Louisiana

We had a great time in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I will have to REALLY face the fact that in most places we visit we will only have a chance to sample the icing on the cake so to speak.  As Zina will tell you, that is the best part but it is hard to just try some of it!

We arrived in a suburb of Baton Rouge called Denham Springs late in the afternoon to camp at a KOA Holiday.  It was an OK campground.  The pool was closed until April 1 and even though they said the hot tub was open, it was closed whenever we wanted to use it.  There was a great park behind the campground so David, Zina, and I went for a bike ride there.  Myra did her workout run and Will played basketball.  It was good to have a quietish evening.

Tuesday we had a plan to see Baton Rouge after we finished our school work.  A visit to the old Louisiana Capitol building was first on the list.  It is a beautiful building.  The greeter said that for $2 a person we could see a presentation by a ghost that would tell us about the building.  That sounded great to us!  As we walked to the presentation the greeter asked Zina if she would be afraid of the ghosts but she said no.  She then explained that ghosts are her specialty because she was born just a week before Halloween!  We really enjoyed the presentation (it is the favorite historical presentation so far for David!).  We then saw the other exhibits, including a big one on Huey Long, a depression era controversial governor who was assassinated shortly after he took the Senate seat he orchestrated getting while still governor.  He had so much power that he hand picked the LSU band drum majors (that was HIS school!) Will was set on having lunch at the original Raising Canes chicken finger restaurant he had heard about a long time ago.  The chicken fingers were good and we enjoyed seeing the location.  I had planned to ride our bikes along the levee to visit the USS Kidd, a WWII destroyer turned Veteran’s Memorial.  The bike riding worked well but when we got there it turned out that the USS Kidd was off to a shipyard for repairs!  The veteran’s museum was still great and we wished we had had more time there.  When we returned to the campground I did laundry, Myra ran, Zina watched Wicked, and Will and David just hung out.

I have been very frustrated with how much Addium work I have had to do this week.  On Wednesday I was wrapping up a big project that I had actually hoped to have finished before I left.  Being so distracted made Zina quite gumpy with me.  But, we finally set off for New Orleans and arrived in time to get tickets for the afternoon Natchez Steamboat Paddleboat Jazz cruise.  The drive to New Orleans was amazing to folks who come from the dry West!  So many different birds and houses where it looked like the only transportation was boats!  While we waited for the cruise we went to Cafe Du Monde to get the obligatory Beignets.  They were a hit with Zina and everyone else enjoyed them also.  We enjoyed the narrated cruise and bought some local cuisine for lunch on the boat.  Zina kept telling me that the water looked so inviting and she wanted to jump in.  I didn’t think that was very funny!  I don’t know why she thought that, the Mississippi River is pretty brown!  We wanted to see as much as possible in our short time so we grabbed a mule drawn touring carriage.  Our guide, KJ, was great and made the ½ hour tour last an hour!  Unfortunately, Myra needed a bathroom the whole time and wasn’t able to enjoy the tour as much as the rest of us.  After the tour we found a bathroom and then walked around the French Quarter.  The kids were amazed at the atmosphere.  As we were wandering down Bourbon Street, we were wondering where to eat when a restaurant “salesman”said he would seat us on the balcony.  He said his name was Irvin and he would take care of our family.  Indeed he did get us seated on the rooftop!  It was fun to eat our dinner to the accompaniment of the Bourbon Street chaos!  As we were riding the elevator Myra told us that her business idea was to offer a completely white, quiet room in the area for people to rest but I think she began enjoying the life that is all around and later asked Judith if she wanted to live there with her!  The food wasn’t outstanding but I really liked my blackened Red Fish!  Too much beverage had us wondering where we could get off the highway safely to get gas and find a restroom.  We will have to plan ahead to avoid that scenario in the future!  We didn’t get back to our trailer until 10pm but it was a great day.