Category Archives: Louisiana

From the River to the Lake

Tuesday was hot and humid in Baton Rouge. The temperature reached 92 degrees and the humidity was heavy. Donna went out in the morning for a bike ride. She took her hybrid knock-around bike on the Mississippi River levee trail. Here are some photos she took on her ride.

I-10 spanning the mighty Mississippi

Casino parking – notice the high water level on the left

Casino on the river

USS Kidd – a floating Veterans Memorial and museum

Raising Cane’s River Center Arena

Opposing statues – two of 22 cast iron and aluminum statues scattered in the downtown area

Baton Rouge is spelled out in large red letters on the levee

After Donna’s bike ride, we rode the Spyder to Garden District Coffee. We needed coffee beans and wanted to try some locally roasted coffee. This shop is definitely boutique and buying coffee from them was a splurge. We bought a pound of the coffee used in the porter Donna tried yesterday at Tin Roof Brewery – Italian/Espresso – and a pound of Ethiopian Sidamo.

Then we made a stop at Trader Joe’s to stock up on produce. Our refrigerator is fairly full, but we can always use fresh fruit and vegetables. We don’t know how accessible a good grocery store will be at our next stop.

By the time we finished running our errands and dealing with Baton Rouge traffic, the heat was taking a toll on us. We spent the rest of the afternoon indoors enjoying air conditioning and a bit of solitude. We didn’t make it to the Old State Capitol. When it cooled down in the evening, we enjoyed sitting outside and watching the horses. The workers at the center put the horses in the stables at night and let them out in the pasture in the mornings.

Horses in the pasture by our site

In the morning on Wednesday, Donna went out for a run in the neighborhood by the BREC Farr Equestrain Center while I packed up the chairs and loaded the Spyder. We weren’t in any hurry but we hit the road at 10:15am. I had the generator running and the front roof air conditioner on while we traveled.

The drive through Baton Rouge to I-12 wasn’t fun. The roads are narrow and in terrible shape. The interstate through the metro area is bumpy and erratic drivers are everywhere. Once we got away from the city on I-12 east, the road surface improved and the traffic settled down. We made a stop at the Pilot/Flying J Travel Center in Hammond. Donna bought a couple of Arby’s roast beef sandwiches while I pumped $160 worth of diesel to top up our tank. We rarely eat fast food other than an occasional  Subway Sandwich or a taco, but the Arby’s was convenient and it hit the spot.

Our destination was the Elk’s Lodge near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. This was our first time in Mississippi. I was surprised at the number of pine trees lining the interstate. I was expecting to see cotton fields. Our original plan was to exit the interstate at Covington and take state highways. We changed the plan on the fly. The road surface was good and the driving easy, so we followed I-12 to I-59.

We had to drive for about 8 miles on narrow county roads to the find the Elk’s Lodge. The lodge is located on an amazing property – I’ve never seen a lodge like it. They have 1400 acres of land and a lake – Elk’s Lake – behind the lodge. They have 50 RV sites available for Elk’s members with fresh water and 50 amp electrical service for $10/night! Many of the sites are on the waterfront.

The area around the lake is forest with many tall pine trees. Maneuvering our rig in the park was difficult. I had to get us turned around in a limited space to drop the trailer and back into our site. It took patience, but it was worth it.

Our site on the lake

There’s a little cove to the left of our site

Donna’s looking forward to hiking in the area and getting the kayak in the water. Tonight the lodge has a special steak dinner – we put our reservations in. The forecast calls for a high of 92 today. The hot temperatures will continue through the weekend – but the lodge has an Olympic size pool that will open tomorrow! I need to run a couple of errands and may take the Spyder into town today.

 

Spoonbills, Alligators and Horses

We jumped on the Spyder Monday and headed east from Betty’s RV Park in Abbeville on highway 14 past Delcambre. Our destination  was Rip Van Winkle’s Gardens. We weren’t that interested in touring the gardens – our intention was to visit the rookery to see the birds and look for alligators.

Click to enlarge

The rookery is a favored nesting ground for roseate spoonbills, ibis and egrets. The birds congregate on the three islands in the pond created by water recycled from the gardens. They prefer to nest in islands where alligators keep snakes, raccoons and other predators away from their eggs.

A little hard to see, but these trees are full of birds

Donna and I walked the path around the pond – it’s about three quarters of a mile around. As we reached the far side of the pond, something thrashed in the water. There it was – an alligator – eyes and head popped up looking at us. Then I saw a much larger ‘gator swimming in the channel between two of the islands.

