Sept.11 to Sept.20, 2010 : Louisiana

Over a week in Louisiana already spent with our niece, Isabelle, her husband, Yohann, and their two cute boys, Samuel and Lucas. It’s always nice for Alain and me to visit our family either in France or this time, in Lafayette. We have been living pretty much by ourselves since we decided to immigrate to Canada.

Isabelle and Yohann were eager to show us the surroundings of Lafayette and the first day, we went altogether for a swamp tour. Our guide, a real Cajun of 75 years old, Normand Leblanc invited us to join him in his boat. The atmosphere is strange on the swamp, you have the Spanish moss hanging from the cypress. These large trees have their feet in the water and it’s easy to project yourself at night fall with the mist just over the water… People living nearby the swamps used to harvest the moss to fill out mattresses or car seats until the sixties, which is not that long ago. The heat is torrid and the humidity high. It’s three o’clock, therefore luckily, the mosquitoes are not quite out yet. Normand still speaks French and is happy to share what his live has been growing up around the ‘’bayou’’ Teche, where he grew up. He was a hunter of alligators and he proudly displayed his pictures in the National Geographic. He also shows us pictures of alligators that he had killed, a bullet just above the eyes, weighing about 300 kgs and probably close to 9 feet. You can still hunt alligators in Louisiana with a permit, 4 per season. Normand does not hunt anymore. We have to drink a small glass of whiskey while in the boat, not that we needed this to be hot. At this time of the day, and because of the heat according to Normand, we don’t get to see large alligators but a couple of small ones, resting on branches. A few young alligators are waiting for us to fall in the water, we feel spied as just the eyes come barely out of the water. They barely move…

Did you know that the famous ‘’Tabasco’’ sauce was produced in Louisiana, on Avery Island close to Lafayette. They have only one plant, this one, for their worldwide distribution in about 130 countries with about 200 full time workers. The seeds and grown on the Island, then exported to Central and South America. The red peppers are then harvested and shipped to Louisiana, where they are being mashed with a little bit of salt. The marsh ferments and ages for three years in oak barrels. Finally, the aged mash is mixed with vinegar for 27 days before being bottled. The salt being used for Tabasco is actually mined on Avery Island.

Louisiana is a state with a very rich history too. Of course, there are the ‘’Cajuns’’, the ancestors of the Acadiens, who were deported by the British in 1855 from Acadia (now Nova Scotia). This is what had been called ‘’Le grand derangement’’. For most of them, they did not settle in Louisiana before 1865, after spending a few years in France or in other American areas. They were usually not welcome in the United States, as they spoke French and were mainly Catholics. The Acadiens were hard workers and adapted to their new life style by working even harder. We have visited a couple of State Parks. In Saint-Martinville, an historic village, the Longfellow Evangeline State Park is worth the visit. The Creoles have played a role in the history of Louisiana, they were from French ancestors mostly, as well as from German decendance. They had made the choice of coming to Louisiana. Many plantations of sugar cane belonged to them and at the time, they painted their house in vivid colours. Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, there were about 400 plantations along the Mississippi. Once the plantation was acquired by an American family, it was painted in white. The plantations were usually oriented facing the river to get as much air as possible.

We were surprised to see in Louisiana how little the French language is used nowadays. You still have in some villages, the streets’ name in both languages like in Saint-Martinville, as a ‘’souvenir’’ of this French heritage, but even in the Visitor Information Centers almost nobody uses French anymore. Even in Lafayette, the capital of the ‘’cajuns’’, you seldom hear French. Our swamp guide, Normand, shared with us that his kids spoke only English. Apparently, there has been a time in Lousiana where you were not authorized nor encouraged to speak French at all. This lasted for about one to two generations. It has been enough to almost eradicate French here. They are trying now to encourage French exchanges and initiatives, but it seems that it is mainly folklore now, most certainly too late...

