Louisiana

Airstreamers enjoy driving all over the country on their adventures, but one thing they don’t ever want to do: Drive into a “big” city!

So we take a bus…

Today we are going into the “big” city – the heart of Baton Rouge, the State capitol, population 240,000 – smaller than Irvine…! To get there we drive along this 18 mile long causeway: Almost all east-west highways in the state are on these causeways because there is water everywhere…

Out first stop is the governor’s mansion…

The mansion was built way back in 1963, after the “old” mansion was deemed to be inadequate.

As we waited to enter the grounds we saw this helicopter land…

A bit later a second helicopter landed…

I started looking around as we waited for the garden tour. This lake was adjacent to the mansion property…

This house is directly next door to the Governor’s Mansion, right on the lake.

According to the Redfin app on my phone, this house is worth about $275,000. We’re not in California anymore…

We soon started the garden tour. Sorry, not my thing…

However, when I looked the other direction I could see the State Capitol Building. We will tour it tomorrow…

Garden tour over, we were allowed to approach the mansion. As we walked, the Governor and 3-4 other men walked out of the mansion and down to the helicopter; it took off and left the property… (PS: maybe this is why he doesn’t seem to care about the horrible condition of the roads… he never drives or rides on them…)

As we were learning a little bit of the history of the mansion the First Lady and her people came out onto the veranda… After a short talk she and the other women walked away and left in the second helicopter…

The house is modeled after a classic plantation mansion, but it is a bit bigger – about 25,000 square feet. We were only allowed to see a few public rooms. I hate tours like this – I want to see the kitchens and the basement mechanical rooms and the servants’ stairs, and things like that…

The entry foyer or reception room contains the requisite center round table and beautiful flowers; it also has a four sided mural painted by Auseklis Ozols of New Orleans… It depicts scenes and symbols of all areas of Louisiana as well as all the governors who have lived here…

I couldn’t help but notice that the chandelier in the foyer was terribly lopsided…

Beyond the foyer is the stair rotunda:

The seal of Louisiana on the floor of the rotunda…

The drawing room…

The dining room seats 20 – even more than my Airstream…!

So we returned to the bus and we drove a short distance. We stopped for lunch, then we walked along the Mississippi River, enjoying the scenery…

Our walk ended at the USS Kidd, a WWII era Fletcher-class Destroyer. Not being a military guy I never knew the difference between destroyers, cruisers, tenders, and the like. Here I found out that a destroyer is basically a weapon destroyer, a defensive ship, designed to intercept and destroy torpedo boats…

After the Kitt we walked through downtown Baton Rouge. It is basically full of government office buildings and a few (very few) restaurants and hotels.

Out next stop was the Old State Capitol Building; it is a very forgettable building. They called it neo-Gothic, but it was just a fake castle with Gothic shaped windows. I didn’t even take a picture of it. It looked like something a winery in Temecula would build if they wanted to have their tasting room in a castle… It was built just before the War of Northern Aggression or the Civil War or the War between the States – no wonder we fought with each other – we couldn’t even agree on the name of our war!

It was occupied and looted by northern troops during the war and damaged by fire. It was rebuilt after the war. The only good thing about the new building was this lovely skylight above the center stair hall…

We did learn about Huey Long and his assasination in the New State Capitol Building – more on that tomorrow when we visit the New State Capitol Building…

By now we were exhausted! The bus brought us back to the campground. Happy Hours ensued and an enjoyable time was had by all…

The Cajun Country Caravan officially begins today!

We are in Butte La Rose, LA, but the address of the RV Park is Breaux Bridge, so that is what we will call it…

Cajuns were French folk who had settled in eastern Canada, around Nova Scotia, as we learned on our Nor’ by Nor’East Caravan in 2017. The were called Acadians, but the English kicked them out of Nova Scotia two or three times, so finally they got the hint and they resettled here in Louisiana, and “Acadian” was corrupted to become “Cajun”…

Our leaders are parked near the entrance to the park. They have a very unique Airstream, called The Skydeck:

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Airstream produced only 12 of these motorhomes from 2003 to 2006. It is a fairly typical interior layout, except that instead of a dinette they have an internal stair that accesses a hatch to the roof. The roof contains a “skydeck”, with built-in seating , umbrellas, ice chests – everything you need to hang out and party on your “deck”

There were no activities planned for the day, other than watching the Airstreams roll in. It turns out there are five other couples that we have met on our previous two caravans. It was great to see old friends.

We did walk about one mile down the road (actually we walked on the levee, because Louisiana streets have no accommodation for pedestrians…) to the Atchafalaya Visitors Center

The houses across the levee were interesting… It was hard to tell if the levee was protecting us from water on their side or protecting them from water on our side. Water is everywhere!

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Houses were traditionally built up, leaving open space below to allow water to pass through and to allow cooling breezes to go by… and to keep termites away from the wood structures…

We arrived at the Visitors Center, where we learned a bit about the geography and history of the area…

We walked back along the levee; at 3:00 pm we had our initial meeting. Information books were handed out, lots of information was discussed, and a generally convivial atmosphere prevailed. Following the meeting was a gumbo dinner, provided by the staff of the RV park. This was followed by some door prizes, dessert, and brief introductions all around.