A Visit to the Past

Hello friends.  Would you like to travel to the past with me?  After our fun times in New Orleans - showing my daughter Amy the famous city in the state where she was born - we then rented a car and headed to show her the place where she was born.  I also had dearly wanted to re-visit the places where we lived when we first were married and where we had our first two of three children.  I found this bed and breakfast, called "T'Frere's" thinking it would be nice stay in a charming place.  

This is the living room.

The dining room where we'd be served breakfast the next morning.

The pretty glassed in porch.

The charming kitchen.

Our breakfast of quiche, sausage, fruit and yogurt, a grilled tomato and a fresh biscuit.

My room, named "Mary".

Then we packed up, checked out and were off to find the past.  My sister Denise was the navigator and plugged the address of our house into her iPhone and we found it!  Here Amy and I are posing in front of our old house.  We bought the home when it was just framed up, we got to choose the color of brick, the roofing, the paint colors inside, the light fixtures and paneling, etc.  Along the way over the years someone enclosed the garage and made it into a room.  Amy's first room as a baby was the one on the left.  We also had our second child while living here, Shawn, our son.  I'd not been back for 40 years!

Our next destination was to find Milton, Louisiana where we'd rented a little old farm house for quite a while.  Dayle was flying helicopters for PHI (Petroleum Helicopters Inc.) and he worked 7 days on and 7 days off.  I used to drive him to work in his green 1968 GTO until he bought me a brand new, off the showroom floor, RED 1970 Volkswagen "Campmobile".  On the way to find Milton we passed the airport and lo and behold, I spied the yellow helicopters of PHI!  I took the next exit and drove as close as I could and climbed up the bank and took these photos through a chain link fence.  :-)

Dayle flew there for 6 years, taking oil workers out into the Gulf of Mexico and landing on the heliport on the big oil rigs.  He really loved his job there.  While out on the rigs they were fed wonderful Cajun food by a Papa Landry, a nice cook who made fresh bread, too.  He also could fish off the rigs.  Then a whole week spent at home with the babies and me.  He took me flying several times and also my sister Denise visited us there and he took her flying.  I must say, it's very exciting flying in a helicopter!

The company has a nice new office building.  It was so neat to see these and I knew Dayle would enjoy the photos too.

We then followed the iPhone GPS to Milton.  I did not recognize our old house but after looking at this one for quite some time the memories flooded back.  The room on the front left was filled with light from all the windows.  Dayle and I bought an old oak round table while living here and he refinished it in that room.  Sanding it down, staining and varnishing it.  The kitchen was just past the sunny room, then beyond it was our master bedroom with a door right out to the back where the Vermillion River flowed past.  Next to it was the guest room where my sister stayed on her visit and also my friend Shirley visited for several weeks.  In the fall we started hearing these loud noises on our metal roof and figured out it was pecans (puh-KAWNS) falling.  I'll never forget the racket.  :-)

Pardon the poor quality photo, but it was all I could find on the internet.. but this old grocery store was across from our house and certainly was convenient for us!  Milton was fun and totally inhabited by Cajuns all of which seemed to have the last name of Broussard.  The store was called Broussard's Grocery, Seed, Feed and Hardware.  :-)  The had "yard eggs" in a bowl on the counter and sold all manner of things.

The old building is still there, but they built a new store probably 30 years ago, which we thoroughly enjoyed walking through.  Of particular interest to my sister Denise was the unique meat department - I wish we'd bought some of their "Boudin" (boo-DAHN).  A unique sausage made with rice, ground chicken giblets and spices.  I bought a little bottle of Cajun seasoning to bring home.

We then drove down into a boat launch area a little ways from the old house so I could take some photos of the bayou - the Vermillion River.  This is looking to the right, there is a little old bar there.  See the line down into the bayou?  That is a crawfish trap!

This is looking to the left, the part that flows in back of our old house.

My sister Roberta took this photo which I love and asked her if I could use it on the blog.  She has a real artistic eye for photos.  I love how she captured the live oak branch arching over the bayou.  I have no idea why all the waterways are muddy looking.  :-)

Next on the "bucket list" was to find our favorite restaurant while we lived there, the Riverside Inn.  The old one burned down, but they built a new one.  We followed the iPhone GPS and it was SO funny as it took us in the most crazy way and we thought it MUST be wrong.. we were in a funky area with yards of oil drilling paraphernalia, but just as we were ready to give up, we spotted a sign and there it was.  I ordered my old favorite meal there, still on the menu, the "Crawfish Dinner".

Here is the menu listing for my dinner.  :-)  The round things are the "boulettes".  You mix chopped crawfish, onion, celery, egg, bread pieces and roll into a ball - roll in seasoned bread crumbs, fry in oil.  :-)

What a perfect "last supper" for us to have in Louisiana!  I was so happy that my sisters and daughter also enjoyed the cuisine I so love.

