoyed the meal and presentation at the Osuba Hibachi Grill in Waxahachie.

 

 

This brought some frowns from the little boy who was with his mom and dad at our table.

The weather looked like a storm could come up at any point on the drive to Shreveport.  We kind of hoped it didn’t rain, we hadn’t used our windshield wipers since last November.  We’ve been in rain but we were just sitting when that happened.  We’ve kept them covered to prevent sun damage, but still you never know.

 

 

Welcome to Louisiana.

We are staying a couple of days in the RV Park at the Diamond Jack Casino in Bossier City just outside of Shreveport, Louisiana.  No pull through sites were available and we just barely fit into this one.

It’s a good thing we don’t want to get the bike off while we are here, that’s quite an incline behind us.

Diamond Jack’s has a pretty good sized hotel in addition to the casino.

 

 

This casino is one that is still on the water.  This is the view from the rail, a nice breeze was blowing up here.  We didn’t even take any money with us when we walked over to the casino this evening – maybe we’ll try our luck tomorrow night.

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?

Louisiana, Gonzales - Friday, November 1, 2013 - The Cabin Restaurant and shopping

What a beautiful day – mid 70’s and just a slight breeze, low humidity.  We rode about 20 miles into Gonzales to go to Tanger Outlets to see if we could locate a bathing suit for me.  Lucky day – we found one (and just one) that was the right size and looked pretty good on – and it was 70% off.  However, no pictures are going to be posted.  In addition I found a couple of pairs of shorts and some tops on sale.  Now I have to get rid of some of the old stuff in the closet.

Our next stop was Home Depot to see if we could find the materials we needed to make tire covers for the motor coach.  We gave the guys who worked there some chuckles as we planned for how we could get everything on the bike.  I’ll follow up on this story as we start to work on the covers.  It’s going to involve some sewing so I need to get out the sewing machine I purchased right before we decided to start thinking about living fulltime in an RV.  I’ve been busy and haven’t even got it out of the box yet.

Years ago I sewed maternity and baby clothes but that was on an old Singer treadle machine.  Not sure if I can figure out this newfangled model.  Greg isn’t convinced I can sew.  I’m hoping it’s like riding a bike, you never forget once you’ve learned.

This is where we stopped for lunch.

 

 

It’s called The Cabin Restaurant.  It began as one of the ten original slave dwellings of the Monroe Plantation.  It is approximately 180 years old.

 

As you enter, the walls are papered with ancient newspaper fixed to the wall with a mixture of flour and water.  This was the way the slaves insulated the walls of the original slave dwelling.  The room where we ate was really rustic also.

 

 

The roof of the main dining room where we ate is supported by four massive beams that were manufacturer’s rejects obtained for a bottle of Old Crow bourbon.  This is a picture of one of the beams.

Lunch was fantastic!  We both had shrimp po’ boys.  The bread was light and crusty outside and soft inside, loaded with shrimp that had a light crispy coating.

 

I asked our waitress about crawfish tails and alligator which were both on the menu.  She couldn’t describe crawfish, but said it was what the locals “live for” and it was delicious.  She said alligator tastes “like chicken” but if it’s not cooked right it gets really chewy in a bad way.  Maybe next time we’ll get a little more adventurous.

The restrooms are really unique.  They were made from a large cypress water cistern that was used to store fresh rain water.  I waivered on whether or not to take pictures.  I ended up deciding the person in the other stall might think I was kind of odd, so no pictures of the bathrooms.

“Rock” the alligator was carved from a virgin cypress sinker log.  This log was cut down approximately 100-120 years ago on the banks of the Amite River.  It had been laying on the river bed under mud until it was pulled up on April 20, 1988 and sculpted into the “largest alligator in the world”.

What looks like trees growing alongside the building is actually bamboo.  I’ve never seen bamboo this tall.

Louisiana, Convent - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - Looking Back in Time

St. Michael’s Catholic Church is within a short walk from where we are staying.  The church was built in 1831.  It underwent a renovation in 2008 and is very beautiful.

 

 

 

There was at one time a 60-foot steeple which was visible for miles in the middle of the church.  Hurricane Betsy blew the steeple down in 1965 and it was never replaced.

