The Savage Traveler: Winter Trip 2015: New Orleans and Mardi Gras!

Sun. Feb. 15: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM H. AND CHUCK!! Once again we woke a bit earlier than I’d like so we could do the dishes and finish packing up, getting on the road by 9:30 after dumping our gray water at the park’s station. It was another long day of driving, this time across many steep bridges to leave clearance for the giant ships that serve the many refineries that cluster along the bays of the Gulf Shore. Once in Louisiana we found ourselves crossing large bayous and swamps. As we neared our exit off I12 we learned via texting that Craig had a new job! So we called Sarah to get all the news. That was one more load off our minds, along with the knowledge that Mom H. is feeling much better and more and more like herself. Our camping site at Fontainebleau State Park on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain turned out to be a very nice one on a part of the road that means we won’t have much traffic going by. We set up the camper and got out our bikes so we could ride a bit while it was still pretty nice. It was in the low sixties with a weak sun and the forecast says that may be the best it is while we’re here. We rode 3 miles on roads and trails within the park before Marv grilled chicken tenders while I fried onions and potatoes and made a nice salad. The temperature dropped to the high fifties as we spent the evening catching up on emails and planning for our time in New Orleans.

Mon. Feb. 16: Mid-morning by some dumb luck we figured out we could park for free at the Art Museum in New Orleans City Park, just off the Causeway. Down the block was a stop where we bought a Jazz Pass, good all day, and rode the Canal Street streetcar down to the river. We wandered through the Zulu Lundi Gras celebration on the riverfront and bought lunch there. Following the levy we walked as far as the French Quarter Market, where a coupon I had cut out got us a free French Market shopping bag. We walked back to Jax Brewery near the St. Louis Cathedral, bought a beer, and sat on the second story back porch overlooking the river listening to the band playing below. We got in touch with Aaron Kabodian and met him a couple blocks away. Together we made our way up Bourbon Street as beads rained down from people on the balconies above. Eventually we crossed Canal St and found a spot on St. Charles to watch the 4:00 Proteus and then Orpheus parades. As forecast, near the end of the parades, the winds turned from southwest to northeast in a flurry, the temperature dropped out of the seventies and rain poured down. We put on raincoats for the last couple of floats and then walked a block up and had a really good dinner at Daisy Dukes. What a find!! Marv had a Cajun omelet, Aaron had Gumbo, and I had Red Beans and Rice with spicy sausage. It was all delicious and very reasonable. We parted ways with Aaron and walked in the drizzle up Canal until we got to Claiborne, where the streetcars were huddled, ready to resume their routes following the parades. It was a quick trip back to City Park where we recovered the truck and drove back to the north shore and our camping spot. We couldn't have asked for a better plan. The people-watching was absolutely fantastic and we had a ball. What a day!!

Zulu Crewe members at the Lundi Gras celebration

Aaron's back as we walk down Bourbon Street

Parade float

Inside a street car

Tue. Feb. 17: HAPPY MARDI GRAS! As I finished writing the night before and tried to stand up I realized my right knee had become inflamed and frozen up to the point that I couldn’t put any weight on it. I hadn’t “done” anything to it so I guess I just overdid it with all that walking and the 2-3 hours of standing. It hurt all night long and I tossed and turned and worried about what I was going to do about it. We had already decided not to go to the city, feeling like we had met our limits for beads and crowds and craziness. Instead we went to nearby Covington and enjoyed a small-town Lions and Rotary sort of parade, which was fun in its own right. I found I could hobble around relying heavily on my sotol walking stick but still couldn’t put much weight on my right leg. Having scored a rubber chicken, a peanut butter Snickers bar, a Whoopie pie, and a bag of caramel corn we felt we made out okay. We returned to the camper and had a quiet day reading, watching around the clock coverage of the Mardi Gras parades on TV, and getting things done like reorganizing the truck, and we each took showers. It was cloudy most of the day and the temperature never got much out of the forties in sharp contrast to the low 70s the day before. I followed a good routine of R.I.C.E. (Rest, Ice, Compression, & Elevation) all day and was rewarded with a marginally better leg. I had made Red Beans and Rice with sausage in the CrockPot in the morning and Marv made corn bread to go with it so we had an appropriate Mardi Gras dinner. Around 8:00 we found a sports bar named “Times” where we could watch the MSU/UofM basketball game and were thrilled when MSU led from start to finish and beat them on their home court to sweep the series this year.

