Southern Bygones

Our next campground was part of an equestrian center. In fact, it seemed to be pretty much a horse pasture with a fence separating the horses from the RVs. There were only a handful of other RVs, and it was quiet, except for some construction during the day. Downtown Baton Rouge was about five miles away. As we drove downtown, we noticed people walking and biking on the levee between the road and the Mississippi River. Aha, we said, a place to go biking! 

But first we visited the state capitol, which, at 34 stories, is the tallest capitol in the country. It is an impressive building to look at. The outside has elaborate carvings and statues and is surrounded by formal gardens. 

Inside, each floor has 26 kinds of marble. The main floor has murals, statues and a display where Huey Long was assassinated (or, more probably, accidentally killed by his bodyguards). He had been governor and later was responsible for the state capitol being built in 1929 to replace the old state capitol. We’ll have to watch All the King’s Men, which is about him. 

We went to the 27th floor for a good view of the town as well as its oil refineries. The town seemed pretty quiet for a state capital, but the legislature wasn’t in session. On another day we visited the old state capitol a few blocks away. It looks like a castle. On the first floor there is a big exhibit on Huey Long. On the second floor are portraits of all the governors of Louisiana. You can click their portrait on a computer screen and learn more about them. 

Antebellum plantation homes used to line the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Most are gone. Many were destroyed during the Civil War, others fell down from neglect. White Castle had been moved four times because the river kept encroaching. Nothing remains of it now except the name of a town. 

We visited Nottaway, one of the most elegant plantations you can visit and the largest in Louisiana when it was built. Its owner had just finished building it when the civil war began. Mr. Randolph took the money he made in sugar to Texas to invest in cattle and thereby save his fortune, leaving his wife behind. 

When the Union soldiers showed up, she knew one of the officers and because of their friendship, their home was spared from being destroyed or even occupied. After that, we followed the so-called “scenic” road along the Mississippi. You couldn’t see the river, just the grass-covered levee beside it. Lining the opposite side of the road, petrochemical plants took turns with as-yet-to-be-planted fields. We stopped at another plantation, Oak Alley, 

to have a picnic and see the impressive row of oak trees leading to the home. 

We also visited Rosedown Plantation, north of Baton Rouge. The house is luxurious inside, and although it had no indoor plumbing, running water or temperature control at the time, it was worlds better than the slave quarters, which were no better than shanties. 

Pretty gardens surround the house and would be prettier later in spring when the azaleas and flowers are blooming. A few miles away is another plantation--the Audubon State Historic site. It didn’t have much to do with Audubon, except that he stayed there three and a half months to tutor the daughter. While there he killed a bunch of birds and drew pictures of them for the Birds of America book. This home was built in 1806, around 30 years before the other, and wasn’t as fancy or as well-furnished. 

A big turkey was gobbling loudly outside. He was all puffed up, proudly displaying his feathers. No female turkeys in sight, I’m afraid. 

One afternoon we biked the levee to Baton Rouge. Between the levee and the river is a narrow strip of land with some trees and a wide ditch. The vast wetland had been filled in and replaced by a levee. Now people try to control the water level, prevent the river from flooding, (which is why the land was so fertile to begin with), and imitate poorly what Nature had done so well. A story all too common. Huge barges floated on the river, some stationary, looking like small in-stream islands, others pushed by tugboats. 

Another day we visited the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center run by the National Park service and were reminded of how, when the Acadians (French Canadians) were forcibly removed from Nova Scotia by the British in 1755, many of them ended up in Louisiana and eventually became known as Cajuns. We visited Laurel Valley, which had been a sugar plantation and still is, on a much smaller scale. Outside the general store, farm animals wandered about. The attendant explained that all the chickens and roosters go in their hutches at night. That way the coyotes can’t eat them. But the goat has learned how to open the hutches to eat the hay. So now he’s worried that the coyotes may get the chickens. 

Down the road a bunch of old, grey dilapidated huts slowly rot in fields overgrown with tall grass, weeds and yellow wildflowers. The buildings had originally been used in the late 1800’s by people working the sugar plantation. Now they are occupied by thousands of bees buzzing loudly.  

In and Around New Orleans

Fontainebleau State Park is a nice, big park on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain with 126 campsites. We planned to stay there three nights. Since it was the weekend after Mardi Gras, I didn’t think there would be a problem but, just in case, we got an early start and got there before 11 am. A woman was helping the guy in front of me with his campsite. She took a long time on her computer. When he left, she turned to me and asked if we had a reservation. We didn’t. “I’ll be right with you,” she said and turned her attention to someone in a car that had just driven up to the window. She talked with him a long time and seemed to know him. Finally, when she was finished, she turned to me and said, “We’re full.” She explained that unless there was a cancelation later, nothing was available. I was not pleased to have been waiting 30 minutes for this information, especially since I could be using this time to find another place. Nevertheless, we did find another campground, a bit more expensive and not as scenic, but it had full hookup, and for 3 days, that was nice. 

