BATON ROUGE & NEW ORLEANS

It’s a beautiful sunny morning and you would never know that it poured all night except that the grass was soaking wet.  Today on the agenda is visiting the Baton Rouge plantations and riding a swamp boat at the Jean Lafattie National Park.  Being strapped for time, as always, we  divided up the chores this morning (just like we do at home) so that we could get ready efficiently.  I taught Brooke, Christian, and Grace how to unhook everything.  Of course none of them want to do the septic and gave me a disgusted look on their face when they thought that they had to do it.  I told them I would do that, but they need to do the electrical and water, and they were happy to oblige. 

After making sure everything was unhooked, picked up, and cleaned, we were off for the LSU Rural Museum, which was an actual working plantation of producing sugar and corn meal.   When we arrived we drove through beautiful gardens to get to the visitors center. 

  

Before walking around the actual plantation, we browsed through an enormous warehouse full of old antique machinery, carts, guns, baskets, chairs, quilts, hunting and fishing gear, and my personal favorite was an old camera.  

Then we strolled out to the fields and looked through each old building that created a small community of living.  There was the overseer’s house, one room slave quarters, a schoolhouse, a post office,  a commissary,  a medical ward, a blacksmith building, a church, and many outhouses. 

The overseers house

The commissary

 The post office

Because it was a sugar and corn plantation, the middle area had the sugar refining building with step by step instructions of how molasses and sugar crystals were made. 

There were two types of corn mills at that time, one powered by horses and the other powered by water, and this plantation used horses.  Then we walked around to the beautiful church, and ended with a visit to Bessy the cow, who was incredibly friendly.  She stood very still and just stared at the kids . . . they thought she was adorable!   

Next we drove through the residential roads of Baton Rouge, only because we took a wrong turn which served a wonderful purpose of actually seeing houses in Louisiana,  to the Houmas House, which is also called “The Sugar Palace”.     Wade Hampton, the largest sugar producer in Louisiana and the largest slave owner in the South, built this house in the later 1820’s., making the Houmas House one of the first columned mansions on the Mississippi River.  John Burnside purchased the Houmas House in 1858 and began accumulating sugar cane plantations to become the largest sugar planter in America.  He had over 300,000 acres which gave him the title “The Sugar Prince of Louisiana.”  

The 23 room house has an enormous collection of antiques and collectables from that time period, and the rooms include a courting room, men’s room,  carriage corridor, and a 3^rd level ballroom.  The present owner bought the house in 2005 for 3 million dollars, but has also put a large amount of money into it to restore it to its previous looks. 

Our tour guide, who was a sweet older gentleman, shared with us many stories of events that have taken place here, including amazing weddings.  The owner lives at the house, but it is also a full service restaurant, major events are held regularly, and there is a beautiful gift shop.    It was so beautiful that we seriously asked the girls if they wanted to get married there.  The bride walks up the aisle of trees and the ceremony takes place on the porch with a full southern band playing music.  Maybe Dave and I will renew our vows there!

 Rushing to leave the Houmas House because we had a swamp boat ride to get to at the Jean Laffette National Park, they called us to cancel because a terrible storm was coming in.  Bummer . . . maybe tomorrow?  Well, this is what you call being flexible . . . so we just changed our plans and drove down to the New Orleans French Quarter.  We followed the signs to the visitor center which was an incredible blessing because this is the ONLY place to park an RV with a nice $25 fee.   We gathered information at the visitor center and the proceeded to walk down to through the French Quarter, and I wasn’t too impressed so far.   We were in the upper portion of the French Quarter walking towards Bourbon Street, and the buildings were old and ugly looking.  Bourbon Street was “party city” even at 4:30 in the afternoon.    We were strolling down the streets and looking in the shops, of which we found a lovely tea and spice shop, a chocolate shop, and souvenir shop.  Then we walked toward Canal Street to catch the streetcar to the Garden District.  It seemed like we waited forever to catch the streetcar, but one finally came.    I was under the impression that it was a tourist trolley that narrated as we rode through the famous streets, but we were wrong!  It is actually a commuter train for people to get one place or another.  And considering it was dark, we couldn’t see any of the beautiful houses.  People were pulling the cord on the ceiling to tell the conductor that they wanted to get off, and as we went past the New Orleans Hamburger Restaurant, I shouted to everyone, “let’s get off and eat”!!  Madison smiled and pulled happily pulled the cord.  We walked up the restaurant and had Louisiana style burgers . . . mine had jerk sauce and mango chutney . . Yum! 

I also bought a bowl of Gumbo for all the kids to try.  They all liked it (even my picky kids) especially Christian. 

As we were finishing eating it started pouring rain and we got a little nervous about walking back to our RV in the rain.  We decided to call a taxi and begged him to take all 7 of us.  He agreed reluctantly and thankfully agreed, thank God.  As we drove, we asked him about Hurricane Katrina and he began to tell us his story having to sit on top of his roof for 2 days until a search and rescue boat came to get him.  He said he actually go knocked out so he didn’t remember anything.    Then he told us about the difficulties with the Government in rebuilding his house as well as losing his 3 souvenir stores downtown in the French Quarters, and that is why he was driving a cab.  He was thankful to have a job, but my heart broke for him, and we prayed for him.

We drove to the outside of New Orleans to our KOA campground as it continued to rain heavily.   We found our spot, hooked up, and wanted to take showers, of which we could have just stood outside and lathered up it was raining so hard.  It didn’t stop ALL night, and again the thunder sounded like the Indian’s pounding their drums.   Thank goodness we were all so tired otherwise we would have been up all night with the extreme noise.