We continued our walk and met a woman from Baton Rouge who was visiting the area and photographing the birds. She warned us about taking I-10 into Baton Rouge. She told us there was construction before the bridge into Baton Rouge taking the interstate down to one lane. She said there are crashes reported on a regular basis as an inattentive driver slams into the suddenly stopped traffic. It’s always nice to have local knowledge – we planned to avoid the I-10 bridge over the Mississippi.

As we made our way around the pond, we heard a sound. It was almost like someone snoring. We moved slowly toward the sound. The sound stopped. A few more steps and there he was – an alligator just a couple of feet from the shore. I estimated him to be between five and six feet long.

Alligator snoozing

He didn’t pay any attention to us and only opened his eyes a couple of times.

Zzzzz

We rode into Rip Van Winkle Gardens to visit the gift shop and look around. We found several peacocks and hens by the gift shop.

Peacocks and hens

Peacock in a tree

Donna bought a couple of items and we headed home. I got busy stowing things in the trailer and getting us ready to move. We had our final Betty’s Famous Happy hour – until next time. The name Betty’s Famous Happy Hour comes from an app called Untapped. On this app, people check in and rate the beer they’re drinking. Someone checked in and put their location as Betty’s Famous Happy Hour! So now, if you open the Untapped app at Betty’s, you can check in and it’ll give that name for the location.

On Tuesday morning, I finished making us ready for travel. I moved slowly as it was hot and very humid. I kept the air conditioners running until the last moment before I unplugged from the 50-amp pedestal. Once I had the trailer hooked up, I started the generator and turned on the front roof air conditioner for the drive to Baton Rouge.

We took a roundabout route that took us up US167 to Lafayette and up to Opalousas where we hit US190 east. The road surfaces were atrocious, but I figured I-10 probably wasn’t much better and we would cross the mighty Mississippi into Baton Rouge on the US190 bridge avoiding I-10 altogether.

The drive through Lafayette and Baton Rouge wasn’t much fun, but metro areas never are in a big rig. We found our way to the BREC Farr Park Equestrian Center. This is a large park on the east bank of the Mississippi River. They have 108 RV sites with water and 50-amp electrical pedestals. We squeezed our coach and trailer into site A4 – a pull through site – and left the trailer a little crooked to make us fit without hanging into the road.

Site A4 – a tight fit

After setting up and showering, Donna and I rode the Spyder to town. We went to Tin Roof Brewing for a cold one. It’s about five miles away from the park. Donna had a beer called River Rosé – it’s a mild ale like a Gose but it was brewed with beets. She liked it and said it was refreshing.

River Rosé

On the way back, I rode up on the levee of the Mississippi. We saw a large tow of 28 barges behind a couple of freighters. I wrote about barge tows here. The river is very high right now and there are flood warnings in effect. The levee here is so high, I don’t think we have any worries.

Barge tow behind the freighters

Later, we sat in the shade of the coach. I puffed a cigar and we watched a group of girls riding horses.

Girls horseback riding

It was very quiet and peaceful last night. However, Ozark the cat didn’t let us enjoy a restful night. For some reason, the cat kept waking us up. This morning, I thought I could hear a rooster crowing. When I stepped outside at 6:30am, it turned out to be a horse whinnying. He was kicking up dust prancing around the pasture and making a racket.

Feeling his oats and kicking up dust

Today will be another hot one. The forecast calls for a high of 90 degrees. Donna and I want to explore a bit and go to the Old State Capital Museum. Tomorrow we’ll head out and make our way to Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Tail Lights and Cajuns

Saturday was Cinco de Mayo. It also happened to be our wedding anniversary – Donna and I were married on the fifth day of May, 2006. We usually go out to dinner to celebrate – this year we celebrated with dinner at Shuck’s – The Louisiana Seafood House – a day early on Friday evening.

We both started with a cup of seafood gumbo, followed by a crab cake plate made with locally caught blue crab. Donna had hers house style, served with a dill sauce over the cake. I had mine smothered with crawfish etoufee. Crawfish etoufee is a Cajun dish  with crawfish meat in a gravy-like sauce. It was delicious. I had a bottle of Abita Amber beer to go with it. It was a rich and very filling meal!

