Day 102 – Another Trip to Cajun Country

As Ginger has said all along during these trips, “It’s all about the food”.  Well, here we are again traipsing the countryside for good grub.  This past Spring we had a stupendous breakfast at a cafe in Breau Bridge, LA and vowed if we were ever near the area again we would go back.  By constructing a route from Laurel, MS, we managed to do just that.

First we passed through New Orleans on I-10 to see how the city was doing post Katrina.  It didn’t take long to begin seeing homes that were boarded up, blown apart, or partly gone among other homes that have been rebuilt.  New apartment buildings were everywhere, but dumpsters were still on street corners as were piles of debris.  We thought the damaged homes would have at least been torn down, but that is not the case even after this length of time.

We also passed a large field that must have had thousands of empty FEMA trailers parked in rows upon rows waiting for who knows what.  We began wondering how so many could have been built in such a short time.  Should the Government sell them, we could all have one to pull around.

The last item of note during the driving piece was crossing the bayou country west of Baton Rouge.  I-10 becomes airborne  for over 30 miles on concrete pilings.  Driving and driving along over swamps and open water for this distance makes the road an engineering marvel to me.  

Back to the dining experience in Breau Bridge.  Cafe’ Des Amis is the name of the restaurant we returned to, this time for dinner.  We were not disappointed and the Oysters Rockefeller soup for starters was decadent.  Both of our entree’s had a crawfish etouffe’ sauce as accompaniment.  Being Halloween, our waiter was in costume resembling the character in Beetlejuice.  our carrying on with him was apparently loud enough that we caught the interest of another couple nearby about our travels.  They stepped over to say hello and we had a coffee and probably bored them with tales of our travels.

We bid adieu to seafood extravaganzas as we continue west, and hopefully will long remember them. 

 

Day 101 – The Freedom Road

From Warm Springs we hopped on Route 80, the road known as the Southern Pacific and made for Montgomery, Alabama.  Our goal today was to retrace the path of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. 

Before the Civil Rights movement, though, there were many other endeavors that laid the foundations for racial equality.  One of them was the integration of the armed forces in WWII.  A small chapter in this activity was the formation of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of pilots, navigators, and repairmen that amassed a stellar record during the war.  The Tuskegee Airmen flew almost 1000 missions in the European Theater.

Begun near the campus of Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, the airmen trained on a small airport on the edge of town.  A couple of hangars and outbuildings remain from the 40’s and form the basis for this new memorial which held its grand opening October 12 and promises to be a large complex in the future.  Right now it is a parking lot and a temporary building showing a movie of the history of the airmen.

In Montgomery, the State Capital, we visited the Memorial to the Civil Rights victims in the heart of the capital complex.  44 individuals, both black and white, that were killed from the onset of the movement in 1955 to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968 are memorialized here.  The outdoor sculptures are done by the same artist that created the Vietnam Veterans Wall in DC using a moving water over granite effect.  The indoor exhibits articulate the circumstances of each of the victims deaths and the events surrounding the times beginning with Rosa Parks defiance on the bus.

Voter registration efforts fostered much of the conflicts during this period and Selma, AL turned ugly with a killing.  To protest this occurrence the 45 mile march from Selma to Montgomery was organized along Route 80.  We traveled it in reverse spotting the plaques showing the campgrounds and crossing the bridge where the famous confrontation occurred.  All of this is really timely now, we think.

On to Meridien, MS and finally Laurel, MS where we spend the night.  As we covered these backroads our thoughts were with the fearless volunteers. 

 

Day 100 – FDR for the Fourth Time

We seem to have traced all of FDR’s homes and memorials in our last 15 months of travel.  Beginning with Campobello in New Brunswick, Canada, Hyde Park in New York, the open air memorial in DC, and now The Little White House in Warm Springs, GA.,  his numerous terms as President made this a worthwhile effort.   

Warm Springs, Georgia is the location of the Little White House built by Franklin Delano Roosevelt just prior to his presidency.  Seeking relief from the polio that paralyzed him, the warm springs and the community of doctors specializing in treating polio made this town ideal for him to visit.  The home and grounds are now owned by the Foundation FDR established to research a cure and rehabilitate polio victims.  This foundation would later become the March of Dimes and they have retained the home in the same state as when FDR lived there including the original furniture and memorabilia.

