#57 Rayne & Lafayette 2-24-09

Grace and Leo took us to the little town of Rayne, LA--"the Frog Capitol of the World." There are numerous murals all about frogs. The one below looks like it is in 3-D.If you look at the mural below you will see what the frogs do in the swamps. The lawyer frog looks like some of our lawyers!

Then they took us back to Lafayette driving us down by the oldest live oak tree. This tree is massive. It takes up almost a full city block.The limbs on this tree are so heavy that they have to be propped up with metal posts. In some areas the limbs have touched the ground and there are new trees coming up from those limbs.
The tree is protected by a iron fence now in order to keep vandals and trespassers from tramping the area around it.

I thought you would like to see the sign. It is in English first and then it is written in French.

This is St. John's Cathedral. It guards the old oak. It is a beautiful building.

As you can see, spring is a coming! The Azaleas are blooming and they are really beautiful. These are in the church gardens.

#56 Lafayette, LA Kings Parade, Marti Gras 2-24-09

Laissez Les Bon temps Rouler! Let the good times roll! And we did. We started off Mardi Gras with the Kings Parade in Lafayette at 10:00 a.m. in the morning. Our friends Leo and Grace picked us up at our RV and were our guides, transportation, and hosts for the entire day.

The police closed off the highway (the main road) in Lafayette for the parade. People were lined up all along the route (3 1/2 miles) to watch the parade and enjoy the music. Of course, like many parades there were the marching bands.

But the floats were so unusual. The faces are to scare away the devil and other mean spirits.
Every float had a different face or figure on the front of it.

All the floats had people riding up high and down low throwing Mardi Gras beads! We were there to catch them! Can you see the beads flying in the upper left hand corner of the picture?Grace and I caught a lot of beads. I'm wearing most of mine! That kind of a parade really gets you in the Mardi Gras mood. In the afternoon we went to Iota for a real Cajun Mardi Gras. One of the first things we saw was the big vat of grease used to fry pork rinds. Greasy, but good!!

After they reach just the right "poppin" stage they are spread out and bagged for sale to the party revelers.

What would Mardi Gras be without a lot of Cajun dancing. The stage was full of dancers having a good time.Grace and Leo just danced in the street. The music was so good and the beat just had you dancing where ever you happened to be.Grace got Frank up on the dance floor and they two stepped to the great Cajun music. The "petite Madri Gras" was first with the children dressed up in their Mardi Gras costumes complete with the face masks so the devil can't recognize them.

Then they danced and begged for money to help buy food for the big pot of gumbo at the end of Mardi Gras.

Then the "drunken" Mardi Gras were rounded up and paraded all around.

And the "hunters" show off their catch, which goes in the big pot of Gumbo. Above is a Mardi Gras hunter with the chicken he caught.After we got home we dumped our "haul" of beads and the tee shirts we bought out on the bed. Grace even gave us a Mardi Gras plastic bag to put everything into.The above shirt is Franks from the party in Iota. It is called "ti Mamou" and shows the catching of the "meat" for the gumbo, and the costumes for the Marti Gras.

This was a real Acadian Mardi Gras. Not commercialized for the tourists. You could feel the small town party atmosphere. And Leo and Grace were the most wonderful hosts. Every where we went someone knew them and greeted them with hugs. It was a most memorable day.

#55 Vicksburg, MS 2-22-09

Vicksburg National Cemetery Park in Vicksburg, MS. The cemetery for the Civil War soldiers. Every state that had soldiers fighting at Vicksburg has erected a monument. All of them are different. This one above shows men fighting the battle.

The story of the siege of Vicksburg and the battles fought until Vicksburg surrendered to the Union forces.

Many of the Generals of both sides of the war have statues placed in the park in memory of their service.

This is part of the cannon placements surrounding Vicksburg. These are the Union cannon.

The only plantation home not destroyed that is inside the park. It was closed for repairs the day we were there. The hurricanes have reeked havoc all through the south. You only read about the areas that have the largest devastation, but many smaller signs of the hurricanes remain throughout the south. Hurricane Ike, Gustav, Katrina, and more have left their marks. Hill upon hill of gravestones. All of the larger stones have names, but there are many that are graves of unknown soldiers. The unknowns all have the smaller markers.

One of the many statues of the Generals. I think this one is Sherman. Too many beautiful statues to take pictures of.

We spent 2 1/2 hours going through the park. We bought a CD to play in the car that told about each of the memorials and the battles, trenches, gun emplacements and the siege. We can keep the CD and listen to it again.

#54 Natchez, MS 2-21-09

Below is the bridge we crossed going from LA into Mississippi. Under the bridge is the Mighty Mississippi River. "Old Muddy."