Outside the restaurant was a big pond and I enjoyed seeing the local inhabitants.  :-)

They had an arbor which was covered with Jasmine in full bloom.

The last place on our list to visit was Avery Island where all the Tabasco sauce is made that is distributed all around the world.  When we visited 40 years ago they made it in a really OLD brick factory with rows and rows of old oak barrels where they age the sauce for many years.  NOW there is a big modern new factory where we went through and learned all about the company.

When we entered the factory there was this neat collage on the wall.

Then there was a HUGE bottle of Tabasco Sauce where my daughter Amy posed for me.  :-)

On through the factory we saw them making sauce through the windows.

A close up of the bottles moving through the line.  The girl who took us through gave us each 4 tiny bottles of different Tabasco Sauces, so cute!  

We then walked up to the Tabasco "Country Store" to see what they had.  I got Dayle a tee shirt with a big healthy crawfish on the front.

My daughter Amy had the MOST fun here.  She got several bottles of Tabasco to take home.  I saw several things I'd love to have but there was no room in my luggage, alas.

A big regret for me is that they now charge $8 per person to drive on into the wildlife preserve part of the place and we were running out of time, so we did not get to see all the alligators and birds there.  :-)  But I did get a final shot of Avery Island and the big live oak trees draped with Spanish moss.

Denise and I took on the chore of returning the rental car to the airport.  Funny story -- we were looking for a cab or shuttle to get back to the hotel and this man called out to me and said.. I'll take you back.  I asked him how much and he said "Whatever you want to pay."  And he ushered us into this limousine!  The story gets funnier.. he drove on past the exit to our hotel and headed towards New Orleans!  I go.. uh oh.  So, I say, you passed our hotel, and he said, "You said Comfort Inn, right?"  We go, well, yes, but it was that place back there, and he goes.. "That's the COUNTRY INN. I bet you thought I was kidnapping you!"  And I go.. "Welllll... I was wondering what you were doing!"  He took the next exit and took us to the right place.  Whew!

We had to be up at 3.. THREE am to catch the shuttle to the airport.  And friends, I was so rummy that I didn't see a step down and I lost my balance and fell.. flat.. on my face.  I caught myself on my two hands, and re-injured (jammed) my left shoulder and hurt my knees.  I got a hand up and climbed into the shuttle bus.  ::sigh::  But here we are, flying over the Grand Canyon on our first leg to Las Vegas - 3 and a half hours.  We only had 50 minutes to make the connecting flight and the next gate was a LONG way away from where we landed.  Not even time to drop a few dollars in any of the slot machines in the airport.  :-)

We then had another 3 hour flight to Portland and we flew over Crater Lake, my sister Roberta took these two photos for me with my camera.  

A closer shot of Crater Lake, you can even see Wizard Island.  

And so we returned to our homes and have the memories of a wonderful trip.  I do hope you've enjoyed coming along.. I hope I haven't bored you!  We are on our last day at the beach, tomorrow morning we head home.  It's taken me a week of relaxing to catch up!  I will put up some photos of our week at the coast day after tomorrow.  I decided not to show the "same old things" this time.  Well, maybe a lighthouse photo or two.  ((hugs)), Teresa :-) 

Plantation Alley

Hi there!  Thanks for you comments on my New Orleans trip.  It's a wonderful historic city and I hope you know more about it now.  We decided to add some adventuring to the end of our trip and I'd always wanted to tour some of the historic plantation homes to the west of N.O. - we picked two to visit - "Laura" which is reputed to be one of the most realistic and natural of the estates - and "Oak Alley" which is probably the most famous of them all.  We passed others along the way to Laura and on to Oak Alley, I didn't realize there were so many!  Below you'll see our approach to the colorful and charming Laura.  If you want to read the history that we were told by the docent, click on that link, then click on "The Sugar Plantation".

One of the huge Live Oak trees in front of the home.  I just loved them.

The centuries old oak branches arch gracefully over the grounds and home.

You begin your tour by entering the cool dark basement on the ground level.  They had life size images of Laura and her parents which was brilliant for bringing them to life for us.  We heard wonderful historic stories of the family - I won't try to tell you those here, but the link above will tell you all of what we learned.

The plantation was started by a French aristocrat named Guillaume Duparc and his wife Nanette Prud'Homme.

This house is not the biggest nor the most elaborately decorated, but that is part of it's charm, it's very real feeling.  I noted that the paint color of this room is the same as the lime green we painted our living room back home.  :-)  

I love the children's room here and the beautiful baby crib.

Filmy canopies protected the family from creepy crawlers of the day.

Not long ago the historians found descendants of the plantation who generously shipped boxes of old photos to them.  

Raymond Locoul married Elisabeth Duparc, grandmother of Laura.  Interestingly, the plantation was run by women of many generations.  The painting below shows the plantation house from the Mississippi River.