Later that afternoon we went on a two-hour swamp tour. It was well-done, although there were hordes of people, and we felt we were being herded through a disney ride. The swamp wasn’t particularly unique for us, and we saw only a few animals, but it was interesting to hear the guide talk about local culture, such as hunting gators and crawfish and the homes and fish shacks on the bank. One poor great blue heron was trying his best to swallow a huge, long garfish, but it got away.

The next day we took an interesting tour of Bayou Lacombe gardens 

and walked a trail around a recently burned pine savannah in the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. The weather was great--sunny in the low 70’s.

After lunch we biked part of the Tammany Trace, a 31-mile bike/walk paved rails-to-trail trail. This fabulous trail passes through residential neighborhoods and patches of “wilderness” and connects to Fontainebleau state park. As usual, David took off and was gone. I tooled along, and when I got to the state park, road around it to see what we were missing. It has a huge lawn with gigantic live oaks. On the massive lake is a small beach, a fishing pier, a fountain and grass where kids were playing sports. There are remains of an old sugar mill in front of the visitor’s center and walking trails. It’s a popular park, and on such a nice day, there were tons of people engaged in various activities. David and I met back at the truck. He had ridden 30 miles. 

On our third day we went to the French Quarter in New Orleans, paid $14 to park for 3.5 hours, walked around and waited too long for a so-so, over-priced lunch. We were amazed at the line to get into the famous Cafe du Monde.

 We had been there 20 years ago and had no desire to stand in line for two hours for a beignet and coffee! Bourbon Street was dirty and lined with strip joints and bars. Loud music blared out of competing restaurant bars. Perhaps at night it’s more appealing. We enjoyed just walking around and looking at buildings, people, statues and street scenes.

 I like the architecture and the street musicians in the French Quarter, but there are too many tourists. We left and went to city park, which is pretty and big. 

There’s an art museum and the Sydney & Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, which has a good selection of sculptures by various sculptors. 
We then went to Chalmette National Battlefield where Andrew Jackson soundly defeated the British in the battle of New Orleans in 1814 and became a hero. The British lost 2,000 men while the Americans lost only 13. Unfortunately the battlefield closed early, so we only had time to watch a video of the battle, but I think David had enough sightseeing for the day.

Storms in Alabama, Mud in Mississippi

Watching TV

The day we left Alabama, it was supposed to rain. David went outside to start prepping for departure and then came to the door and said, “Jane, we have a problem.” That bad? I’m not sure I want to know. I don’t ask, but he goes on to explain that the truck has a flat tire. He changes the tire with the spare while I clean up inside. When I go outside to see how he’s doing, it has become very windy. Another camper wanders over, looks at the sky and says, “It looks bad.” I look up. The clouds are low, billowing and ominous. There’s lightning and thunder. I hurry back inside. David just finishes changing the tire when the bottom falls out. There are tornado warnings, and one touchdown in the area. After about an hour of heavy rain, the storm appears to have passed. The rain is lighter. We decide to leave. The cats get wet as we carry them to the truck, and they are unhappy. We’re driving on country roads. Then we come to a low spot where water is covering the road and flowing across it. The two fifth wheels ahead of us make it, so we proceed across. Then we come across another low, flooded spot and another. “If I had known it would be like this, I would have stayed in the campground,” David says. He is concerned that the drum brakes in the trailer will get wet and fail. It begins to rain hard again with thunder and lightning. Neptune is agitated and won’t stop meowing and bouncing around the truck. Plato has his paranoid look and stares out the window nervously. Perhaps they feel our anxiety. We still have a long way to go before we get to the Interstate. After about the 4th or 5th flooded spot, the two campers in front of us pull into a parking lot. Almost immediately we get a “tire sensor fault error” on the dashboard. David pulls into a gravel parking area. He checks the tires and doesn’t see any problem. We assume the error is because the spare tire doesn’t have a tire pressure sensor. David is leery about continuing because of all the water on the road, but the storm is traveling west, and we are heading east. We decide to continue. We finally make it to I-10, drive past Mobile, through the tunnel and on toward our next destination--Gulf Islands National Seashore in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. 