The first thing we did when we got to Natchez, was to have lunch in the notorious area called "Natchez Under the Hill." It has been written about in many books, including Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer."

Then we took a horse and buggy ride through the old town of Natchez. The weather was cool and overcast. But, the horse went slow and the driver gave us a lot of history about the town. We drove by the house that has the picket fence that Tom Sawyer was supposed to paint. We also drove by the Ante Bellum home that was used in the movie "North and South." Above is one home that we saw on the tour, but it is not an Ante Bellum home. Do you know that Ante Bellum means "before the war?" I didn't until our tour guide/horse and buggy driver told us. On the 22 of Feb., we decided to take a drive to Vicksburg and see the National Cemetery for the Civil war. On the way we drove on part of the Natchez Trace. The road follows approximately the same path that was used by the Indians and then by the boatmen that brought their goods down the river to Natchez. The flat boat rafts that were used to haul goods from the North couldn't travel back up the river, so the boatmen would sell the lumber they were made of, and either walk or buy a horse and return to the North using the Trace (Path).I don't know if you can read the sign, but it tells a story about the Trace. I thought the picture on the sign was good.

This is the only "inn" that has been preserved along the Trace. It shows the kind of accommodations that were available, but were few and far between. The travelers mostly spent their nights camping out! There was a communal dining area and on either end of the dining area were bedrooms, usually with more than one bed. They were used for the travelers, and probably for the children of the family.

The family cemetery is a short walk from the inn. There are still some headstones for descendants that are still alive.

The family cemetery is a very peaceful and quiet place. It is nice to see this kind of things being preserved.

We only drove about 30 miles on the Trace. It is over 500 miles long. It took the boatmen and any other travelers months to traverse from Natchez to Kentucky.

#53 Houston, TX 2-15 thru 2-18-09

On Monday Feb, 17, we drove to the Houston Elks Lodge, which is actually in Stafford TX, just outside of Houston on south west side. On the way we had to fill up with Diesel. We paid $2.06.9. A lot better than over $4.00 we were paying. It was a long drive for us. A little over 200 miles! But, we made it to the Elks in time for Cocktails! The weather was warming, but still overcast and misting. Sort of like Oregon fog, only warm. I think it hit 72 degrees that day. Here the locals call it humidity. Monday was a holiday, so we didn't do any sight seeing, just driving. On Tuesday we went to the downtown visitor center and got a map of the underground tunnel system.

This tunnel system under the downtown area of Houston is unbelievable. There are 6 1/2 miles of underground pedestrian tunnels. It is a city under the city. And as you can see by the pictures it is well used.

The picture above is one of the intersections of the tunnel system. In the background are two different types of restaurants. We saw flower shops, dentists, hair salons, barbers, nail salons, Dr. offices, gift shops, jewelery shops, boutique clothing shops and more different kind of places to eat than I can name. Every ethnic food as well as fast food and nice sit down restaurants.

When you want to go up to a certain building you just take an escalator to the main floor lobby and from there you can go up or out. We went up to the 59th floor of one building and the 60th floor of another building. Each had a lobby at those higher floors where we could look over the skyline of Houston. And we weren't even at the top of the buildings! You can see part of the skyline of Houston in the picture above. It looks like haze on the horizon. It is "humidity" misting down. One lady told us the tunnel system is climate controlled so workers don't have to go outside during the summer and endure the heat and humidity. Great idea!

Here we are looking down. I think that is city hall in the lower left part of the picture. The one with the dome top. Most of the big tall buildings are banks or investment firms. Chase has 4 buildings, Wells Fargo has one, there are a number of municipal buildings also.

Everyone seems to be in a hurry. Of course it was the lunch hour when we were down there. I'm sure we really looked like tourists to all these workers!

On Wednesday, Feb. 18 we went to NASA. This is Mission Control how it looked in the 60's and 70's. It is not a working Mission Control now. The new Mission Control is much newer. Although these stations were used up into the 90's.

Check out the "red" phone! Some of the kids don't even know what a phone with a dial looks like. Even the handsets on the consoles had dials to reach other departments. How soon technology changes.
Now we are in the training center. No one is training now. There is a new mission scheduled for the end of Feb. The above unit has a reticulating arm that the astronauts use to train with for space walks, and working on the space station equipment on the outside. It moves the equipment in all different directions as if the astronauts were suspended and having to work while floating.
A full size mock up of the space shuttle (minus the wings) is used for training. Everything that the real space shuttle has. is duplicated inside this building.

The Saturn rocket (laying down) is huge. The jets are as big as a small building.

All of this is at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX.

We have now been to Edwards Air Force Base, where the shuttle sometimes lands, to Kennedy Space Center where the shuttle lifts off, and to Command Center in Houston. All places we read about, and now we've seen them. What a country!