The forecast called for thundershowers on Saturday. I started the day by changing the tail light housings on our coach. I found replacement parts on Amazon and they arrived on Friday. The tail lights used by Western RV on our Alpine Coach were original equipment on a Ford Econoline van from the 1990s. Our tail lights were hazy and had cracks in the lenses where someone previously over-tightened the mounting screws. The replacements I bought were made in Taiwan and are an exact copy of the originals. Installation was easy. First I removed the four tail light housing mounting screws, then gave each bulb holder a quarter turn to release them.

Tail light housing removed and bulb holders hanging from the harness

When I first fitted the new housing, it wouldn’t fit flush. Then I noticed they had extra mounting points. There were four holes that lined up perfectly with the originals, but there were also two stand-offs molded in the plastic back plate that interfered with the body of our coach. Apparently they use a one-size-fits-all back plate on the housing and these extra points are for another application. I snipped them off with side cutters and the housings fit perfectly.

The new tail lights look much better. Along with the headlights I replaced in Mesa, we’re looking sharp on all four corners!

Old tail light

New tail light

I tracked the storm front in the forecast on the Radar Express app on my phone and it looked like it would stay to the north of us. Betty mentioned a farmers’ market in Delcambre, about 10 miles away. I looked it up and we decided to check it out. We’re finding Louisiana to be interesting – it’s culture is unique.

Delcambre farmers’ market at Bayou Carlin Cove

This market is seasonal and only open on the first weekend of each month. When we arrived at the farmers’ market at the Bayou Carlin Cove, I knew we were in for a treat. This was the first farmers’ market we’ve been to that had shrimp boats tied up to the dock selling fresh caught shrimp.

Shrimp boat

The locals came to the market prepared – many had coolers with ice to pack the fresh shrimp and crayfish for sale. We walked through the vendor area and sampled food and sauces. The owner of Brasseaux’s Hardware in Abbeville had a Traeger demo set up and gave us free pulled pork sliders! Another vendor had Creole tamales and gave us one for a sample. Creole tamales are different than the usual – these had pork and beef ground very fine to about the same consistency of the corn meal used and it’s all mixed together. They were delicious and we bought half a dozen. Donna also bought a jar of persimmon pepper jelly – another food new to us.

At another vendor, I saw a guy shucking fresh oysters. The woman there put a little olive oil and garlic on the oyster on the half shell, added shredded parmesan and then put them on the grill. Donna bought a plate with half a dozen oysters. I’m not much of an oyster eater, but after trying one, I had to have another! At the next table two ladies were mixing up Bloody Marys – we each had one with the oysters and they were the spiciest Bloody Marys ever.

Char-grilled oysters

We came home around noon, then headed out in the other direction toward Maurice a little after 1pm. Our destination was Touchet’s Bar – the locals call it Two-checks. They had a Cajun jam session starting at 2pm. It was a fun time. We sat back and I had a beer while Donna sipped a Bloody Mary. The people were all so friendly and the music was good. I couldn’t understand half of the lyrics as they sang in a mixture of English and French patois. Actually I had a hard time understanding the dialect spoken by some of the people at the bar.

Cajun jam session

Last night we sat at Betty’s famous happy hour and everyone planned a potluck brunch for today and fish dinner for this afternoon. One of the guys here, Mike, caught a bunch of redfish and our neighbor Daniel volunteered to grill 10 pounds of fresh fish filets! Yum!

Potluck brunch this morning

The forecast calls for abundant sunshine today and a high in the mid-80s. Tomorrow will be slightly warmer. I’ll need to prepare for the road tomorrow. We’ll head out on Tuesday and probably make our next stop in Baton Rouge.

 

Tabasco and Rice

Yesterday Donna and I headed out on the Spyder. We left Betty’s RV Park in Abbeville, Louisiana around 9:30am and rode to Avery Island outside of New Iberia. The route took us out LA14 through Delcambre – which I’m told is pronouned Dell-come by the locals, rhymes with welcome. Seems like a lot of letters to spell Delcome and it’s certainly not the French pronunciation you might expect.

Anyway, the shortest route from Abbeville to Avery Island took us through a lot of turns on narrow parish roads, but we found our way. Our destination was the McIhenny Company’s Tabasco plant for a tour of the facility where they make the iconic Tabasco hot sauce. I’ve been a Tabasco user for nearly 50 years.

