the open road

We all know that the creation of the U.S. Interstate highway system took all the glory out of American travel and reduced it to something easy, straightforward, and soulless. But you know what, I think the Louisiana state roads still have plenty of soul. Even I-10 (top) and the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway (second from top) got some points for being (at least in part) bridges over water. And I think the American idea of "set out in your car and see what you can find" is still plenty alive.

baby gator petting pool

The homepage of Insta-Gator Ranch is perfectly clear from the start that the gators you can play with and hold for the requisite photo op are not all going to grow up and be released to the wild to become the scourge of Labradors. If the description of a visit to the ranch weren't clear enough ("Your guided tour gives you a first-hand account of the Louisiana Alligator Industry, from hatchling to handbag."), perhaps the fact that "Adopt A Gator" appears directly above "Gator Recipes" in their website's features might help. During the visit, they talk a whole lot about how farming gators protects the wild ones from being overharvested (and A+ to them for having some actual transparency, unlike the rest of the industrial meat industry) and it sounds like they're doing a lot of good in that way. It's still a little disturbing to stroke and photograph something that will ultimately be dinner . . . but I think that says more about how far we Americans have gone to free ourselves from knowledge of our food production than anything else. I'd much rather have the opportunity to be squeamish petting dinner than be kept from any knowledge about where dinner comes from at all.

world's best hushpuppies and perfectly adequate grits

I realize that 'world's best hushpuppies' is a big claim to make, and I'm willing to go right ahead and make it. They're served at Big Al's Seafood, which is located on a perfectly forgettable strip mall-laden boulevard in Houma (say HO-ma), LA, about halfway in between the trucker-haven Ramada Inn and Creole Lanes, the bowling alley (which gives you brand new socks if you need them, yours to keep!). We were mainly at Big Al's in an effort to go three-for-three on crawfish in our meals that day, and because we still, three days in, had not managed to eat a crawfish boil; the hushpuppies were an afterthought. But oh goodness, not for long. They were crispy with cornmeal on the surface and perfectly deep-fried so that the crispiness gave way to soft, spicy, artery-ruining glory the whole way through. The crawfish were amazing, too, not to mention all kinds of fun to play with. I tormented Katie with dangling talking crawfish the whole meal long.

Houma as a town was suburban standard and pretty forgettable, in spite of AAA's claim that it is "often likened to Venice, Italy" (by whom, AAA? by whom?), but its uproad neighbor, Bayou Cane, was pretty danged memorable. Don't mess with Bayou Cane, particularly not the gas station on Route 24 that advertises Confederate memorabilia, Bud Light, knives, and dolls with an absolute lack of irony (unpictured because when we tried to obtain photographic evidence of this, the very scary owner chased us off her property). Much as we'd wanted to get a view of (one side of) the real Deep South, we were pretty relieved to flee Houma and Bayou Cane for über-suburban Mandeville and the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, which was a whole 'nother pile of weird, but a pile of weird in which we felt very much less like we were going to get shot for gas station trespassing.





Mandeville is home to a whole lot of rich people who seem to live a year-round take-it-easy vacation existence -- more South Florida than Louisiana, it seemed to us. The North Shore has lots of antiquing and a cute 28-mile bike path and adorable breakfast places like the original Broken Egg Café (which I hadn't quite realized was a chain!). If you go to the Broken Egg (or to Mandeville in general), go for the ambiance, not because you're expecting something exceptional. Katie's guidebook made the blackberry grits sound like they were going to be something to rave about, much like my AAA guidebook made Houma sound like Venice, and we were similarly disappointed. Not because they weren't delicious -- they were! -- but because they were nothing more than grits with a side of blackberries. Not quite that little special something we were looking for. But we should note that Mandeville does know how to throw a party (at the same four bars, visited in the same order, quite likely every night of the week) and that Katie was a real prodigy at the ubiquitous throw-the-metal-ring-on-the-bottle game. I'm sure she'd get a warm welcome back to Mandeville anytime. Me, eh -- maybe if I practice up.

plantationing

  

The top two pictures are from Shadows-on-the-Teche, New Iberia, LA. All others are from Oak Alley Plantation, Vacherie, LA. I like the landscape and the grounds of both the houses better than the houses themselves, and feel less historically troubled appreciating a beautiful landscape than a house built on slave labor . . . though of course the grounds would have been maintained by slave labor as well. More than Shadows, Oak Alley didn't shy away from discussing its slave history (Katie and I were glad that there was the rather unsettling plaque detailing the prices for each of the slaves who worked the plantation), though it should be noted that we learned a whole lot more about the standards of rich white girl courtship than we learned about the people who kept the household clean, clothed, and fed. In spite of this, I was glad to have seen these places -- and there's no denying that those 300-year-old oaks are incredible.

swamp tour!

  

I'm incapable of thinking about our swamp tour! without an exclamation point. Swamp tour! (I blame this book, which I keep intending to read.) Our swamp tour! was with Champagne's Cajun Swamp Tours on Lake Martin, just south of Breaux Bridge. In addition to the hoped-for gator sightings (we saw three of them, including one that our guide provoked a little with a kayak paddle to improve the photo opps), we also got all kinds of information on why there are no mosquitoes in that kind of swamp (a particular kind of plant that grows in the area keeps them away), why you don't take your dog duck hunting during early duck season (the gators haven't gotten sluggish from the cold yet and are still hungry enough to devour a Labrador), and why kicking your husband out of the house is not a particularly effective punishment when the man owns a houseboat [pictured above] (he'll come out there with a bunch of beer and his buddies and have a good old time).