By the time we get there mid-day, the storm is gone. However, ravenous no-see-ums have emerged and dine enthusiastically on David while he sets up the trailer. It’s too wet and buggy to go on the hike I had planned, so instead we drive to Biloxi, ten miles away. The big draw there, I guess, is Beach Blvd, which runs alongside a pretty white-sand beach. 

We drive by eight huge casinos, which had been destroyed by Katrina and been rebuilt. You can still see damage from Katrina--damaged buildings, houses under repair or just empty lots where homes had been. You also see new construction. A huge casino barge had swept onto shore and destroyed the Ohr-O’keefe art museum, which was being completely rebuilt and was partly open. We wonder if this is partly why the casinos are all solid, land-based buildings and not barges. We stop to look at the building. I take photos of trees that had died in the hurricane and been turned into sculptures where they stood. 

I also take photos of a white, cast-iron lighthouse. We visit the Katrina memorial, which lists the names of everyone who died in Mississippi because of the hurricane. 

The Hard Rock casino is across the street, so we wander over. It is so weird to see all these people sitting at gambling machines, pushing buttons. You don’t have to pull a lever on the slot machine anymore, and you can play other gambling games by yourself at machines. Does anyone ever win? I try my luck. I stick a dollar in a 25-cent slot machine, push the button and lose. I push again and lose. I push two more times and lose. That's it for me. We drive around downtown Biloxi, but it looks pretty depressed with a lot of empty storefronts. Mardi Gras decorations still adorn some of the windows.

The next day we go to the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge where the only population of this subspecies of cranes lives. 

There are only about 132 of them. They are non-migratory and live only here on this refuge. The exhibits in the visitor’s center are excellent, some of the best we’ve seen. We walk a trail through their habitat, a wet pine savannah, one of the last tracts of this ecosystem left. 

Then we drive around some neighborhoods trying to get a glimpse of the birds. They like to feed in people’s backyards. A glimpse is all we get. They’re huge, grey birds with some red on top of their heads. I spot two large grey lumps in the far end of someone’s yard. They raise their heads and walk off.

After lunch we go on another, longer trail. We walk about a mile when the trail starts getting muddier and muddier. Soon it is covered with water. We try bushwhacking through the thick, thorny underbrush, but the trail never gets any drier so we give up and turn back. 

Where's lunch?

Before returning to the trailer, we stop at Shearwater Pottery and look at some great pottery by the Andersons. 

The Retired Life

Evidently, many people from Canada and the northern states spend the winter in campgrounds in the south. These are the “seasonals”. They get special rates, and it can be a good deal. We got a taste of this lifestyle at our next campground, 40 minutes outside Mobile. As we drove to the campground, we saw several signs for RV parks. The park we stayed in is behind a small golf course. There were five rows of RV’s, lined up one right next to the other with some trees. 

Although we prefer the more scenic parks, we were thrilled to have full hook-up. That afternoon we attended a “customer appreciation lunch” where they served hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans, potato salad, potato chips, cake and various fixings for the dogs and burgers. David was delighted to partake. I enjoyed the chocolate cake. I asked a woman who was from Montreal what they did while they were there. She said the campground had planned activities; the nearby town had outlet stores, and there were many places to eat inexpensively close-by. Also there are things to do in Mobile and other nearby towns; you can golf, and the beach is 20 minutes away. We compared notes with another couple who also have a North Trail travel trailer. They were from Wisconsin and were planning to return in a few weeks, when it stopped snowing. They had just bought their travel trailer and were dismayed that some things were already failing. Like us, the overhead cabinet doors had popped out. I told them we had a list of items to fix when we got back from Canada. 

That afternoon we went to Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. A trail leads you to a large lagoon. On either side are bare, dead trees and palmettos in the sandy soil. The trees may have died from Katrina.

The following day we drove to Mobile. When we got there, police were blocking off streets and people were setting up for a big Mardi Gras parade. David said he didn’t want to get trapped downtown, so we turned around and left while we could. Instead we visited some smaller towns. Fairhope is a small, nicely-landscaped town with big old live oaks lining the streets and lots of galleries and nice shops in the small downtown area. We found a nice park on Mobile Bay to have a picnic.

We walked a boardwalk at the Weeks Bay National Estuarine Reserve and got back early to the campground, lucky for Neptune who got to go for a “walk”. (Plato also got to go outside, but he likes to stay close to the trailer.) We did some laundry, and I met a women from Scotland who lived in Ontario. We had a nice long talk while our clothes dried. She told me about an accident she and her husband had in their travel trailer. They ran off the road and flipped over. She broke three vertebrae in her back but fortunately has mostly recovered. Her husband was unscathed. Now they have a smallish motorhome. 

