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New Orleans Road Trip

 

New Orleans has been on the list for quite sometime but, it is a long haul from Denver at around 20 hours driving time.  Denver is not green yet, Spring takes a while to arrive and I was in need for some foliage.  Usually, we try to hit up the rain forest at the Botanical Gardens to get a little green and humidity during winter, but alas, it is closed due to Covid restrictions.  New Orleans it is!

We took a week off, 2 days driving, 3 days in NOLA and 2 days for the drive back home.  The drive through Texas was uneventful except for a quick stop on the way to shoot the small town of Memphis.   The old town/city center was empty and it looked like it had been abandoned pre-Covid.  All of the shops appeared to be out of business and in disrepair.  The only building that seemed to be in use was the courthouse. Nice little photo stop on our way to Wichita Falls, Texas for our overnight.

Camera: Olympus OM E1





Our AirBnb was a shotgun house walking distance from the ferry in Algiers.  The ferry crosses the Mississippi River every half hour to the French Quarter and cost 2 bucks each way and takes about 10 minutes.  Algiers is the second oldest neighborhood and had some really cools houses.  Shotgun houses are really long and you could stand in the back of the house,  fire a shot gun and it would miss everything and hit the front door. 

Shotgun House - Air BnB in Algiers

Algiers

For our first day in New Orleans we scheduled a creole/cajun cooking class and a street art tour of the ninth ward.  The cooking class was fantastic and after the other attendees cancelled is was just us and Chef Preston.  We learned how to make a roux as the essential ingredient for the gumbo and étouffée we were about to make. We ate so much that we ended up skipping dinner.  Such good food and so rich, well, there was a lot of butter.  After the class we walked from the French Quarter to the Ninth Ward for the street art tour.

French Quarter

French Quarter

French Quarter

The  street art tour was pretty good, although the quantity of art cannot beat RiNo in Denver.  Still pretty cool and by having a guide we learned a bit about the artists and the area. 






On the second day, the storms started rolling in and we expected some rain and maybe some overcast skies. We planned to visit several of the plantations in the area and make a day of it, sort of like doing the Napa valley wine route.  We arrived at the San Francisco Plantation in Garyville, and it was just drizzling, so we parked and bought a ticket for the grounds and took a few shots.  The rain started coming down in buckets! We ran for the car and thought we would try our luck at the next stop, the Laura Plantation, thinking the rain would ease up while on the interior tour.  No, it just got worse, you could watch the flooding in real time. While on the tour the rain got harder and the thunder and lightening increased as the tour led us out to the grounds, stepping ever so carefully to not get your shoes wet, I just gave up and walked firmly in the water.  The wind was blowing so hard it completely destroyed my umbrella.  

San Francisco Plantation

San Francisco Plantation


Laura Plantation

We gave up on plantations and headed back to Algiers to wait out the storm.  Well, the power went out shortly after arriving back at the shotgun house. We ended up watching Netflix on the iPad. 

The next day the skies were clearer and more downpours were expected, but we wanted to take advantage of our time and went to Metairie Cemetery.  All of the tombs are above ground due to the low water table and all of the flooding.  We had stormy skies which made for some creepy graveyard shots, we kind of lucked out.  When we first arrived there was a light drizzle so we trekked out in to the heart of the Cemetery surrounded by tombs.  Then the storm passed right over us, the thunder and lightening was serious! The lightening was really close and being surrounded by granite was probably not the best place to be.  We made it to the truck soaking wet. Now my second pair of shoes are all wet. 





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Location: New Orleans, LA, USA

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