Something about the word 'swamp' makes it sound like the place is going to be nasty, but Lake Martin was surprisingly beautiful. Perhaps the lack of mosquitoes contributed to our general enjoyment. Unfortunately, you really, really don't want to go swimming there, no matter how inviting the water might look on a hot day. It's got a shockingly high number of gators per acre (something like 3,500 gators for 300ish acres?!) and while most of them probably aren't large enough to try to eat a human, I'm personally not taking any chances.

honeymooners

  

  
I hadn't exactly planned on going to Breaux Bridge, Louisiana on my honeymoon, but when you call up a place like Bayou Cabins (individual cabins! on the bayou! with free boudin and cracklins upon arrival [pictured above]! and a massive crawfish decorating the front yard [also pictured above]!) and they tell you that the only cabins they have available are the Honeymoon Cabin or some inexplicably more expensive Other Cabin, well, you change your plans right quick. And we had to admit: it's hard to think of much of anything more romantic than sitting on the back porch overlooking Bayou Teche and listening to the cicadas chirp while enjoying some chilled Abita beers out of Evangeline the $2.99 styrofoam cooler (a fine purchase made at the Breaux Bridge Wal-Mart that same afternoon). I'm just not sure that my actual honeymoon will ever be able to top that level of class -- particularly when you consider the glory of the embroidered pillow we found on the Honeymoon Cabin's bed.

We spent an afternoon driving around Breaux Bridge and Henderson in search of Cajun music, ultimately finding it at Mulate's (which we rapidly dubbed "the real Merlotte's"), home of the swingin' octogenarians. Boy, could those old people dance. Before we landed at Mulate's, we had a heart-in-mouth introduction to driving on the top of the levee in Henderson, of which I have no pictures because I was too busy driving and trying not to die. (It looked a lot like this levee in Vacherie except the sides were much, much steeper.) You have to drive up and over the levee to get to any number of waterfront bars/restaurants/boat launches, you see, and we'd had a great recommendation for Cajun music at one such establishment, only to find out after we'd given up the hunt that the place was closed -- it had been flooded and wouldn't reopen until long after we'd left Louisiana. By the time we learned this we were done with driving on the levee, and I was thankful for it -- it was an experience, all right, but not one I'm much looking to repeat anytime soon.

Downtown Breaux Bridge is pretty big (it includes the aforementioned Wal-Mart), but the cute old part of downtown can be walked in right around one minute, or two if you linger and take a picture of the giant crawfish overlooking the main street -- which you should. But about fifteen minutes south of Breaux Bridge is Lake Martin, home of a shockingly high number of alligators, and also our swamp tour.

city of a million fleurs-de-lis

  

Katie and I had been talking about going on a road trip since well before we were able to drive, and finally, at the end of June, we did it: six days in Louisiana. We rented a car, whom we christened Jean Claude, and went on a leisurely tour of southern Louisiana, from the city to the bayou to the "Venice of Louisiana" to the lake and back to the city at the end.

We spent our first and last couple of days in NOLA, where we wandered around the French Quarter, Tremè, and the Warehouse District eating anything that wasn't nailed down: two rounds of Johnny's (fried oyster po boy + shrimp grits), dinner at Cochon, late-night Mexican in the back of a club on Frenchmen Street that I didn't catch the name of (kicking myself, because the food was awesome), and of course the requisite beignets and café au lait at Cafe du Monde.

While moseying through the city we came up with a fun game to play if you're ever in New Orleans: count the fleurs-de-lis (first to ten wins). It can be a little tricky outside of the French Quarter, but once you're in the FQ you're basically shooting ducks in a barrel, so after the first round was finished, we came up with the following rules:

1. The fleur-de-lis must be voiced and acknowledged by at least one other player for it to count.

2. No Saints symbols. (I mean, you could be done after a single store window if that were allowed.)

3. Once a player has found a fleur-de-lis of a certain category, she may no longer use that category for another fleur-de-lis during the same game. Example: once she has spotted a fleur-de-lis on a flag, she cannot call out any more flags. Same goes for signs, bumper stickers, Christmas tree ornaments, pottery urns, garbage cans, fencepost toppers, decorative belts, and beverage containers. (Note: we spotted all of the above.) As you become more advanced at the game, you can be more specific about just what constitutes a category. We decided that a pottery plate and a pottery urn were different categories, for instance, but you might not!

4. Bonus points for particularly excellent spottings may be awarded at the other player or players' discretion. Example: combination fleur-de-lis/American flag. Generally the number of bonus points would be two.

5. However, in spite of the fact that we never saw one, we decided that five points should be awarded for a fleur-de-lis tattoo. (We felt it was acceptable to make an exception to our no-Saints-symbols rule for tattoos.)

6. If the tattoo spotted as per #5 is on the person's face, automatic game over. You have spotted the most magical thing that could ever be.

Even if you are playing the advanced version of the game as delineated above, you can still point out fleurs-de-lis that fit into already taken categories, so that the players can let the glory of the fleur-de-lis wash over them. Don't worry if you lose to a particularly sharp-eyed player whom the fleur-de-lis has graced with its blessing. Everybody wins when you spot fleurs-de-lis!