After exploring Louisiana for 11 days, we have now crossed another state line to find ourselves in Mississippi.
Our destination is Natchez State Park, just outside the town of Natchez, Mississippi. We have a nice camping spot overlooking the lake, in the middle of an old wood forest. We had to back up a long ways to get a picture of the top of the trees we are camped under.
We are finding that most of those one-hundred-feet-tall trees seem to have 98-feet-long vines hanging from them. This would be Mark practicing his Tarzan imitation on one of those vines.
Besides that nature trail, we also have a nice lake in our new state park. We love living in these natural places!
We are finding that because we are blessed to explore new places on a daily basis, it is hard to make special plans for special days. Every day is already special, so what can a couple celebrating their 37th Valentine's Day together do? We started the day by finding a new church to attend in the nearby city of Natchez. Then we spent the afternoon touring our new charming little city. Situated on the Mississippi River, being an important shipping harbor has led to part of its success.
But it was the fertile land that allowed its early citizens to amass enormous wealth. Before the Civil War, the town of Natchez had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the United States. Plantations, using enslaved labor to cultivate the land, grew huge cotton crops that financed antebellum mansions all over the river valley.
It's a beautiful city to drive, with entire streets lined with houses on the national register of historical places. You could play the game of trying to find all of the 109 registered places in town.
There are also two national historical parks in town. One is the William Johnson House, where we learned about the life of a freed black man who raised his family in Natchez before the Civil War. He was once a slave, but his barber business allowed him to purchased land and slaves to cultivate it.
The other national park is centered around another home in Natchez--Melrose. This was one of the dozen majestic Antebellum Homes that are open for tours.
There is much history in Natchez, including an intersection called "Forks on the Road." There's nothing to photograph there now, but at one time it housed the second largest slave market in the south.
So Natchez was an interesting place to spend Valentine's Day. That would include a lunch at the romantic "Pig Out Inn" with dessert at "Fat Mama's Tamales." We finished that with some home-made chocolate dipped strawberries.
The next day we were forecast to get a half-inch of rain, so we planned a day at home. That forecast was correct in one way--it did rain. But instead of a half-inch, we got 4.2 inches of precipitation. Our view out the front window looked something like this most of the day
The good news is that we know that we have no leaks in our motor home, because we surely would have found them with this downpour. Just to make a couple of Oklahomans feel at home, the Mississippi news channel announced that we were under a tornado watch all day. While we only saw wind and rain, six different twisters were confirmed on the ground in parts of Mississippi just north and south of us. We also lost electricity for much of the day, but not until after we finished baking the Valentine dessert that we were too busy to make on the 14th. A rainy day allowed us to bake a chocolate chip cookie dough cheese cake. After carrying around that cheese cake pan for over a year, it was time to finally put it to work!
We watched the level of the lake outside our window, wondering if we would have to move to higher ground. But we were glad to see that they were letting water out of the spillway to control the level of the lake. This spillway had been a trickle two days ago, but today it was a fury of water.
Happy Valentine's Day from Natchez, Mississippi!
After five days at Betty's RV Park in Abbeville, Louisiana, it was time to again make our push towards the motor home repairs we are needing in Alabama. So we headed east and north over the section of I-10 that is built over the bayou.
For 18 miles we are on an interstate built on stilts over the water. Trucks have a speed limit of 55 and must stay in the right hand lane. We were feeling very truck-like and fell into line behind the 18-wheelers.
Our next stop was another two hour drive to the state capitol city of Baton Rouge. We found a quiet little campground that is run by the city and is next door to the Farr Equestrian Park. The view from our big windshield were the corrals, horse stables, and indoor arena. Nice!
But the favorite part of our stay here was a big surprise. We had no idea that this little park connected to a bike trail that would take us for miles of smiles. The first evening we found we could ride to a trail on top of the levee that separated the city of Baton Rouge from the Mississippi River. We read that this trail was closed last month when the river was at flood stage. But today it was open and gave us perfect views of the mighty Mississippi and her watercraft. Not familiar with river traffic, we were surprised to see barges and the connected tugboats "parked" along both sides of the river for the two days we were riding this trail. There were very few boats or barges actually traveling down the big river. The tug boats were idling around the clock to keep the barge from moving backwards with the current.
We rode two miles north and got a nice view of the Louisiana State University campus.
