Post- Mardi Gras Trip to New Orleans

"San Francisco"

The beautiful gardens at Houmas Plantation

Yes, that's a limb, 500 year old live oak!

Yes, we just spent a few days in New Orleans, right after returning from Brazil.  Normally, we wouldn't plan back to back trips like this - we'd miss our cats too much! - but we were invited to a wedding in New Orleans and our beloved son Jeff lives there, so off we went. We always love spending time in the Big Easy even when weather is cold and gray as it was post-Gras.  We  tacked on three days to tool around plantation country and, as usual, found southern Louisiana to be an intriguing part of the state. First, the Mississippi River has got to be considered the heartbeat of America. We drove up one side and down the other of the "River Road" between New Orleans and Baton Rouge; it's completely industrialized - plants specializing in fertilizer, chemicals, oil, natural gas, gravel, grains - you name it - riverside and ready to be loaded onto barges or tankers and whisked to wherever. Trains come and go at all hours of the day and night and no sound is lonelier than the far off whistle of a train in the fog-shrouded night...It's a hub of constant activity.  Easy to see why Louisiana's unemployment rate is way below the national average. Who knew?
Our goal was, however, the plantations, and we were not disappointed. We saw four and stayed in two that are now B&B's. We learned so much - about Cajuns [Acadians], Creoles, the French presence, the Louisiana Purchase, slave life and hardships, especially disease, sugar cane [no, no cotton here] and the extraordinary local efforts to preserve and protect what is left of this bygone era.