Yes, we have spent some time in New Orleans : this city has been our ‘’coup de coeur’’ so far. From the other side of one bridge, it does look like any other American city with his skyscrapers, its dome, but very soon, you see on some large streets, the palm trees, the trolley bus. The French Quarter is as wild as it was described to us. As soon as it is 4 o’clock in the afternoon, Royal and Bourbon Streets start becoming alive with hundreds of people invading the road. Bourbon Street is the place to go to have fun and party. All of a sudden, the level of the music is turned up and it is a fierce competition between all the clubs, bars, cafes and tourist shops on which one is going to be the loudest. This is in a friendly atmosphere of course, and like at Mardi Gras, during the carnival, you have people throwing collars of beads for you to catch. In New Orleans, there is no curfew for drinks and the crowd seems to be let lose. From time to time, you do see the police but they seem to quietly gauge the situation and ensuring it does not get too much out of hand. There is a lot of drinking going on and there are Jazz bands playing in the streets or in the clubs, which contributes to the ambiance. We had to taste the worldwide famous ‘’Hurricane’’ at Pete O’Brien, a drink with rum. For the food, Alain and I have tasted the jumbalaya, the seafood gumbo, the ‘’boudin’’ creole and other Cajun specialties both in restaurants and also bought all ready to eat on the way back to our campsite.

We are back to Lafayette for a day or so, just enough time to do some laundry, clean the motorcycles and take care of one oil change. Probably, tomorrow we will be On the Road Again. Next stops : Houston,  and Dallas.

Aug 29 to Sept.10 : From Frankfort, KY to Lafayette, LA

We are still getting organized for our posts and for maintaining the blog, hence no post in the last two weeks. We don’t always find an internet connection available in some parks, and when we have one, it is not always a good time for us to take care of our blog. Believe it or not, we are incredibly busy! If anyone reading this post, by the way, has a good way to load pictures quickly on Picassa, this would be very much appreciated. It seems to take forever…

In our last post, we had mentioned that we had been invited to a Square dancing Evening. Go check out our Faces and Places page to learn more about it.

August 29, 2010: First real good night since we started camping. We woke up at 8am. Sunny again, which announced another very warm day. As we wanted to fill up our bikes, before hitting the road, the gas station was crowded by about one hundred and twenty bikers. They were riding for a good cause : Research for diabetes for kids! I wanted to leave the gas station before all of them, and as we left two police cars pulled up, put all their flashing lights on. They opened the way for us, stopped the cars at the intersections to let us go by. This was so funny, like being in an American movie, with your own police escort.

Tonight, we have arrived at Mammoth Cave National Park (still in Kentucky), but not before I experienced my first fall of the trip. We were turning around on gravel, I slipped and fell. No harm done, not even scared!

This area seems to be very touristic which is reflected in the price of campgrounds. The first one we tried was forty four dollars a night with water, but we thought it was too expensive. In the end, we ended up in the State Park itself at seventeen dollars a night, with no negotiation possible though.

We have now been a week on the road and we are starting to feel we are on vacation. We rode only 253 kilometers today, which is a huge improvement from the first days. Good news : Alain and I still love each other. We are getting organized for the food and to load all our equipment on the bikes. However, today it was just too hot to ride with the motorcycle gear. Alain rode with his jeans on and just a T-shirt. I wear now only a pair of jeans too, but I keep my jacket on despite the heat. It is like a sauna, but the little experience of today shows me I’d better be safe. The temperature was about 35 degres Celsius and we have entered the Central time zone.

The Mammoth Cave Park seems to be quite a lively crowd of animals. We have already seen raccoons, deers, right at our campsite. This morning, as Alain picked up his helmet, I heard a loud scream. He had a huge spider in it. Deep down, I was thankful it had not happened to me. Needless to say, I checked my shoes and helmet after that.

We started by exploring one cave at nine o’clock. It was a two hour tour “the new entrance tour’’, but unfortunately as it was a spur of the moment decision to join the group, we forgot our camera in one of the helmet… therefore, no pictures from the cave. We went down 360’ below the surface of the earth and we went down 286 steps. Each step cost 3 thousand dollars. Narrow and low paths : visibly this is a spot for dwarfs and lean people. The caves are very impressive and of a mammoth size, hence their name. The different rooms are really huge, but you can actually see in some of the rooms very few stalagmites and stalagtites as water is not dripping anymore. Still absolutely worth the detour to go down.

The good thing about travelling at this time of the year, in fact after school has started, is that there are very few people visiting sites. We were only 17 in our group for the visit this morning. The campgrounds are fairly deserted. We even found a beach close to a lake in the Nolan State park, where we ended up being alone.

We are having our second problem with Alain’s motorcycle. His left turning light goes on by itself when he starts the engine. It also goes off by itself.