Another two miles brought us to the bridge that we had used to cross the Mississippi river to get to Baton Rouge.
Another two miles brought us to downtown Baton Rouge with views of the Old Capitol's stained glass windows shining as the sun was sinking low in the sky.
The next day we had planned to tour several areas of the city, but parking is always a problem on a week-day downtown. So we decided to use our bicycles for transportation in the city. That was a great decision because some of the downtown parking spaces were already closed off and multiple television trucks were taking up more spots. It seems that we weren't the only out-of-towners visiting Baton Rouge today. Donald Trump was giving a speech at the River Center at 7 p.m., and we saw people lined up for blocks at 3 p.m.
Since we are on a limited budget, our Baton Rouge tour included all free attractions. We started with the Louisiana Old State Capitol, that beautiful building that resembles a castle that we had taken a picture of the night before. We were greeted with a majestic winding staircase and could see straight up to the stained glass dome.
Entering the Old Capitol is free, but there is usually a charge for the multi-media film that tells the history of the building (from the viewpoint of the resident castle ghost). But we were lucky, as they were showing it for free today. Produced by one of Disney's film makers, it was a top-notch 3D experience that was educational as well as entertaining.
We learned that Union troops had camped on the lawn during the Civil War, and had carelessly set it on fire. Later it was a neglected party place for LSU students. Looking at its beautiful interior, the people of Louisiana should be proud of their efforts of bringing it back to its original grandeur. This is a close-up of the stained glass dome,
and more of that winding staircase.
The bottom floor houses a Mississippi museum, while the top floor makes a beautiful venue for weddings and other formal events. This was once the meeting room for the state legislators, but is now a gorgeous backdrop for wedding photos. This was the stained glass we could see glistening in the setting sun the night before.
There was also a children's activity room, with coloring pages and photo ops for the kids. We took advantage of this room to see how Mark would look as a founding Father.
We bought lunch from a downtown food truck--pulled pork, okras and tomatoes, and cheese spaghetti. Delicious! Fueled for our walk downtown, we headed to our next stop--the current Louisiana state capitol. The tallest capitol building in the United States, it is 450 feet high. Denisa took this picture of the skyscraper capitol with one of her new favorite flowers in front--camellias that are blooming right now.
Built in the 1930's, it took only 14 months to complete the building. We had to take this picture from a distance to get all 34 stories into one picture. You can barely see Mark standing on the front steps.
It's a little easier to see him now, standing on the 46th step of the front staircase. Each step leading up to the capitol has a state name engraved on it, in the order they became a part of the United States. Beginning with the 13 original colonies at the bottom of the staircase, Mark is standing on Oklahoma's (46th) step. There are only 48 steps, because Alaska and Hawaii weren't yet states when the capitol was built.
We enjoyed our tour of the capitol, including the ornate Memorial Hall. We also saw the back hallway where Mississippi's controversial politician--Huey P. Long--was assassinated not long after the building was finished.
We found that the Mississippi legislators will be back in special session on Sunday afternoon. The newly elected politicians are faced with serious budget shortfalls that must be addressed. It sounds like the falling oil prices are affecting other states.
Part of our capitol tour was a trip out to the observation deck on the 27th floor. From there we could see more boats on the Mississippi.
Even though we have driven north to get here, we had a beautiful day to go sight-seeing. It's nice to see that we are still far enough south to see palm trees.
We headed back to our camp site via the Louisiana State University campus. We always enjoy visiting another university.
We especially enjoy a university with a live mascot like a tiger. This is the best picture we could take of the fifth tiger named Mike that has cheered for LSU. Tigers usually sleep 20 hours each day, and he was exhibiting his best sleeping posture while we were there.
So our only chance for a good LSU tiger picture was the statue out front. It looks like Mark has a tiger by the tail today.
Our legs were tired from two long bike rides and lots of walking around Baton Rouge today. But we had a great time getting to know Louisiana's capitol city. We have been blessed by another beautiful weather day. The sun was setting over the mighty Mississippi as we headed back to our home at the Equestrian park.
After exploring and celebrating the culture of Acadiana for four days, we made it to the final day of the Carnival season. The culmination of a month of revelry is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The French translation for Mardi Gras is actually "Fat Tuesday." There were several small towns with celebrations, but Betty recommended that we make the thirty minute drive to Louisiana's fourth largest city--Lafayette. We were up early, following Betty's directions to get us around the streets closed for the 5-mile parade route. We were there early enough to walk to the very beginning of the route for the first of the three Mardi Gras parades of the day. So we were some of the first to see King Gabriel's float starting the parade.
