Travelog - Day 30, Mar.2

The creek running near our campsite

Today we’re off to St. Francisville in plantation country, northeast of Baton Rouge. Yesterday during the video presentation at the Tobasco plant I learned that pepper pickers use a red stick painted the exact colour of a perfectly ripe pepper in order to identify which ones to hand pick. In French of course that translates into ‘baton rouge’. Did you know that the state of Louisanna is divided up into parishes, not counties, which are then grouped by similarity, eg. Bayou or plantation country?

To get to our destination I choose #49 north, then #190 east. ‘Low fuel warning’ and we pull off. Well what do you know, yet another Walmart Supercentre. Gas bar price? A whopping $2.33/gal. We don’t fill up.

We’re now on #190 where fields and boulevards are very green, almost lush. Shell gas station at $2.45. Chevron & Exon at $2.39 with a Mobil next door at $2.43. We may be ‘nickel & dime-ing it’ as Al would say.

This area is known as the Atchafalaya Basin. We notice that the last 5 mile section of the road is unusually high compared to the creek we are following and the land on either side. A levee topped with a highway? Al is getting gas in Krotz Springs at $2.27. Yup! We’ll be stopping again today as the ‘fill’ took no time at all.

Up ahead is a high, pointy bridge first going over a levee and then the Atchafalya River. Forty miles west of Baton Rouge #190 is up-in-the-air so to speak and then becomes an elevated roadway (5.5 km long) with concrete ‘fencing’. The effect is much like being on a train with the concomitent bump, bump, bump with each join, only in this case, not rails, but concrete sections with dividers. This is the Morganza Spillway.

Smoky haze – but I don’t see a fire anywhere. Turning left onto #1 we are now on a ‘new’ road heading to New Roads. This laptop seems to be more sensitive to road conditions with different applications popping up un-announced causing causing great gaps in my account.

We are now following False River (?). The road is well above the river height, but all sorts of houses are barely above water level. One newly developed section has palatial houses, nicely landscaped, and magnolia’s in bloom. Both sides of the river are lined with houses quite close together, most of which have mini jetties leading out to deck platforms, some 2, even 3 levels with boats pulled up out of the water, others with covered roofs. I want to take pictures but there is absolutely no place to stop; the shoulder is far too narrow and driveways literally disappear from view as they drop down a steep incline.

In the city of New Roads houses continue to line the shore much like along Riverside Dr. in Ottawa or Merrickville. In-fill houses amongst older clapboard houses, known as clabbers here.

St. Francisville is on the other side of the river. During our short ferry wait atop the levee a fisherman lands a channel catfish. The ferryman who is from Missouri informs me that catfish and bass are great eating but he wouldn’t eat anything out of this river.

Royal Street in St Francisville has many historic houses dating from the 18th century. Grace Episcopal Church is just one of three with graves dating in the 1900’s, possibly older, but the writing on many stones is illegible.

Admittance to Rosedown Plantation is $10 each ($8 if over 62). Instead we go to the Audubon Historic Site and Oakley Plantation which is a bit smaller. Audubon was in residence there for 3.5 months working mornings only as tutor to the youngest daughter. According to the guide, he was fired by the lady of the house for raising such an indelicate subject as his wages ($60/month) at the dinner table. During his tenure he completed 23 paintings, roughly one every 3 days.

As we do a U-turn in the parking lot, I spot a peacock sitting on a fence. I can’t believe my eyes. His or her tail feathers touch the ground. I manage to fire off a few shots before the dogs notice and begin to bark.

Our trip home is almost identical to the route here with a minor variation which takes us along the river for a bit. Downside is that we are on the wrong side of the levee so don’t see the river. We pass what looks like a hydro generating plant that has some sort of giant feed coming from the river. Heaps of very black ??? appear at the end of a conveyor belt system. A small detention centre on my right and numerous fields being burned.

Another dead armadillo on the road completes our adventure for today.

One of the houses next to the creek















Ferry boat arriving














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Three of the houses in St. Francisville































The Episcopalian church






















Slave cottages












My escaping peacock














Self-destructing crane in all its beauty left on levee next to ferry jetty. Our ferry arriving to take us back 'home'