It's All About the Music

Dateline: New Orleans, Louisiana

This was actually our second visit to New Orleans. The first was during our second winter in Florida about 18 months after Katrina had devastated the city as well as towns all along the gulf coast of Mississippi and Alabama. We took this route home that year in order to volunteer our services for a short week helping to rebuild homes in Waveland, Mississippi. I mention this only as a tribute to the resilience of human beings in overcoming any disaster.

We took a Sunday afternoon off (actually they didn't work on Sundays) and went to New Orleans for the day. While we found enough music in the streets and inside Preservation Hall to make the trip worthwhile, the French Quarter was noticeably depressed and the number of tourists was very small.

This year it is very evident that the city has returned to its original character.

We were so fortunate to pick the week of the French Quarter Festival which highlights musicians from all over Louisiana and only from Louisiana. We went into town the first evening we arrived and even before the festival did not begin until the next day music was everywhere. We ate dinner at an outdoor café where a jazz band was playing, in the streets we were treated to a band of young street musicians as talented as any professional band we have heard. We had desert at the Music Legends Park, Café Beignet, where a jazz combo regaled us with rhythm and blues. Walking down Bourbon Street, music was emanating from every other door where you are welcome to stop and listen whether you go in and buy a drink or not.

The next day the music festival began during a horrific rain storm which lasted until late afternoon. We waited for the rain to stop then went into town for the evening shows. We found ourselves perfectly timed to get a great standing view of the stage for the New Orleans Nightingales revue. One after another, lady blues singers graced the stage with mind blowing talent. After that show we found a place to eat some shrimp and jambalaya, and another stroll down Bourbon Street. Friday was a beautiful day and we arrived at the Festival earlier in the afternoon and spent the day drifting from dixieland  to blues to Cajun to Zydeco. My ultimate conclusion: the music is alive and thriving in Nawlins.

The Garden at Laura's Plantation

We also found time to explore some of the other cultural and natural treasures of Louisiana.

We spent one morning at Laura's Plantation. This was a Creole plantation as opposed to an American one i.e. Tara. The Creole people are a combination of Europeans, Africans, and American Indians. Their primary language was French and they did not consider themselves Americans. The guide gave us an enlightening presentation demonstrating how the Creole culture was so different from American and also how the cotton plantation business was run.

Another morning we took a swamp boat trip into the Louisiana bayou. They took us deep into a romantic cypress swamp and passed a fishing village on the swamp in which one home was only accessible by water and another home was actually floating on pontoons. Nothing as spooky as in the Blues Brothers movie, but maybe that's because we were there in the daylight.

The Long Journey Home

We left Lakeland 2 weeks ago and since then we have either been in the middle of nowhere with sketchy internet access even on 3G or just plain busy.

Rainbow Springs River

Our first stop was Rainbow Springs State Park in Dunnellon, Florida. As it was Holy Week we spent some time at the local Parish church of St. John the Baptist, and while there was no sunrise service on the ocean as in St. Augustine, the parish was so welcoming and the pastor so enthusiastic about the services, we thoroughly enjoyed the worship community there.

We took our traditional bike ride on the Withlacoochee trail to the McLeod House eatery in Inverness. Where we had a very relaxing lunch on the back deck.







We rented kayaks one afternoon on the Rainbow Rive which is a beautifully clear spring fed river, and we had our Easter celebration with our winter travelling buddies, the Russells.

Manatees in the wild

We also took about an hour's drive down the coast of the gulf to Homosassa Springs in search of a Sugar Cane plantation and it turned out to be just a ruins of a sugar cane processing thingie. However, while down there we discovered a treasure of a place, the Homosassa Springs State Park. Not only were the gardens lovely, there was a wildlife zoo of sorts, and a deck on the river where the manatees gather in the wild. By the way we also had lunch with a view of Monkey Island. A story for another time.






The bike trail on St. George Island

Next on our homebound tour was another state park, St. George Island. Now we were really in the middle of nowhere, but what an awesome nowhere it is. Dunes along the seashore in Florida no longer exist except in the State Parks as commercial builders have such a need to be as close to the water as possible without falling in. Unfortunately, we all know that sometimes they do fall in. It was a bit cool and rainy for swimming or sunning, but that doesn't stop us from enjoying the park. There was a 5 mile road out to the point of the island accessible only by bicycle or special permit. Only 19 permits are issued a day mostly to fishermen. The ride was through the dunes to the beach. The beach was lined with fishermen and their families creating a Rockwellian scene of Americana.

I also realized our first evening on the beach that the sun was setting behind our backs. Wow, that would mean that it is actually possible to view a sunrise on the Gulf of Mexico from Florida. So the next morning we got up and trekked down to the beach to behold the miracle.









On the rainy day we packed up the car and took in the quaint little town of Apalachacola, immortalized in a song by Tim McGraw. The most distinguishable characteristic of this time is the number of shrimp boats docked and moving in and out of the waterways.









Further into the Florida Panhandle we arrived at Henderson Beach State Park in Destin, Florida. Last year we had chosen this route home in order to stop in New Orleans and travel north via the Natchez Trace. In the meantime, my brother, Bill bought a home near there and we now had the added attraction of visiting them while in the area. We had a wonderful 4 days with him and Debbie his wife. We golfed two of the great golf courses which are a part of the resort in which he lives, and went on a great bike ride, culminating in the city of Seaside. Seaside is a quaint little beach town with its own special type of Florida Architecture. By the way, they also have a great ice cream parlor which gives meaning to most of our rides.















The beach is lovely surrounded by sand dunes with a boardwalk across them to reach it. On the last day we were there it was extremely windy, the red flags were flying in warning of the undertow, and the surf was powerful. That's the way I love my beach.