The lovely and large dining room.  What I wouldn't give to have one like this!  The slaves worked in a kitchen behind the house to prepare lavish meals for the family and also to feed the hundreds of workers of the sugar plantation.

There was a fire in 2004 but the house was saved and repaired.  They left this one room to show the fire damage on the beams in the walls - they call it the store room now and have spinning wheels, baskets, crocks and workaday items.

We then exited the house onto the expansive back verandah with a view of where the old cookhouse was, the 2 chicken houses in the back are built on top of the cookhouse foundation.

I loved the grain-painted doors that were so colorful and pretty.

Notice the wonderful colorful colors the house is painted?  Interestingly, the house was painted white for years.. when the fire happened and they were working to repair it, they found the beautiful original colors and when they re-painted after the restoration, they used these bright colors.. I love it!!

We were blessed with a fabulous sunny warm day for our tour, I so enjoyed sitting on a bench on the balcony overlooking the plantation grounds.

A close look at the chicken houses built in later years after the cookhouse was gone.

There were several slave quarters on the property, small houses shared by 2 families.  

I was very charmed by this tropical garden to the side of the house.  

We enjoyed passing back through the gift shop of the estate, I bought one precious memento - a wooden candle holder made from an original porch spindle removed during the restoration of the house after the fire!  Much of the house was built using Cypress wood.  Isn't this neat?  The house was built originally in the early 1800s.

OK.. we then headed on to find Oak Alley Plantation.  We all were hungry for lunch and happily there is a lovely restaurant at Oak Alley - built in an old farmhouse.  I was pleasantly surprised that they served local Cajun cuisine and we had one of the tastiest meals of our whole trip!  It began with crawfish gumbo.  The gumbo was the real deal, too.. made with a dark roux and served over rice.

Then a delicious sausage, rice, red beans and crawfish étouffée!

Outside the restaurant was the old dinner bell used to call the farm workers to dinner.

The back side of Oak Alley Plantation house - where horse drawn carriages would pull up and drop their passengers off under the porte cochere.

They took groups of 20 in at a time, we were able to rest on benches and chairs looking at the amazing alley of 300 year old live oak trees while we waited our turn.  Can you believe that the oak trees were planted before the house was built?

I walked down the brick walkway between the oak trees to snap a photo of the front of the house.. just beautiful.

Our group walked in and were ushered into the drawing room.. I was taken by the light fixture and the beautiful medallion on the ceiling.

Oops.. I didn't take another photo in the drawing room.. but next up was the dining room.  Our pretty docent was dressed in a period costume and I was amazed at how much detail she had memorized.  See the big fan over the table?  A slave would stand in the corner and pull the rope to keep the diners cool and to keep the bugs at bay.

On to the bedrooms and to hear more historic stories of the family.

Wouldn't it be lovely to live in such a wonderful home?

I think I'd like this room.  :-)

How lovely are these twin canopy beds?

In the hallway we heard more history and family intrigue!  I do hope you visit the plantation website and read some of the history for yourself.  For a sample - the lady on the left 2nd row from the top named Louise Roman was coming down that stairway and tripped and broke the whale bone stay in her hoop skirt and the sharp edges of the bone raked her leg - which got infected and they had to cut off her leg.  Women with disabilities like that were deemed un-marriageable and so she became a Carmelite nun and lived out her life in a convent in New Orleans.  She is believed to be seen as a ghost here!

Looking down Oak Alley from the 2nd story verandah - the Mississippi River is just beyond the road - it has a levee now, but in the old days you could sit on the porch and watch the ships and boats pass by on their way to and from New Orleans.

Our knowledgable and adorable docent.. I asked her if she like her job and she said.. "It's better than working at Sonic!".  :-)

The side section of the wonderful, deep and cool wrap-around porch of the house.

Another shot of the beautiful old oaks before we headed down the stairs and out of this beautiful plantation home.

After we left Oak Alley we stopped on the side of the road to snap "the famous photo" of the house down the alley of oaks.  I really wish those people would have not been on the walkway!  LOL!

I do hope you've enjoyed visiting these wonderful plantation homes with me.  It was one of the highlights of my trip.  I lived in Lafayette, Louisiana for 5 years and simply can't believe that I never visited them during that time.  But to be honest, I don't think they were as open to the public in 1970 - but they are wonderful now for visiting.  My next and last installment of this story will be a visit to Lafayette and Milton to see the houses we lived in during our 5 years there.  One is a very old place on the Vermillion River.  It's still there!  

We are still at the beach for the week.  Yesterday was stunning... sunny and warm and we went adventuring and out to lunch.  I'll share our beach photos after I'm done with this series.  :-)  Today it's rainy and cool so we're cozy in our caravan watching TV and relaxing.  With the roar of the ocean outside.  Lovely.  I think I will crochet today!  I hope you're enjoying your week.  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)