Living Our Dream

Berwick, LA to Shreveport, LA

Shreveport, LA

After an enjoyable stay in Cajun Country, we headed north toward our next destination of Shreveport, LA. We could have pushed to drive all the way from Berwick to Shreveport in one shot; but it would have been a 5½ hour drive, and we usually like to limit our drives to 4 hours.

Margery found a nice campground along the Red River in the little town of Colfax, LA on RV Park Reviews part way between Berwick and Shreveport. Colfax is off the beaten path, and it's a little difficult to find information about the campground, which seems to be a joint effort between the Corps of Engineers and the Red River Waterway Authority.

The Red River Waterway Authority is an agency of the state of Louisiana that appears to control the locks and ports along the Red River. They have a number of recreation sites along the river including the Colfax Recreation Area.

The campground is relatively new. It has 25 widely-spaced, back-in sites, and it has paved roads, pads and patios. There are full hookups with 30/50-amp electric and free Wi-fi. The Colfax RV Park accepts America the Beautiful Passes for half-price camping, which makes it a real bargain at $12 a night. The photo below shows our site at Colfax Recreation Area.

Although we heard a few distant trains, the campground was generally nice and quiet. Other than the campground hosts, there was only one other RV besides us in the entire campground.

The Colfax Recreation Area is located next to a lock on the Red River. In the photo below, the lock is to the left, and the boat launch is to the rear of where we were standing.

There are several rivers named Red River, two of which are larger and fairly well known. The northern Red River forms the border between North Dakota and Minnesota, and it's the one we that we always hear about that floods in Fargo.

The other well-known Red River is the southern one that runs through the Colfax Recreation Area. The southern Red River is 1300 miles long. It starts in the panhandle of Texas and forms the border between Texas and Oklahoma and a short section of the border between Texas and Arkansas. In Arkansas, the Red River turns south and flows into Louisiana. Shreveport is located on the Red River.

The drive from Berwick to Colfax was a little over three hours, and the drive from Colfax to Shreveport was only about two hours. In Shreveport, we stayed at Tall Pines RV Park.

Tall Pines RV, a Good Sam park, has paved roads and patios. Some sites have paved pads, and some sites are gravel. The sites are mainly pull-throughs. There are full hookups with free Wi-fi and cable. Some sites have 30 amps only, and some have 30/50 amps. It was hot, so we got a 50-amp site.

We could tell by the distinctive A-frame shape of the office the campground used to be a KOA, which usually have very narrow sites. Surprisingly, the site width was not bad at all for a private campground.

The next photo shows a view down the main road of the campground where our site was located. It was early when we arrived, so there were quite a few empty sites. However, many of those empty sites were filled later in the day, and the campground was almost completely filled for the Memorial Day weekend.

There was a fair amount of traffic noise from I-20 to the north. We could also hear an occasional, distant train. However, as we said, it was hot when we were there so we ran the air most of the time, and that pretty much covered up any noise.

The weather forecast for our first full day in Shreveport was calling for mostly cloudy with a 40% chance of rain so we didn't plan on any sightseeing. Instead, Margery took the opportunity to get a haircut, after which we made a stop at Walmart to restock some groceries.

Shreveport isn't a big tourist town, but we did identify some sightseeing possibilities. Look for our next post, and we'll tell you what we found.

Morgan City, LA

Berwick, LA

Although we decided to relax the last couple of days before we left Berwick, we were curious about how high the water levels were along the Atchafalaya River in town, so we took a drive over the bridge that lies between Berwick and the larger, neighboring town of Morgan City. The photo below shows the flood wall in Berwick. The flood wall is gray with light blue flood gates and sits in front of the trees to the right of the photo. Water was only a little way up the wall, which was only a slight increase over what it was when we first arrived in the area 5 days prior.

As we approached the Morgan City side of the river, we could get a better view of their riverfront, and we could see the water was up over the wharf. The water was only a foot or so deep at the base of the flood wall, which is about the same as it was in Berwick. We could also see the Morgan City flood wall had a walkway on top, so we decided to drive into town to take a closer look.

We parked and took the steps to the top of the wall where we could see a depth gauge with the water at the 8.5-foot mark. The gauge is on the wharf where the water is only a few feet deep, and the 8.5-foot depth relates to whatever their reference point is rather than the actual water depth at that point on the wharf.

