New Orleans Road trip - Day 8 - finally here, New Orleans.

We had a relaxing morning, didn't set alarms, had breakfast in our trailers, caught up on emails etc (Internet here is good). At about 10 we set out to find some plantation houses.

This is the back side of the Destrehan Plantation House. I don't know why I didn't get a picture of the front with its Greek revival columns and 2 level "gallery".

This Plantation is just about 15 minutes along River Road from the KOA. It is not in the Plantation House tour brochure and I am sure that is why it was not busy. After a short video on the history of the house and family we had a tour guide to ourselves.

The house was built for a rich French family by a "freed man of colour". He and 7 of the landowners slaves took 3 years to build it. That included making all the bricks and cutting down and shaping all the Cyprus trees.

One of the rooms had been stripped back so you could see how it was built. The insulation between the walls was made of mud (there's a lot of that here), Spanish Moss (also abundant) and animal hair. Then the lathe and then plaster inside and out.

There are no nails in the house, all the wood is fitted together with holes and pegs.

The house has some of the original furnishings and many of the original family portraits. The rest is of the period but from other plantation houses. The movie Interview with a Vampire was filmed here and the film company had some furnishings created for that, like this chandelier, and donated them.

The 17year old daughter of the family died in this room. Her portrait is over the mantle. Yellow fever swept through the area a number of times killing thousands.

Although the house is not as cluttered as the Victorian home that we saw in Memphis, the furnishings are solid and ornate. They were either bought from France with the family or made by highly skilled slaves. Slavery was governed by French law and education and skills were encouraged for the slaves.

This was the only room that was cordoned off. It was because the rug was over 150 years old.

Our tour guide was great and obviously loved her job. We asked lots of questions and along with talking about the house, the plantation families lives and those of the slaves she was also game to discuss the politics of the time, explained the Louisiana Purchase for me (I have very little knowledge of American history) and told us about the trees on the property.

We were then able to wander on our own around the slave quarters. This was the cookhouse which, along with the laundry house, were close but separate from the main house.

The first crop produced at this plantation was Indigo and then it moved into sugar cane. There was an exhibit on those two crops in one of the out buildings. Louisiana is second largest grower of sugar cane in the U.S. still.

The trees on the property are Southern Live Oak. They don't have leaves like our oaks but they have acorns. They do not loose their leaves. The ferns growing on them are called Resurrection Ferns because if they have a few days without rain they curl up and go brown but one rain shower makes them green and full again.

The trees are hundreds of years old and covered with Spanish moss.

Back in the car we crossed the Mississippi and looked for another plantation. The land was either swamp woods or sugar cane fields and there were huge trucks on the road transporting the sugar cane.

Hungry we stopped at a restaurant specializing in Creole cooking (we had just found out that Creole simply meant born in Louisiana so there were French Creole or African Creole, even German Creole in one area) I ordered the special  catfish with white beans and rice. It was really good. Greg discovered Hush Puppies (basically deep fried sweet cornbread) and I ordered Fried Alligator Nuggets just to give them a try. Wont do that again. They were very dense, not quite rubbery but close and really had no flavour, maybe slightly swampy/fishy tasting.

We drove to Oak Alley Plantation but decided we really didn't have time to do it justice and headed home.

This picture is for Dad, "Yes Dad, I did shop at the Piggly Wiggly"

When we got back to the KOA, Aimee and I went for a walk on the levee which is just across the road. The top is paved for walking, biking, riding and the right (the river side) is reinforced with cement.

Every so often there are huge pipes and pumps to pump the water back to the river.

We walked and watched the boat traffic on the river as the sun went down.