Despite the heat today, we made another budget decision. The showers are two dollars each for 10 minutes. As we could swim in the lake Nolin today, we are skipping today’s shower. A dollar is a dollar. Since we have left home, we have avoided stopping for coffee at coffee stores and we don’t buy water. We fill up our bottled waters, whenever we find a rest area. This sounds cheap, but between just coffee and water, we save at least nine dollars a day: Just do the maths, and you will be amazed how many sites we can visit instead.

At the end of the day, we went to listen to the story of a guy, named Floyd. The state parks here organize activities at night for the tourists. Real story of a famous local boy, a speleologue who never turned 38 years old. During one of our morning trail’s walk, Alain encountered a ‘’baby snake’’… He was courageous enough to take a picture though, but he used the zoom… Mammoth Cave is opened year round, caves have a constant temperature of 54 degres Fahrenheit with a very sophisticated circulation air system. The lives in caverns include bats, shrimps…

We are getting late already with our notes and our blog…. It’s probably due to the Nashville atmosphere. Yes, we are here already. Only 218 kilometers under a torrid heat, Teresa’s mom is waiting for us in an air conditioned home, with a big bed and our own bathroom. Funny how after 7 days of camping we seem to appreciate this even more… The only issue is that Alain’s light is still not working and this time, we cannot fix this on our own. We locate the BMW dealer in Nashville who is luckily located close to Teresa’s mom house, call him and have to drop the bike. By the way, I have experienced my second fall from my bike today… No harm again, just tired.

On September 2, 2010, we drop by the dealer to check on our bike which is fixed. It’s the left switch who got some water in it. Everything is now fine. Alain starts and guess, the left light goes on by itself one more time. They now have to order a new switch and they should get it airfreighted tomorrow. By the way, this took us 2 hours of our time as we had to wait before they told us they would have to order it. Patience, patience…. We end up leaving to visit the Country Hall of Fame. It’s an incredible Museum, we learn all about Tammy Wynette and ‘’Stand by your man” as well as Hank Williams and the drifting cowboys. We see in one of the show ‘’Bascam Lamar Lunsford’’, who we later learn is Teresa’s uncle. Hee Haw! It’s not for nothing that Nashville is called the City of Music. We are so thrilled to be here !

September 3, 2010 : we start our day by going back downtown to visit the Ryman auditorium (a little bit disappointing), we drop by Tootsie to listen to some country music. We visit the ‘’Hatch Print Shop’’, an interesting little store on Broadway, where they still make posters the old way. We have a guided visit of the Capitol and then visit the Tennessee State Museum. A lot of things to see, far too many things we will not remember, but interesting nonetheless to understand the culture down here.

Alain’s motorbike is now ready, but screwing the rear view mirror is something that was not part of the deal. Here is a dealership who is not going to have a good review on the internet… in short, don’t go to the motorbike BMW dealer in Nashville, unless you have no choice, like us.

September 4, 2010 : After visiting a Bourbon’s distillery, we had no other choice than visiting Jack’s. Jack Daniel’s distillery is made in Tennessee in Lynchburg. A little bit chilly this morning and despite the distance of 125 kilometeres, we leave with Alain’s bike, just wearing shorts, T-shirts and running shoes. The sky is very blue, the temperature is 25 degres Celsius, and all day we regret not to have been more thoughtful. We also forgot that it is the Labour Day long week-end and after getting lost, we realize the place is crowded with tourists, …like us. By the way, nobody knows why it is called Jack Daniel No7 and the weird thing is that it is made in a ‘’dry county’’, meaning Jack Daniels is not sold locally. The visit is a little bit rushed by the guide, but worth seeing nevertheless.

September 5 and 6, 2010 : On the road again towards Memphis and the King. The scenery has changed, less hilly, almost flat in some areas and we see our first soybean fields and most of all our first cotton fields. The heat of 36 degres Celsius is unbearable when you are driving. I had to take off my jacket…, but we are not complaining. We wanted some heat, we have it.