Flood level in Morgan City is 4 feet. At a level of about 7 feet, the water just starts to overtop the wharf. The level was 7.7 feet when we first arrived, and it was 8.5 feet when we took the above photo. The crest is predicted to be less than 11 feet. The flood walls are at least 18 to 20 feet high, so that means if the water goes up another 2 or 2.5 feet, it will be nowhere near overtopping the flood walls.

The next photo is a view downstream. The wharf, an old abandoned warehouse downstream, and an oil company dock upstream of where we were standing were on the river side of the wall and were flooded, but there was no flooding anywhere on the city side of the wall.

There was no chance of anybody violating this parking ordinance, unless someone tied up their boat.

From the the top of the flood wall we had a good view of the Berwick lighthouse over on the other side of the river. The lighthouse originally stood along the Atchafalaya Bay to the south of Berwick to mark a shoal at the mouth of the bay. Just before WWI, a new channel was cut through the shoal. When a new lighthouse was built to mark the new channel, the old lighthouse was abandoned. In 1987, the town of Berwick rescued the old lighthouse and moved it up the Atchafalaya River next to the town.

After we left the flood wall, we took a short drive through town. The next photo shows a grand old house that was near the river.

Some of the homes in town looked like they hadn't changed a bit over the years. Even though the car needs some work, Paul liked the old De Soto Custom parked in front of the house in the next photo. It is most likely a 1946 to 1948 model.

We had a great time in Cajun Country. We never did get to go on our Cajun swamp tour because every time they thought they were going to have enough people (they needed 8 to make the trip economically feasible), someone cancelled. Finally, on our last day in the area, it looked like we would finally go; but then the Corps of Engineers closed one of locks on the tour route to better control water flow during flooding, and the tour had to be cancelled again. Oh well, now we have an excuse to go back - like we need one.

Our next destination is Shreveport, so stay tuned.

Jeanerette Museum

Berwick, LA

Jeanerett is a small town along Bayou Teche about half way between New Iberia and Berwick where we were staying. Margery found the Jeanerette Museum when she was doing her research into things to do.

Jeanerette is called "Sugar City," and, in addition to local history, the Jeanerette Museum has a lot of information on growing sugarcane and processing it into sugar. We have been hearing so much about sugarcane at all the Louisiana plantations we have visited, we wanted to learn more.

Another reason we decided to go the Jeanerette Museum was so we would have a good excuse to drive along Bayou Teche. The drive is quite scenic with many old plantation homes that were built in the 1800s. The photo below shows just a few of the mansions we saw.

Since most of the homes are privately owned, it's hard to find out much information about them unless you talk to the locals. The house in the photo below, however, had a plaque on the pillar by the gate that said "Arlington 1861." When we later Googled the name, we found out the house was for sale for $995,000. 

Franklin is another town along Bayou Teche on the way to Jeanerette. Franklin, which was named for Benjamin Franklin, was founded in 1808. Franklin is very charming with its white lampposts running down the center of the main street. The lampposts, which date back to 1915, were restored in 2005.

The town of Jeanerette was named for John W. Jeanerette, who came to the area in the 1820s from South Carolina. He worked as a tutor for a planter's family, and he also opened a store and saloon. By the 1830s, he had saved enough money to buy a plantation. John Jeanerette also became the town's first postmaster.

When we got to Jeanerette, we had no problem finding the museum. The Jeanerette Museum is in a 100-year old cedar house on the banks of Bayou Teche in back of a small park right on the main road.

Inside the museum, we watched their excellent video on sugar. From the video, we learned more about how sugarcane is grown and processed. Although sugarcane does produce seeds, it is most commonly grown commercially using stem cuttings. Short sections of stalks containing at least one node are buried horizontally in a shallow trench. Sprouts appear from the nodes. The photo below shows a field of young sugarcane plants.

Although sugarcane is still harvested by hand in some locations, growers in the United States use mechanical harvesters that cut the stalks at the base, strip the leaves and chop the stalks into short lengths all in one operation.