A self-guided tour of the plant costs $5.50 for adults – military discounts are given. The walking tour starts in a small museum and takes you through five different buildings to observe the process of making the sauce – from growing the peppers to shipping the product.

Sign on the walkway to building two

We saw a small greenhouse with a variety of pepper plants. Tabasco peppers are a variety of chili pepper – capsicum frutescens.

Tabasco peppers

Habanero peppers

Jalapeno peppers

The peppers are picked by hand. The pickers compare the color of the pepper to the color of a red stick they carry to ensure uniform ripeness.

The peppers are crushed and put into oak barrels. The barrels are used whiskey barrels that are re-purposed. The coopers at McIhenny scrape the charred interior of the barrel to expose clean oak, then they remove the iron bands and replace them with stainless steel bands. The crushed peppers with a little salt added are put into the barrels to age for three years. The tops of the barrels are covered in salt to prevent bacteria from entering. By the way – Avery Island is a salt dome! The air was heavy with a pungent odor at the barrel aging buildings.

Freshly filled barrels ready for aging

After about three years, the contents of each barrel is tasted. If approved, it goes to the next step where seeds and skins are removed. Then the contents are put into a large vat where it is blended with pure distilled vinegar for two to three weeks. The hot sauce aroma was evident in the blending building.

Blending vats

The bottling process was similar to what we’ve seen in beer breweries. It’s mostly automated, but people are on station to operate the machinery and provide quality control. Once the bottles are filled, a digital camera reads the bottle to ensure it’s filled to the proper level before capping.

Filling bottles

Checking and capping

Labelled and ready for packing

They had an electronic counter with a digital display showing the number of bottles produced. At 11am, it was over 184,000 for the day and quickly counting upwards.

Donna peeking around a giant Tabasco display bottle

At the end of the tour, we visited the gift store where we sampled jalapeno ice cream. Donna bought a bottle of the standard red Tabasco and a bottle of the green sauce for $2 each.  You can buy Tabasco sauce by the gallon at the store here! The self-guided tour had a number of informational kiosks and video presentations. I thought it was worth the time.

We skipped the driving tour of the Avery Island gardens and headed into New Iberia for lunch. A cafe was recommended by Betty – the Bon Creole Cafe. She told us they had the best shrimp Po’ Boys around. A Po’ Boy is a Louisiana standard – it’s a sandwich made of a hoagie roll stuffed with fried seafood – usually shrimp, crawfish or oysters. It can be made with beef as well. We ordered a full shrimp Po’ Boy and split it. It was more than enough for two people. I added a couple of dashes of Tabasco to mine.

Shrimp Po’ Boy with lettuce, tomato and sauce

It was short ride from there to the Conrad Rice Mill – the oldest independently owned rice mill still in operation in the U.S. It was built by Phillip Conrad in 1912. He named his company Konriko (Conrad Rice Company with Ks substituting the Cs for trademark purposes).

The leading rice producing states in the country are Arkansas followed by California, Louisiana and Texas. The mill wasn’t operating Thursday afternoon so we skipped the guided tour and just watched a video and did some shopping instead. Konriko also owns the brand Hol-Grain which makes a line of crackers. Donna loves them and bought a box of their brown rice crackers. Did you know that brown rice and white rice are the same thing, just processed differently? Brown rice has the hull with bran intact while white rice has the hull and bran polished off. Donna also bought a couple of pounds of wild pecan rice.

Donna’s spoils from the day out

It’s been warm, humid and windy here. Today the forecast calls for a high in the mid 80s. As I type this at 9am, it’s 73 degrees with 93% humidity. We’re debating our weekend plans. We’re hoping to go to the crawfish festival in Breaux Bridge.

Hello Betty

We hit the road Monday morning a little later than I intended. By the time we had the trailer hitched up and rolled out on to the highway, it was 9:40am. Our route took us from Aransas Pass up TX35 to Angleton where we hit TX288 north to Houston. This was a familiar route as we came this way in 2015. There was plenty of water along the way in the creeks and lakes, but the fields weren’t flooded like they were in 2015.

We made a stop in a Walmart parking lot in Bay City before we reached TX288. I walked over to Subway and bought a sandwich for lunch while Donna made a salad for herself back in the coach.

TX288 took us to I-610 – a loop around Houston that ostensibly avoids the traffic crossing the city. In fact, I-610 is just as congested as any other portion of interstate through a large city. There were construction zones and sections of rough pavement. Once we hit I-10 east and headed away from Houston, the pavement was rough for several miles. Eventually the road surface improved and the traffic thinned out.