There were also lots of high school bands entertaining the crowd with a combination of music that included more dancing than marching.
But the main attraction of this first parade of the day was the decorated floats with a dozen riders that kept a continuous flow of beads in the air. Denisa is proud to say that she managed to catch both of these necklaces that were coming her way--one in each hand.
All of these floats had a super hero theme, but the crowds were more interested in beads than in heroes today.
We chose to spend Fat Tuesday in Lafayette because of its family-friendly reputation. Unlike New Orleans, it is actually illegal to reveal body parts to get beads. We found the crowds of families got bigger as we walked the parade route. There were thousands of people lining both sides of the street on the entire route.
It seemed that most of the locals brought their own food, complete with cookers and ice chests on the side of the street. There were few food vendors, but we found one that we really liked. This picture shows our first tasty treat--an Ultimate Mac Dawg. Quoted from their sign, that would include a "beef frank topped with grilled onion, jalapeno, Rajun Kajun mac and cheese, cream sauce with andoville tasso". Yum! It was so good that we made a return trip to their truck later for their homemade Creole gumbo. It was a successful food day!
This first parade started at 10:00, and we found that we could walk the parade route faster than the floats traveled the same route. At times the floats came to a complete stop for 15 minutes at a time. We never did find out what caused the long pauses. Here is another picture of Denisa, catching another strand of green beads in her upraised hand.
The traditional colors of Mardi Gras are purple, green, and gold. So Denisa had quite a collection of those colored necklaces by the end of the first parade.
She talked Mark into wearing the other colored beads, so he ended up with a more patriotic look.
The last float finally reached our spot in the middle of the parade route, so we stopped by the car to leave our beads and take all the weight off our necks. We ate a healthy snack of fruit, then decided to meander on down the rest of the five-mile parade route to see more of the city of Lafayette. We stopped to listen to a zydeco band playing music for the crowd.
The parade terminates at Cajun Field, so we decided to walk the two miles to see the carnival that was set up there. We were surprised to catch up with the parade floats--still throwing beads--as we got to Cajun Field! It was now 3.5 hours after the parade started that morning 5 miles away.
We even walked to the parking lot behind Cajun Field where all the floats were lined up. We talked to a couple of the men that had ridden on those floats, and their arms were already sore from throwing beads for over three hours. They explained that they buy the necklaces by the pound, and they had bought $1,200 in beads for the parade this year. Parades are expensive, as there is also the expense of storing these floats in an indoor facility until they are re-used next year.
By the time we walked back to our spot, the second parade of the day had started. Instead of super heroes and comic book figures, this parade featured the royalty from different organizations. Mostly children on the floats this time, there were less beads.
Instead of high school marching bands, there were long lines of dance troupes from area dance studios. We also saw our first Mardi Gras Indians--decked out in elaborate costumes.
As the day progressed, the crowds increased. There were thousands of people lining both sides of the street for those five miles. The temperature also climbed into a beautiful blue sky day where we no longer needed our jackets.
The firetruck signaling the end of the second parade, was right in front of the police cars ushering in the third parade.
This one featured more merchants, throwing stuffed animals, frisbees, cups, koozies, hula hoops, souvenir coins, and of course--beads.
By the end of the third parade, Denisa had another nice collection of beads around her neck. Knowing that we had left the morning's beads in the cars, we obviously had a lot of fun catching necklaces today!
As people filed out of the streets, they left behind a sea of broken beads on the pavement. We found that the necklaces usually break on impact if they aren't caught in the air.
We also were sad to see the mess that was left behind. All along the curb were the empty bead bags and other trash that people had thoughtlessly dropped in the street.
People weren't the only things flaunting beads. The trees along the parade route were also covered with necklaces.
After walking ten miles up and back down the parade route, we had just enough energy to walk the loop around the campus of the University of Louisiana Lafayette. The only university campus that includes a swamp, it is also home to several alligators. One of the coeds told us that the alligators were usually on the far side of the swamp, so we walked the entire loop. No alligator pictures today--just a Ragin' Cajun with his beads. We have now experienced our first Mardi Gras, and it was definitely a successful Fat Tuesday.