After harvesting, the canes are taken to the sugar mill where they are washed, shredded into small pieces and crushed between rollers to extract the juice. Crushing machines used to be turned by hand or by animal power. Outside the museum, there is a mule-powered sugarcane crusher. The canes would have been fed into the slit in the side of the machine where rollers would have pressed out the juice into the iron kettle.

Bagasse is the byproduct left over after the sweet juice is extracted from the woody stalks. The bagasse is dried and used for fuel for the boilers that produce steam to power the sugar mill.

The juice is then mixed with lime and heated to drive off water. In the past, shallow, open kettles were used. We have seen those kettles everywhere we have gone in southern Louisiana. Modern methods use vacuum kettles to remove water more efficiently at lower temperatures to prevent scorching of the sugar.

After most of the water is driven off, the sugar begins to crystallize. Molasses, which is the thick syrup that is left, is removed from the sugar by centrifuges. The resulting raw sugar is then sent to a refinery for final purification and bleaching into white sugar. Incidentally, most of the brown sugar we buy in the grocery store is really white sugar that has had molasses added back.

On average, one ton of sugarcane yields 180 pounds of raw sugar, 7 gallons of molasses and 270 pounds of bagasse. The remainder of the weight is water, which is evaporated.

One room in the museum had a lot of wooden foundry patterns used to cast gears and other components for local sugar mills.

The foundry, which is located next door, donated the patterns that are no longer needed to the museum. The reason some of the patterns are no longer needed is because many of the local mills have closed due to hurricane damage and environmental pressures against the burning of bagasse for fuel. The foundry is shown in the next photo.

The room with the patterns also had a great piece of local folk art in the form of a alligator hand-carved from cypress.

In addition to sugar-related items, the museum also had lots of photos and items that speak to local history such as these Mardi Gras costumes...

...and these household and kitchen items.

There was also a whole room dedicated to local wildlife. We called it the "man cave." There were mounted specimens of fish on the walls, and there were examples of other wildlife like the armadillo, alligator, wood duck, bobcat and otter shown in the next photo. The canoe-like boat is a pirogue. The pirogue is a traditional Cajun fishing boat built from cypress. The flat bottom is suited to the shallow waters of the swamps and bayous.

One surprising thing we learned about at the museum was that there was a WW II prisoner-of-war camp just 2 miles west of Jeanerette. Most of the prisoners were captured in North Africa and were under the command of General Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox." The prisoners were employed on local farms and engaged in the cultivation of sugar cane.

While the museum isn't a major attraction, we did enjoy it, especially the video on sugar production. It is worth stopping if you are taking the scenic route along the bayou.

Another thing we found out about when we visited the museum was Le Jeune's Bakery, which is located a couple of blocks away. The museum had several photos and newspaper articles about the bakery, which has been owned and operated by 5 generations of the Le Jeune family dating back to 1884. All their products are made from scratch using recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation.

LeJeune's Bakery specializes in French bread that they bake three times a day. If you know when to go, you can get it hot out of the oven. But we were interested in their other specialty - ginger cakes. In addition to being able to buy at the bakery, several local grocery stores carry Le Jeune ginger cakes, and you can also order their products online.

Signs direct customers to the side door because they're too busy in the back baking to man the front counter. In the photo below, Paul is trying to decide how many ginger cakes to buy.

The ginger cakes are fairly large (probably 6 to 8 ounces each), and they're only $1.75. We bought two. We should have bought more because we started eating the first one right there in the parking lot. Yum! They were as good as the ones we remember getting at the King's Arms Tavern Bakery in Williamsburg - maybe better.

We again took the scenic route along the bayou back to the motor home as we munched on our ginger cake. We planned to relax for the last couple of days of our stay in Berwick before we headed out to our next destination.

Avery Island Part II: Tabasco Pepper Sauce

Berwick, LA

In our last post we told you a little about the history of Avery Island and about how Edmund McIlhenny married into the Avery family. After the Civil War, someone (possibly a Civil War veteran who was passing through the area) gave Edmund some chile pepper seeds he said were from Mexico. Edmund was an avid gardener, so he planted the seeds. It is uncertain how he ended up with his final pepper sauce concoction, but because it was such a hit with his friends, he began to sell it in 1868.

Tabasco is the name of a region in Mexico, and since the original pepper seeds were thought to have come from Mexico, Edmund used that name for his pepper sauce.

