On our balcony, New Orleans
Our wake up call came as expected this morning – the garbage truck followed by the bells – so it gave us a good early start for our drive into Texas today.
We hit the interstate and luckily for us we were going out of town. The traffic heading in to town from any direction was 3, 4, 5 lanes of wall to wall cars for miles and miles and miles ! I had managed to persuade the troops to take the “scenic route” for our first part of the drive through Louisiana so instead of heading back north toward Baton Rouge we headed south.
New Orleans to Houston
This route takes you through real bayou and swamp country and the road system is just amazing. The roads go for miles and miles on pilons through the swampy marshes so that the road can be 5, maybe 10 feet above the swamp levels. When the road gets to “hard ground” again they are back to ground level and this alternates as necessary.
On Bayou Teche Scenic Byway
A bit further on we came to a section called the Bayou Teche Scenic Byway. This scenic drive meanders along various roads and can take hours if you followed them all but we would only be doing part of it. This area is actually a sugar cane area and there are a number of plantations here that made their money from the sugar cane instead of cotton. They sure have a lot of sugar cane and at times you would have easily thought you were driving in north Queensland.
We followed the byway on US182 for a while then decided we would cross the river near a town called Jeanerette to US87. This was a great choice as we immediately came across this road with huge trees spanning it with the spanish moss hanging down – just beautiful.
Bayside Plantation
Then round the next corner we came across a stunning plantation house sitting amongst the trees. We quickly pulled over to grab our cameras and take a few pictures. As we were stopped, a young guy on his ride on mower came over toward us and stopped. He said we were more than welcome to go up to the drive to take pictures if we wanted. Adrienne asked if he owned the property and he told us he and his father lived there and his family had been there since the 1930’s but the property had been built in the 1850’s. He then directed us to a marker down the road further with more detail. The marker showed that the house had been built by a man named Francis D Richardson who was a classmate and friend of Edgar Allan Poe. He bought the land for a sugar plantation and called it Bayside due to the dense growth of bay trees nearby.
We continued on this road for a while, through more sugar cane and more affluent looking homes – more modern built but very large. We joined the main road again near a town called New Iberia and headed on to re-join I 10 at Lafayette.
Halfway on our tour – Texas
From there it was really just interstate driving on to Texas. We stopped briefly for lunch near Lake Charles, the last major town in Louisiana. Entering Texas we have now visited 25 of the 50 states of the USA !
We also stopped briefly not long after we entered Texas at a town called Beaumont as Adrienne had read it had a re-created “historical oil boomtown” and we thought it might be worth a look. When we got there it looked like it was more a bust than a boom so we decided to give it a miss.
They say “everything is bigger and better in Texas” – well that starts as soon as you get over the border as the speed limit increases from 70 to 75mph. We also came across two huge highway interchanges on our way into Houston and they certainly were the biggest we’ve seen so far – they are up and down like a rollercoaster and at the top of them you get quite a view ! Dinner was easy as we walked next door to a nice Italian restaurant – very popular and busy and the food was great.
We are in Houston tomorrow also so until then bye for now.