 

This historic church is home to a replica of the famous Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto which was constructed in 1876.  It is known as one of the first grottos of Lourdes to be built in America.  The grotto was constructed by Christophe Colomb, Jr. who is thought to be a relative of Christopher Columbus.

The grotto has a unique construction – it is made from bagasse, which is a fibrous waste product of sugar cane, rather than the usual stone configuration.  Sugar cane was then, as it is now a major crop of Louisiana.  The domed shape of the grotto comes from an inverted sugar cane kettle.

 

This cross was a gift from a baroness from Belgium and was placed on the alter until 1889 when the current alter was purchased.

This hand carved alter was purchased in 1889 in France at the Paris World’s Fair and is absolutely breathtaking.

This Henry Erban pipe organ is the oldest pipe organ on record in Louisiana, dating back to 1857 - would have loved to hear it.

 

There is a school next door to the church, not sure of the date of its construction but it appears to be very old.

 

We went into one of the rooms and it seems that at least this room is still used for some kind of classroom because there was a paper dated October 27, 2013 laying on one of the desks.

From the church we walked out to the cemetery which was established in 1827.  We were surprised that there wasn’t a progression of older gravesites to newer ones, the very old like this one were mixed in with the newer ones.  I snapped a picture of this to show the structure of the older gravesites.  I didn’t realize until I sat down to write this and looked closer at the picture that the person buried here died 180 years ago to the date – October 31, 1833.

We walked back to the plantation and walked through the bottom floor of the house.  The second floor is occupied by guests right now.  This stairway that is right off of the back door is beautiful.

Lovely antiques are on display throughout the house.

This bed is just enormous.

Since this is a working bed and breakfast, an updated kitchen is probably a must and this one is pretty special.

This fountain area is right outside the back door.

I wondered how you reached the bucket to this well since the sidewalls are so high.  There was a picture inside the house that showed this well with a type of water tower on top with piping running to the house, probably very modern for the time.

In the woods not too far from our site there is a chimney that is believed to be from one of the old slave quarters.  Right next to it is a small cemetery, one of the graves is simply marked “baby”.

There are several figurines in the woods, this guy is right behind our site.

This evening we went to a dinner that was provided by the owners of the plantation.  We found out that they have owned the property for a little over seven years.  When they bought the property, there was the old plantation house and cottage next to it, the rest of the property was woods.  Prior to purchasing the plantation they were fulltime RVers.

Louisiana, Convent - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - Poche Plantation

As we headed toward Baton Rouge this morning we crossed another of the high bridges made to accommodate the large oil ships.  There was a 10-story hotel right next to this and I was looking at the top of the roof as we went over the bridge.  I don’t know how tall that is, but we were way up there.

 

Several miles of I-10 go through the swamps, one of them I noted was Henderson Swamp.

The construction of this highway had to be a real nightmare.  I noticed as we went along that there were some real high water marks on some of these pillars.

We took State Road 44 south t0 Convent.  It is also called River Road because it follows the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.  Several old plantations are located along this stretch of road.  We are staying at one that has an RV park on site.  I have to admit that it’s a little different than my vision of a plantation (which is Tara).  But it’s a really neat place.

We are staying at Poche Plantation.  The plantation house was built in 1870 by Judge Felix Pierre Poche who was one of the founders of the American Bar Association.

The style of the house is Victorian Renaissance Revival.  We’ve walked around the outside of the house, but haven’t gone inside yet.  From what I’ve read about the plantation I know that at least a small part of the blockbuster movie “The Butler” was shot here.

 

The current owners are doing a lot of work to the plantation and they have already completed a lot of improvements.  Like rental cabins.

 

The pool area and a lot of the buildings on the grounds have hand painted murals on them.

The hot tub is in this cute little structure – not sure you can tell by the picture but it has a beautiful cut glass window in the back

Tomorrow night we’ll be attending a free dinner put on by the owners on Halloween night – as long as we don’t have eye of newt, I think I’ll be good.

We went across the road and walked along a path at the top of the levee along the Mississippi River.