McIlhenny Company offers factory tours 7 days a week, except major holidays. Tours start outside the factory visitor entrance.

The tour begins with an excellent video detailing how Tabasco sauce is made starting with growing the peppers. In 1965, the McIlhenny Company ran out of room on Avery Island to grow all the peppers they needed for their production, so they began growing peppers in Central and South America. All the seed peppers are still grown on Avery Island, and a member of the McIlhenny family personally selects only the best plants from which to save seed. Most of the peppers for the sauce, however, are now grown in other locations. A big advantage to growing in more than one location is the supply is assured in the event of hurricane, insects or disease at any one place.

According to company tradition, all peppers are picked by hand at the peak of ripeness because that's the best way to assure they are at their best flavor and maximum juiciness. As the peppers ripen, they turn from green to yellow to orange and finally to red, and they don't all ripen at the same time. In case there is any question about which peppers to pick, employees are given "le petit baton rouge" - a little red stick, which is a dowel painted the preferred shade of red for picking.

The peppers are mashed and mixed with a small amount of salt mined right there on Avery Island. The mash is placed into barrels that have been used to age bourbon whiskey, after which a thick layer of Avery Island salt is placed on top of the lid. The layer of salt doesn't directly affect the flavor of the peppers, but it acts as a natural barrier to protect the barrel contents while allowing gasses to escape during the fermentation and aging process. The mash is aged for up to three years.

After aging, the mash is inspected by a member of the McIlhenny family then blended with white vinegar. After the mixture is stirred intermittently for up to 30 days, the seeds and skins are strained out, and the sauce is bottled.

The caked salt from the lids of the aging barrels is put out around the island as salt licks for the deer. That way, their venison is pre-seasoned. ;-)

Seeds strained out from the mash-vinegar mixture are sold to be used to extract capsaicin to make analgesic rubs like Bengay and to make pepper spray.

After we watched the video, we walked along a glass window where we could see various bottling and packaging operations. Mixing and aging take place in other areas of the plant that are not part of the tour.

McIlhenny bottles an average of 720,000 bottles of sauce a day. The photo below shows the mid-day count for the day we were there. They needed to step it up if they were going to get close to their average that day.

There was a stack of labels by the window marked with the names of various countries - Uruguay, Czechoslovakia, Ivory Coast, Greece, Saudi Arabia and more. Tabasco is labeled in 22 languages and dialects and sold in over 160 countries.

At the end of the tour, there was a small Tabasco museum that had examples of old bottles and equipment. There was also a scale model of Avery Island. You can see how high the island sits above the surrounding landscape. The salt mine is located on the other side of the island. The red and gray buildings toward the right are the McIlhenny factory. Rows of pepper plants stretch out to the left.

After the tour, we took time to check out the Tabasco products in the company store.

In case you're hungry, there is also a lunch stand outside where they sell local dishes such as jambalaya, crawfish etoufee, seafood gumbo, red beans and rice, and more.

In the store, you can sample all the Tabasco sauces. We like a little heat, but we're not real crazy about Tabasco because of the sour nature of the sauce that comes from the fact vinegar is such an important ingredient. However, they have a new Sweet & Spicy sauce that Paul loved.

In addition to being able to sample all the sauces, they also had Tabasco soda and Tabasco ice cream. In the photo below, Paul is sampling jalapeño ice cream. It was delish - sweet with a definite jalapeño flavor and with a little bit of a kick.

In the next photo, Margery is checking out Tabasco hot pepper jelly.

By the time we finished visiting Jungle Gardens, taking the Tabasco factory tour and visiting the company store, we were kind of hungry. Rather than try something from the lunch stand outside the company store, we decided to continue our 2011 Zeller Foodie Tour by going back to Duffy's for a late lunch/early supper (lupper). Margery also had her heart set on a chocolate soda ever since we were too full the last time we were at Duffy's.

Margery had a barbecued brisket po' boy (in the background), and Paul had roast beef. This time, we each ordered only a half plus an order of onion rings to share. In New Orleans and the surrounding areas, Po' boys (no matter what kind), are traditionally served "dressed," which means they have lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise on them. Like the shrimp po' boys we had the other day at Duffy's, the meat was overflowing the bread. Everything was great.