The first stop was at the visitor’s center where we met a delightful elderly lady guide that had been helped by the foundation as a child beginning in 1932.  She knew FDR firsthand and showed us personal photos of the two of them attending Thanksgiving dinners, an event FDR chose to celebrate in Warm Springs.  The townspeople truly seemed to bond with FDR and the efforts he made in expanding their livelihood.

This is also the place where he died of a massive stroke in 1945, so there is a sadness associated with the home and the unfinished painting he was posing for at the time of his death is hung as a memorial.

Callaway Gardens was our next stop up the road apiece.  Like other philanthropic multi-millionaires, the Callaway’s used their textile money to reconstruct 13,500 acres of worn out Georgia farmland into a massive arboretum.  Fearing the loss of many local plant species, the Callaway’s hired landscape architects, botanists, engineers and thousands of laborers to restore the land and plantings for the public to enjoy.

The gardens and buildings are surrounded by 7 lakes, walking and bike trails, a scenic drive, a golf course, a hotel, and now homes.  We began at the Discovery Center with lunch overlooking the largest lake and the trees in Fall colors.  The featured display there was the recreation of extinct plants by an artist working in copper and oil paints making full sized replicas of these delicate plants.

We then walked through a Holly and Camellia grove over to the butterfly pavilion for an up close experience with hundreds of butterflies floating around us in a large atrium .  It was a picture taking moment.  Final stop was a giant plant pavilion with a waterfall, tropical plants and trees, an indoor/outdoor pond and more photo opportunities.

Closing time forced us to leave the buildings, but we were able to take a scenic drive through the remainder of the park.  In addition to the groomed grounds, we saw the preparations for the Christmas light show which looked to be spectacular.

A return through the FDR State Park with overlooks of Georgia hills in the twilight made for a really great day.

 

Day 99 – Peanuts and a President in Plains, Georgia

A couple more miles this morning and we were back in Georgia passing by the farms and the red clay.  Practically everything is grown or raised here.  Corn, beans, cattle, hay, pine trees, cotton, pecans and peanuts all claim acreage in this region of the country.  The small towns we pass through support the activity with implement dealers, feed stores, and churches.  There are more churches per capita here than anywhere else we have been.

We had seen signs for boiled peanuts for several days running so when a roadside vegetable stand came along doing the same thing we stopped.  Boiled peanuts are just that….boiled in the shell with a little salt added to the water.  The result tastes like a white bean in our opinion.  Plus, getting the mushy nut out of a limp shell is messy to the untrained.

We needed lunch so another heavily advertised establishment was chosen..Sonny’s BBQ.  A chain in GA and FL, Sonny’s offers 4 kinds of sauce for beef, pork, or chicken.  We chose the pulled pork sandwiches with a choice of side and drink for $7.  This BBQ is smoked and the sauces are vinegar based for a tart taste.  It was excellent.  As a going away present they offered us a refill of our iced tea “to go”.  This turned out to be a 32 oz. foam cup; bigger than our cupholders.

Our recurring presidential discoveries next led us to Plains, GA and the home of Jimmy Carter.  At almost 700 people, Plains is easy to get around.  There is his boyhood home, his current home, his high school – now museum, church, and brother Billy’s gas station.  We saw them all, plus learned about peanut growing and harvesting.  The boyhood farm showed how simple his growing up experiences were during the depression.  No running water or electricity until the late 30’s yet a tennis court next to the house.

The downtown Plains stores cater to the tourists, in this case us and one other couple, so we tried fried peanuts, peanut ice cream, and several peanut brittles, too.  The day was fun with very rural images.

 

Day 98 – Beaches to Backroads in Florida

With Sarasota behind us, we skirt Tampa and drive into the rural Northwest corner of Florida.  This area is filled with pine trees, dense vegetation, casual water, and Kudzu.  We drove through one town where the trees made a perfect archway over the road and the Kudzu climbed on all of the power lines.

Ginger’s Uncle Scott has lived 10 years full time in a golf community in Dunnellon, Fl, and visiting him and his wife, “LC” directed our travel through this part of the state.  We spent a few hours catching up on current events while watching the golfers in the back yard.  It was good to see that they were in fine shape and planning future golf activities themselves.

Small towns along the way catered in the past to auto traffic from the North as the snowbirds migrated back and forth.  With the onset of the Interstate highways, these towns have been bypassed now.  This has led to a large number of defunct motels along the roadsides, many in disrepair.  We note the 50’s and 60’s architecture of V-shaped, low slung buildings, the 40’s with the small boxes like little duplexes.  All now just vacant.