In the morning, the owner of the other North Trail came over to ask David’s assistance. David showed them how to use their tv and how to fix their leaky toilet. We decided to give Mobile another try. I stopped by the office to ask a question and found out that Mobile, this being Fat Tuesday, was having an even bigger parade. People were off work. Kids were out of school. And I thought I was clever to avoid New Orleans during Mardi Gras. It would be fine if we were staying in town and could escape, but we didn’t want to drive there. So we decided instead to go to the Naval Aviation museum on the

naval base in Pensacola, 45 minutes away. Good decision. It was awesome, much like the Air and Space museum in DC and also free.

We followed an excellent tour by a retired Korean War fighter pilot, who explained the history of the many military planes in this huge museum. You can easily spend all day. And just around the corner is the Fort Barrancas National Historic site where a ranger gives an interesting tour of this fascinating fort. The inner walls are supported by sand. 
Happily, when things don't go as planned, other things happen!

Ghosts of Alabama Past

We arrived at our next destination, Auburn Alabama, at a quarter to 6. Since it was late, we decided to spend the night in the WalMart parking lot to save money and to pick up a few provisions. However, when we pulled into the busy, crowded parking lot and didn’t see a good spot to park overnight, we changed our minds and headed to Chewacla State Park. We got there right before they closed and, in this particular campground, they lock the gate!  The only reason we made it is that we were now in central time, so it was actually 4:58, not 5:58. (Once you register they give you the code for the gate.) Soon after we set up, it started raining cats and dogs, so it was better not to be fiddling with the generator in the rain after all.

Horsehoe Bend

The next few days we learned a lot of history. Horseshoe Bend National Military Park is where, in a bend of the Tallapoosa river, Chief Menawa and 1,000 Creek warriors made their last stand. On March 26, 1814, General Andrew Jackson, with a force of 3,300 killed over 800 Indians. Around 200 of his men died. Chief Menawa was wounded seven times and played dead until nightfall when he swam across the river and escaped. After that, the Creek confederacy ceded 23 million acres of their territory to the U.S. This land became Alabama. Jackson was promoted. There’s not much to see at the park but grass and trees, but after watching the video and reading the information in the museum, you drive around the battlefield, stopping at various points, and imagine what happened that day.

We learned a different part of American history the following day when we went to Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, where black Americans trained to become fighter pilots during WWII. They weren’t allowed to integrate with the regular units, so they had their own facility.

Nearby Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) was a college established in 1881 where blacks learned practical job skills. Booker T. Washington, born a slave in 1856, was its first president. George Washington Carver was head of the Agriculture department. We visited Booker T.’s  home (The Oaks), which had state-of-the-art heating, plumbing and electricity for the time period. At the Carver Museum on campus, we learned how Carver invented 300 uses for peanuts, traveled the countryside teaching farmers how to improve the soil, among other things, and about his many other contributions to agriculture. 

In the afternoon we went bicycling in Tuskegee National Forest on a trail that David thought would be too technical. It was a bit too hilly and rooty for me, but he enjoyed it.

We moved to another nice campground--Gunter Hill--outside Montgomery. There weren’t many other campers at the previous campgrounds, and this one was no exception. The warm, beautiful, sunny weather continued as we soaked up more history.

There wasn’t much to see at Fort Toulouse-Jackson Park, just a couple partially-reconstructed wooden forts and a Mississippian Indian mound that looked like a little hill covered with vegetation. But we liked the feel of the place--its wide-open grassy areas, old, Spanish moss-laden trees and river views.

Montgomery is a nice town with lots of history. At the visitor’s center in the old Union station, you learn what the area has to offer. We drove around and looked at monuments, statues and memorials, 

visited the Civil Rights Center, an art museum, the first White House of the Confederacy and toured the capital. We dodged 55 little kids at the State Archives & History museum. One little boy, looking at a glass case of old military revolvers, said wistfully, “I wish I could buy one of those”. 

Civil Rights memorial

looking up at church organ pipes

When you walk in the door at the St. Johns Episcopal church and look up at the ceiling, you see pipes from the organ sticking straight out over the entrance. I thought it made an interesting photo.

We drove to Selma where Martin Luther King led marchers 54 miles to the capitol in Montgomery March 21-25, 1965 to demand voting rights for blacks. Blacks were legally allowed to vote, but local registration 

practices made it difficult or impossible for most of them to register. As a result of this protest, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6. Half-way to Selma, the National Park Service has an excellent, extensive interpretive center explaining all the events surrounding the march and other civil rights events.

There was still more to see and do in Montgomery, but it was time to move on.