Elvis and Marilyn Onboard

A more modest, hometown float

Wed. Feb. 18: It got down to freezing overnight and there was frost on the vehicles in the morning. The High had clearly come through and we never saw a cloud in the sky all day, but the temperature only got in the low fifties. As we heard stories of the below zero, bitter cold in Michigan, record breaking snow in Maine, and heavy ice along the Atlantic coast we couldn’t complain much about the unseasonably cool temperatures here. Luckily my knee was doing much better. We devoted the day to staying local and seeing a list of museums and activities. The first one was the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum & Research Museum in Madisonville. It turned out to be informative and very well done with many videos produced just for the museum. We spent longer than either of us expected but didn’t feel too bad about not having time to visit the nearby Madisonville Museum because we had such a good feel for the history of the area already. Instead we drove to Abita Springs about 10 miles away to have a late lunch at the Abita Brew Pub, which we remembered fondly from our trip here four years ago. Marv had their roast beef Po’boy and I finally had a Muffaletta, which was so big I only ate half and was stuffed. We left in time to get to the 2:00 tour of the Brewery. They are in the midst of expanding both the brewery and the Visitor Center but were available to tour. We went into the Center and found a large noisy crowd gathered in what looked like a big pub. We got in line where they handed us a plastic cup and we filed by about 8-10 taps of their beers (and one root beer) to fill the glass. Some people were standing in line with a full cup and drinking it while they wound back to refill. After about 15 minutes our friendly “tour director” yelled out some instructions and showed a short video on the brewing process. Then she took us into the brewery and showed us the vats and pipes and expanded a bit more on the process. When she finished and had answered questions we went back to the tap room for more beer until they cut people off about 3:15. We took our last cup outside on the patio to sit in the warm sun protected from the cool wind by the high brick walls. Best. Brewery. Tour. Ever. From there we tried to do the rest of our museum list. In Covington we went to the 1876 H.J. Smith & Sons General Store & Museum but it had closed at noon. We drove to the Covington Trailhead Museum & Visitor Center and it had closed at 2:00. We returned to Abita Springs and found the Abita Trailhead Museum and it’s only open on Fri. & Sat. We saw that the Abita Mystery House was open but weren’t interested in it. Finally we went to the Mandeville Trailhead Cultural Interpretive Center and it had no hours listed and wasn’t open. So much for our historical education for the day! We had to make do with driving along the lake shore drive in Mandeville before returning to the campsite. Dinner was just soup and veggies since we were both still so full from lunch and beer tasting. As the temperature dipped to 41° we watched the final episode of The Newsroom before disconnecting the hose to be sure it didn’t freeze overnight.

Thu. Feb. 19: By rising early we managed to meet sister-in-law Janis’ brother, George Long, at the Abita Café for breakfast. He has lived in Abita Springs for just less than 4 years but is firmly established and involved in the artsy community. We had wonderful, huge breakfasts (Marv: Cajun breakfast platter, Peggy: French toast platter, George: Crab cake eggs Benedict) before piling in George’s car so he could show us some places in Abita Springs we never would have found otherwise. George’s partner, Courtney Bitch, spent time in Abita Springs as a kid at the summer place her parents bought long ago and where her mom still lives. Some of her 8 siblings still live in town. First George showed us the large and lovely home that her brother, an architect, is building on a small part of his property. Then we drove to his fantastic rambling home on the majority of the property along the Abita River(Google Ron Blitch and you can see photos). It is comprised of several separate buildings connected by a raised boardwalk, a story above the flood plain. One building looks like a lighthouse and George said it has an apartment in it where he and Courtney lived while renovating their home. Another part is a large octagonal structure that George told us is the shower…just the shower! Ron also has two apartments on the side of Brunelleschi’s Duoma in Florence, Italy and an apartment in Boston, where his partner lives, but he lives in Abita Springs about 50% of the year. I would have loved to have seen the interior but we drove back out to the main road and across the river to the property on the opposite bank, where Courtney’s mom lives. The large property and home were built in the late 1800s and have a Choctaw name (Almeet, I think). We walked around the extensive grounds and saw the two ponds and the spring fed but empty concrete swimming pool but didn’t disturb her mom. Then George took us back to the center of town and let us into the (still closed) Abita Museum we had tried to see the day before. It turned out he is on the Board for the museum so he has a key. It’s a tiny museum so we looked around for about half an hour before bidding George good-bye and thanks for his tour guide duty. Since we were out, Marv and I drove back to nearby Covington and saw the now open H.J. Smith & Sons General Store & Museum. Established in 1876, it has been in the family ever since and in the same location in the historic downtown. About half of the building is an operating hardware store stuffed full as only an old-time hardware store can be. One could spend a very long time looking at everything available in that part but we followed the painted footsteps on the floor through an ancient wooden folding door into the other half of the building which houses the museum. This unheated part of the building is truly like stepping back a hundred and thirty years into a General Store where early settlers could find everything they needed to exist in the bayous of “Northshore”. Many of the displays were donated by local families and run the gamut of historical finds. We loved it! We tried again to go to the Covington Trailhead museum but it was closed Thursday. So instead we drove to Fairview-Riverside State Park to tour the Otis House Museum. Our tour wasn’t until 1:00 so we had about an hour to walk the two boardwalks along the Tchefuncte River. We were the only two people to see the late 19^th Century Queen Anne-style home built by one lumber baron of Cyprus and Yellow Pine from the property, and later owned by Mahogany baron Otis (who appears to be a distant relative of Marv’s through his Grandmother Dunn’s family from Boston). It’s a lovely home, well preserved and well stocked with antiques because the never married Mr. Otis donated the whole thing to the State when he died. On our way back to the campground we made several stops for things we needed and spent some time at McDonald’s using their s-l-o-w WiFi. Before making a light dinner we rode our bikes for 4 miles down to the cottages on the lake shore. They appear to be closed right now while the extensive boardwalks around and connecting them are being rebuilt. Along the way we saw three large Wild Hogs and three deer. We did one load of wash and got a lot of packing done so we could leave early in the morning.