We drove through a swarm of bugs – there were so many of them hitting the windshield, it sounded like large raindrops were falling. I don’t know what kind of insect they were, but they were all over the front of the coach.

We hit a swarm of these

We made our second stop at the Pilot/Flying J travel center in Baytown and topped up the tank with $203 worth of diesel fuel. Donna found a free overnight boondocking spot at a county park in Winnie, Texas. This park is where they hold the Texas Rice Festival and they have dozens of RV sites with 20 amp electrical outlets. The electricity was turned off so we didn’t bother with the RV sites and parked on level pavement outside of the livestock area. The place was deserted when we arrived a little before 4pm.

Level dry camp

In many of the photos, our coach looks like a low rider. That’s because I dump the air from the suspension, lowering the coach before I put the jacks down. The ride height going down the road is four or five inches higher.

We took a walk to town a few blocks away. By the time we were heading out, several people had come to the park. A couple of families were having a picnic dinner near the children’s play area and several other people were walking laps of the park for exercise.

A block away from the park we saw a sign that said “The Secret Garden” and another sign that said,

“The kiss of sun for pardon

The song of birds for mirth

One is nearer god’s heart in a garden

Than anywhere on earth”

Secret Garden

We couldn’t figure out what it was all about. It looked to be someone’s backyard garden.

When we came back to the coach, Donna heated up a cowboy casserole she had made the day before with leftover cornbread, chicken and vegetables that was very tasty. We ate outside and after dinner, I lit up a cigar. Jamie and Francisco gifted me with a bundle of four cigars they bought at the Texas Sand Fest. Although I said I wouldn’t make a habit of cigar smoking, it’s quickly becoming a habit. Two other smaller rigs pulled into the park and spent the night. It was mostly quiet and I wouldn’t hesitate to spend a night there again.

Donna walked over to Burrito Express in the morning and picked up two breakfast burritos that were excellent and very filling. We got back on the road at 9am. The wind was blowing from the southeast, but it wasn’t too bad. I wanted to follow a route down through McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge and Sea Rim State Park, but Nally – our Rand McNally RV specific GPS wouldn’t route us that way, even when I put way points in. I took that to mean the road wasn’t suitable – maybe a low overpass or weight limited bridges. So we headed east on TX73 through Port Arthur and Bridge City.

There are huge refineries there and waterways from the Gulf through Sabine Lake for ships to offload at the refineries. To cross these waterways, the road had high – I mean very high – and steep bridges. These bridges allow clearance for the tankers to come through. I was happy to have mostly a tailwind over these high bridges – a strong crosswind would not have been fun.

When we got back on I-10 about five miles from the Louisiana border, we hit what has to be the worst stretch of Interstate pavement anywhere. It was ridiculous. After we crossed the Sabine River and entered Louisiana, the road surface improved. Although Donna and I both have been to New Orleans several times, this was our first trip to the state in our motorhome. We left the Interstate near Crowley (The Rice Capital of America) and took a series of county roads – narrow and often rough – to our final destination at Betty’s RV Park.

We booked a week at Betty’s based on a recommendation from our friends John and Sharon Hinton. Our friends Brett and Cheri also stayed here. John send us a message a while back telling me the park might be tight for a rig our size. I looked at it on Google earth and saw what he meant.

We were feeling some trepidation as we rolled through the narrow streets of Abbeville and saw narrow driveways on several properties. When we pulled off of State Street at the park entrance, we were relieved to see that parking would be a piece of cake. Betty had a spot picked out for our trailer and it was easily accessible. After dropping the trailer, I made a loop of the small park out onto the street again and re-entered to back into site #4.

Parking spot for our trailer

Site four

The park is small – maybe a few acres with 17 sites. The attraction here is Betty, the owner, and her daily happy hour potluck gathering. Everyone meets at a covered patio area at 4:30pm to share hors d’oeuvres and stories over their beverage of choice.

Happy hour potluck patio

I’m not the most gregarious person, but in a park this small, getting together with neighbors is inevitable and Betty makes it fun. We’ll be here for a week and plan to explore the area.

We’re at an elevation of 30 feet above sea level. The weather is warm – highs around 80 and very humid. Looks like thundershowers may arrive by the weekend. I hope there isn’t too much rain as we want to attend the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival!