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Published: December 14th 2008
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Before we hit the road at 8:40, we left two bowls of food for the stray cats. There was light rain overnight. Today started out cloudy, breezy, and humid. As we passed over sandy creeks, we realized that we haven't seen a rock in three days. There were cotton fields that had been cut, but at the ends of the rows there were little drifts of white cotton balls like snow. There are actually some rolling hills. We passed orchards of big trees - pecans, walnuts?
When we got to St. Francisville, LA, we started going on part of the route that Jodie and Shawne rode their bicycles on two years ago. We drove into the Rosedown Plantation to take a tour. We borrowed umbrellas, but we didn't need them. It was 81 degrees! We wandered through part of the 28 acres of the formal gardens before our tour time. We were the only ones on our tour! The plantation had 3500 acres of cotton. Fortunes were made in one good year. Daniel Turnbull built the 16 room mansion. He was one of the richest men in America, all from cotton. The house was beautifully furnished inside. Now it is run
by the state park system. In the main parlor, a needlepoint by Martha Washington was proudly displayed, as she was the great great grandmother of the Turnbulls daughter-in-law. The guide told us that the pineapple was a symbol of hospitality and welcome. It was in carvings, etc. They grew pineapples on the plantation. When a guest arrived, there would be a pineapple in the room as a welcome. If a pineapple reappeared during the guest's stay, it was a symbol that the welcome had been overstayed! Walking back to the truck, the smell of flowers was delicious. It was the flowering trees that smelled so good, like camellias, but Nancy had never seen a camellia tree. We asked what kind of trees they were and they were Camellia sasanqua, a tree, which Mrs. Turnbull brought over from a trip to the Far East. She was also one of the first to bring azaleas and crape myrtle, so I guess Mrs. Turnbull is at least partially responsible for the beautiful gardens all over the South! Mrs. Turnbull planted the oak trees up the drive herself - the slaves dug the holes and she dropped the acorns in. There were 400 slaves
on four plantations that the Turnbulls owned. Records show that they were well-treated and after the Civil War 200 people stayed on to work at the plantation. We asked our guide how the hurricanes affected them there. She said that one in ten trees fell, as well as many large branches from the live oaks during Gustav in September. They had to close the plantation to tours for six weeks until they could clear the trees and the limbs so that it would be safe for visitors to walk on the grounds. We were going to eat lunch in the trailer, but it started to pour rain while we were in the truck, so we drove out of the parking lot and the rain stopped. We drove back into the lot and then had lunch in the trailer, without getting drenched going in and out of the truck. We drove on and saw evidence of Hurricane Gustav all along the highway. Many houses had blue tarps on the roofs, and many trees along the road or in the forest were blown over - all in the same direction. We saw diesel at $2.39 at a Chevron across from an Exxon
The dining room
Hanging over the table is a "shoo-fly". Mobile Chemical Plant. 😊
We crosssed the Mississippi at Baton Rouge. It was quite the port, and on the other side there was a parking lot for incoming new cars off the ships. There were many auto carrier railroad cars waiting to take the cars to their new destinations. Ironically, on the other side of the fence, there were enormous, we mean 50 feet high, piles of crushed cars in a scrap yard! We enjoyed a billboard that said "Beef - A Grill's Best Friend". We passed cattle and hay fields. Then, on the other side of the highway, there was a bad wreck. Semis and cars were off the road and being towed.The traffic in the eastbound lanes was backed up for about 15 miles! At the end of the traffic, another accident, a truck jackknifed on the causeway, was backing traffic up again. There wasn't a way to re-route the traffic because it was backed up into the Atchafalaya Swamp! The road throguh the swamp was amazing! It was made of two causeways, 28 feet above the swamp. It took ten years to build and was finished in 1972. Why? First a construction canal was dug that was
18 miles long and 300 feet wide. The canal was for floating barges to serve as working platforms. Pilings and slabs were floated down from a worksite in New Orleans. The pilings took four days to arrive - each. They were put into 95 feet of mud and six feet of hard sand. Each road section slab was cast in one piece and floated to the worksite. Needless to say, there weren't any offramps because where would they go? So the traffic was stuck for hours. We noticed that there wasn't any roadkill along the 18 miles of causeway. 😊 The Atchafalaya Basin is a million acre swamp!!! We breezed by going the other way and then it started to pour rain. The weather report on the radio called for severe weather - rain, wind, and possible tornadoes. OOH! We stopped at the Visitor Center for Louisiana and they said there wasn't a threat of tornadoes any more, "but keep watch on the sky". Later, we stopped at the Visitor Center for the Swamp. It was interesting. It made you want to stay a few days and take an airboat tour through the swamp. We saw several billboards advertising their
boudin. If you were at Nancy's retirement party, you'll remember the boudin that Jodie and Shawne ordered for us after they had tasted it on their bicycle trip. It's a sausage and rice dish. We saw rice paddies and sugar cane fields. Another billboard said, "Popeye's Chicken - We Do Good Ba-You". Ha! In one area, we saw what looked like Fema trailers, but there were only about ten spots with trailers left. Rich said that as we've been driving through Louisiana and he sees signs that say LA, he first wonders why there are signs about Los Angeles all the way out here! Oh were his arms getting tired from fighting the thirty mile an hour winds all afternoon. Just before we got to our RV park, there was road construction. A sign said, "Be careful - My daddy works here".
In Lake Charles, houses were on those cement block piers instead of foundations. I would always be wondering what was going to crawl out from underneath! There were also big refineries. We'd smell a gas or propane smell and then realize we were near a refinery. At the RV Park, we asked about tornadoes. They said they had
Gentleman's parlor
Gambling was taxed. If there were no numbers on the cards, it wasn't gambling. never had one there, but that Hurricane Rita blew through and they lost power. There was a huge 20 foot tall bamboo windbreak, so after Rita blew by, not one trailer in their park had even moved! We had heavy rain and thunderstorms through the evening, but it was warm. We kept the door open all evening!
We slept with scenes of cypress knees in sucking swamps, and of glorious gardens.
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