HiJenx

We had rarely been so happy to enter a new state. Despite the day before being just awful, we were hopeful about Louisiana. We spoke to the woman at the welcome center alone more than anyone in the previous state. She clearly loved her state and had lots of advice.

We headed straight into New Orleans. It was a lovely city, full of people, both residents and tourists. The houses weren’t huge, but they were mostly well kept and had reasonable outside space further from the center. The ones in the city proper were very colorful.

Downtown – Back in the Land of Palm Trees

French Quarter

Joan of Arc

We had an up close look at the Mississippi at its southern end, as it runs through the city:

This was actually interesting to me as I’d lived near the northern end my whole life in the Upper Midwest, but never seen the end of it. This wasn’t the very end, but we learned at the welcome center the proper end can only be seen from the air or by boat.

We checked out the famous French Quarter:

Bourbon Street is clearly meant to be some kind of vice street, but it was still interesting to have a poke around, even though we weren’t especially interested in strip clubs. We wandered into a voodoo shop, where they were extremely serious about no photography on religious grounds. The man we spoke to (obviously off camera) said that he didn’t practice voodoo, but was very familiar with the religion due to plenty of locals practicing it.

We went out for lunch there so I could sample some of the local seafood. I had a shrimp and oyster poboy, which as far as I can tell, is a sandwich:

It was pretty good. After lunch, we drove south into the swamp. All the main roads were bridges nearly and the trees looked like this from the road:

We drove into some more rural areas on the banks of the rivers and saw a former plantation house and a grain production center of some sort. It was so big:

This so looks like Interview with a Vampire.

Grain Production

Once off the main road and into the small towns, we saw a lot of this kind of nature: We also saw loads of sugar cane, which is apparently one of the big crops of Louisiana:

Chris tried some to see if it was sweet. I don’t think it was ripe yet:

We also saw a lot of these, and Chris decided to pick one as well to see what it was. I’m still not sure:

We managed to also stumble across a church that was still being built, which was a very odd sight:

We spoke to the builders and they told us a) fortunately they had been planning on doing a third and final sand on the floor, because we’d actually walked over their unfinished floor, oops! and b) they love living Louisiana. They said it was a very outdoorsy and sporty place where things like hunting and fishing are very popular. They all said they wouldn’t consider living anywhere else.

Toward the end of the day, we saw a sign warning of 9 miles of potential bear crossing:

We ended the night in our hotel in Lafayette. It was so much better than the previous night and so good we decided to book another night. It cost about the same as our hotel in Mississippi, but was clean, had a sitting room and a delicious breakfast. We highly recommend the Best Western Vermilion River in Lafayette.