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.