September 7, 2010 : We are starting our visit of Memphis with Graceland. For sure, this is a huge commercial success, although not located in the best neighbourhood of Memphis. Not too many people for the visit, but an artist still well alive. Alain and I get slightly emotional when watching some past performances of the King and in front of his tomb. His voice was really special and deep…

We slightly got lost on our way back to downtown Memphis. We are satisfied and at the same time disappointed to see Memphis, without real street life, with only a few interesting sites to see like the Cotton Museum. The Museum narrates the history of cotton and life around it during many years. Downtown Memphis looks really empty, not many cars in the street and almost nobody walking in the streets, which is weird on a Tuesday early afternoon. Compared to Nashville, we are surprised that the city is not more lively. The highlight of the city center is the trolley. Beale Street is the melting pot of the Delta Blue, Jazz, Rock-N-Roll and Gospel. We could not help tasting a Pork BBQ sandwich, a Memphis Specialty, with a local beer while listening to some blues today. We wish we would have time to visit the Civil Rights Museum and also see where Martin Luther King was assassinated. By the way, about the trolleys, we thought they were typical of Memphis, but we learnt that they were installed about 10-12 years ago, the cars were bought mostly from Argentina. The Montrealers reading this blog will be happy to know that Montreal is not the only city having a Stadium that has cost a fortune to the taxpayers. Memphis has a Pyramid which is empty.

We are going back on the road tomorrow, but we will be watching the weather as we got a few drops of rain today.

September 8, 2010 : We visited the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, the birthplace of the Blues. The blues is more than just music. It is a mirror of culture, of a way of life, of the history of a people. Very often, it describes the frustration of newfound freedom. We heard the music that very often we knew but we re-discovered who sang it : Musicians like B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Charlie Musselwhite, a harp player have left their mark in the Blues history. We had been told to check out the Ground Zero Blues Club, which is partly owned by Morgan Freeman. While looking for the place, a gentleman told me thatif I was looking for fancy Clarksdale was not the place to come. Ground Zero Blues Club looks nothing like a club, but rather like an abandoned house, nothing to show you that it is a Club. I had to ask twice if the building they were showing me, if it was really it. We entered it and the place is covered up from ceiling to the floor with graffitis. Absolutely an ambiance not to be missed! Unfortunately, we were there by mid-afternoon and we had to leave it behind and be on the road again… We are already getting into the habit of deciding whether we should keep going or stay and these are difficult choices to make.

Our camping place that night was also interesting on the banks of the Mississipi River close to Greenville. I will grant you that it is cheap, 10 dollars a night, but this comes with frogs and insects in showers. While I was taking my shower in the morning, I was checking from the corner of my eyes in which directions the bugs or miscellaneous cockroaches were going. By the way, we had been told that the Parchman Sate Penitentiary was not very far, and I certainly believe this when I saw a DNO Convict with the striped pants on opening the door of the bathhouse in the morning. It feels like the beginning of the 20th century to see a Convict with striped suit.

Today has been a very good day, hot and humid though. We kept on putting on and off and raingear. Scenery is now flat with very large cotton fields, some at the beginning of blooming with pink flowers, others ready to be harvested. Only 291 kms today on the odometer! Unfortunately, we haven’t stopped to make any picture of the cotton fields.

September 9, 2010 : We passed Vicksburg and Fort Gibson, not even like Japanese Tourists, who at least will take a minute to take pictures. We realize that there is so much to see in the area, it’s very historical about the blues, the life in the Mississipi Delta, The Civil War… We drove the last part of the Natchez Trace Parkway : very wooded and wild, no houses along the way. It’s nice when you drive your motorcycle and there is no traffic, you do have this sensation of freedom. I see Alain from time to time in front of me checking on me by putting his thumb up, his way of asking me how I am doing. When we camp now, night comes quickly and early. Tonight, we have collected enough dry and dead wood for a campfire, but we will probably go to bed early (this is becoming a habit). As we take our notes by the campfire, we really look like nerds with our lamps on our forehead. Alain heard noises and we saw raccoons come by our table. In the night, we just see the eyes looking at us. I am not comfortable with the eyes staring at us and I keep sweeping the woods with my light by turning my head from left to right. I feel like a lighthouse! It’s not even cold out here and we don’t need to wear jackets. We are discovering the pleasures of living outside all the time, from dawn to night and we are starting to lose track of time and of the days of the week.

September 10, 2010 : we have passed Natchez today. It’s a very pretty city absolutely worth seeing. We don’t have much time and just stop at the Visitors Information, which is like a museum about the story of the city. These last three days, driving in the heat and the humidity, has been so tiresome, that we have had to take a short nap after lunch for about an hour to rest. We arrive in Lafayette where our niece lives with her husband and their two little boys.