Even with only half a po' boy we still got plenty to eat, but not so much that Margery didn't have room for her chocolate soda. It was gooood.

After lupper, we made our way back to the motor home. We still have more planned for Cajun Country, so look for our next post.

Avery Island Part I: Jungle Gardens

Berwick, LA

In our last post, we mentioned we would be visiting another one of the Louisiana salt-dome islands. At a height of 163 feet above mean sea level, Avery Island is the largest of the five salt domes in this area. Avery Island is completely surrounded by water in the form of bayous, a salt marsh and swamps.

Since Avery Island is surrounded by water, it's only logical someone would come up with a solution to a possible flooding problem. We saw the travel trailer in the photo below just before we got to Avery Island. We're not sure this an example of Cajun ingenuity or of redneck ingenuity, but either way, it looks like it will keep them dry. However, if a flood were expected, you would think it would be easier to just hitch the trailer up and drive away.

Native Americans, as well as early settlers, used to boil water from a natural salt spring on the island to extract the salt. During the Civil War, over 22 million pounds of salt were mined for the Confederacy at Avery Island until Union forces invaded the area and smashed mining equipment and burned buildings. Today, the salt mines are leased to the Cargill Salt Company.

Before the Civil War, Edmund McIlhenney married into the Avery family, who settled on the island in the 1830s. At that time the island was called Ile Petite Anse (French for Small Cove Island).

After the war, Edmund founded the McIlhenny Company and began manufacturing his now famous Tabasco pepper sauce on Avery Island. We'll get to the McIlhenny Company and Tabasco sauce in our next post, but we just wanted to give a little background history before we tell you about Jungle Gardens in this post.

There were large banks of clouds rolling in and out all morning, and just as we got to Avery Island, a large patch of relatively clear sky had just moved in, so we went to Jungle Gardens first because we preferred to go there when it was sunny.

One of Edmund McIlhenny's sons, Edward "Ned" McIlhenny, was a naturalist and conservationist. In the late 1800s, the snowy egret was hunted to near extinction to provide feathers for ladies' hats. Ned created a bird sanctuary and rookery called Bird City in a pond on the island. It was nesting season when we were there, so thousands of birds were nesting at Bird City.

Even though Ned assumed the presidency of McIlhenny Company in 1898, he still found time in the 1920s to convert part of Avery Island in the vicinity of Bird City into a 170-acre garden. He planted specimens of hundreds of varieties of exotic plants from all over the world. He also planted many camellias and azaleas which thrived in the mild Louisiana winters. Jungle Gardens opened to the public in 1935.

As we learned when we visited Jefferson Island, oil frequently occurs near salt domes. Oil was discovered on Avery Island in 1942. Ned stipulated the drilling crews avoid the live oak trees on the island, and that they bury pipelines where possible (or at least paint them green) to minimize the impact of oil production on the beauty of the island. Who says drilling for oil and nature can't co-exist?

Jungle Gardens is a drive-through garden. There are pull-offs and parking areas where you can stop for photos and take short walks to explore further. We have to warn you, if you're planning to get out of the car, or even if you're just planning to just roll down the window for a photo, take along insect repellent. It was hot and humid when we were there, and the mosquitoes were ferocious.

Stapled to the map of the gardens they gave us when we entered was another warning for people who are thinking about getting out of their vehicles. It was a warning about the presence of alligators. Sure enough, as we rounded the first bend into the garden past a small pool, we spotted a 4-foot 'gator.

Unfortunately, both the camellias and azaleas were done blooming when we were there, so we had to be content with just the bayous, ponds, live oaks, and palm trees. They were pretty enough, but we prefer lots of colorful blooms.

 

The next photo shows Bayou Petite Anse, which runs along the western side of Avery Island.

There were numerous egrets in various parts of the gardens because of the rookery at Bird City. The cattle egret in the next photo is wearing its orange-buff colored mating plumage.

Live oak trees abound in the gardens, but the ancient Cleveland Oak is particularly picturesque. The tree is named for President Grover Cleveland, who supposedly visited Avery Island in 1931.

After we drove through the gardens, we made our way over to the McIlhenny Tabasco factory for a tour. We'll tell you all about it in our next post.