Author Archives: Jill and Bud

We’re back on the west side of the Mississippi River again, in northern Louisiana.

We’re staying at yet another Louisiana State Park, Poverty Point Reservoir State Park.

The weather has been gorgeous, clear blue skies with temperatures in the mid to upper sixties during the day. Yesterday we spent the day outdoors; first playing disc golf and then visiting Poverty Point World Heritage Site.

We’d seen the signs for this site as we came into the state park. There are a couple of small Indian mounds in the park, and when we asked about them we found out that the Poverty Point Site was also Indian mounds.

What makes this site so special is the age and the complexity of the earthworks. This map is of the driving tour we took.

Our first stop was just to view the central plaza. This area is 43 acres. It was made about 3600 years ago. The people who made it brought in soil to fill any depressions, some as deep as 6 feet. The plaza is still almost perfectly flat.

Surrounding the plaza are six “C” shaped ridges. They are so large they are hard to see from the ground but they show up in aerial photographs.

You can see them on the map. This picture is looking across several of them. They were about 6 feet above the plaza and wide enough to have houses built on them. You can see from the map how evenly and precisely placed they are. The outer ridge is about three quarters of a mile from side to side. Archaeological evidence shows cooking and household activities on them which are dated from 1530 BCE to 1150 BCE.

In the center behind the ridges is what is now called Mound A. Dated to 1350 BCE, Mound A is the largest mound built to that point in history in what is now the U.S. No larger structure will be built for 2000 years! This was a hunter, fisher, gatherer society, with no evidence of agriculture, making the organization and long term occupation of this site required for such an undertaking remarkable.

The mound is shaped somewhat like a bird in flight, with a long ramp up along the bird’s tail.

The highest point would be at the center of the bird’s body, between the outstretched wings and today is 72 feet above the surrounding land.

There is no evidence that any structure was ever built on this mound and there are no remains of any activity. The evidence there is shows this mound, like all these earthworks, was built hauling soil by hand in baskets, about 50 pounds in a load. It took something like 15,500,000 basket loads of soil to make it! It does not seem to have been made over a long period of time, but rather all at once, perhaps in a matter of months!

What you don’t see in any of these pictures is rocks. There are none here. The museum on site had artifacts and chips from local rock, brought from 18 to 25 miles away, as well as rocks from the Appalachian Mountains, the Midwest and even north of the Great Lakes. This site now sits on Macon Bayou, but at the time it was occupied this might have been a lake connected to the Mississippi River. Obviously the people here traded with others for goods that traveled hundreds of miles.

There are three other mounds that are part of this site. The site was abandoned more than 3,000 years ago, but for 600 years this must have been a thriving community.

Natchez is quite a beautiful little city. Early in the Civil War the Union Army occupied Natchez without a fight. It became a Union headquarters and was not destroyed during the war, so is filled with 18th and 19th century homes that are still in use and well kept up. This is the street leading down from the bluff where the majority of the city sits. This area is called Natchez-Under-the-Hill.

It is here that the steamboats docked and it is here where the Union army landed. There are several National Historic Sites in the city, and they, along with some private mansions, are part of a self-guided driving tour that we attempted today.

Just at the top of the bluff is the Rosalie Mansion. It became the headquarters building. It is now open for tours and is privately owned.

This mansion is named “The Gardens”. It is located near the now torn down Marine Hospital and the old city cemetery and was used by Federal troops as a medical facility. About here in the tour we were running into problems. These streets were narrow and our truck is large. There was nowhere to park. I shot this out the open window.

Continuing our tour we came to “The Wigwam”. Bud was able to pull to the side at a wide place in the street so I could get out and take this photo.

The house, which was used as officer quarters and offices during the Civil War, is now for sale if anyone is interested.

Shields Town House was the last place we saw. I couldn’t get a picture because there was traffic on this narrow street and the house was on the left. Bud couldn’t even slow up.

This is an excerpt from the auto tour guide. The directions to the next stop are below the description of the house. As we passed this house I started trying to direct Bud, who was driving. We were both looking around. These are narrow streets and very short blocks, the distances in this set of directions are .02, .07, .14 and .15 miles. Bud pulled over into another wide spot after missing the turn onto Monroe Street. There was no way we could turn around. With one person reading and one person diving we were missing all the sights and were an accident waiting to happen. We gave up.

But our sightseeing wasn’t over. I had noticed a couple of small signs along US Highway 61 on the way back to the park designating a Mississippi Mound Trail Site. We followed the second one and came upon the Emerald Mound.

This terraformed hill was built and used by the ancestors of the Natchez around 1300, and was still visited by the Natchez at the time of European occupation. (Their main village was by then located closer to the present city of Natchez, I suspect where the first Mississippi Mound Site sign was.)

It is the second largest mound in the United States. The flat top, which is 35 feet above the surrounding area, is eight acres, with a smaller mound on one end raised another 30 feet. Archaeological investigations have shown that the Mississippians leveled the top of an existing hill and used that and other earth to build the platform.

It was quite an impressive sight rising up from the woods around it. It is a sacred place to Native Americans, and members of the Choctaw, Creek and reorganized Natchez Nations still visit here.

There’s more to see here, both in and around the city. Next time.

Right now I am sitting in our trailer at Natchez State Park while a front and a thunderstorm roll through. We are the blue dot on the My Radar app on my iPad. The red and yellow is the strongest part of the storm and it’s crossing from west to east.

This is our site and earlier today it was quite mild.

This is actually our second site in the park. At the first one we couldn’t get satellite TV. No problem, because we now have Verizon home internet and YouTube TV. Well the internet works fine, but for some reason the YouTube TV said it needed to update our location, but wouldn’t do it on the smart TV, so we couldn’t get that to work. This whole TV thing is driving us crazy. The park personnel are very nice here and we moved to this site.

As a bonus, there’s a view of the lake from here. It’s especially nice because most of the campsites are empty. A definite plus about being full time RVers is that a lot of the year the campgrounds are fairly empty. You have just enough neighbors to keep it from feeling eerily isolated.

After taking care of that business we drove to town (Natchez, Mississippi) and treated ourselves to a game of disc golf in lovely Duncan Park.

It was a very warm afternoon and there were clouds scurrying across the blue sky.

We were surprised when the course took us up and around an old mansion.

Apparently Natchez has plenty of them, and this one belongs to the city and is part of the park. It’s being renovated now and according to the sign will have billiards, restrooms and a pavilion.

There were also some spectacular old live oaks. To get a sense of the size of this one note my golf disc near the roots. I played right under its branches.

There was also this old steam engine. Though I didn’t see a plaque near it so don’t know its history,

Bud noticed that it had huge, external pistons,

and its wheels were driven by gears, rather than rods.

We have a couple of more days here and intend to delve more into the history of this interesting place.

We are now at Tickfaw State Park, the sixth Louisiana State Park we’ve stayed at in a row. I must say, they’ve all been pretty nice, with 50 amp electrical service and water. We seem to have left the mosquitoes behind and are back in armadillo country. Notice the beautiful red sweet gum tree behind our site.

I also came across this bicentennial cypress tree “live in 1812”. There is some hurricane damage here, but happily this tree survived.

But the main reason I’m happy to be here is that it got a bit dicey getting here. The trailer got a flat tire on this state highway. Our TyMate tire monitor worked perfectly, so we knew immediate we had a flat.

But this road, like many here in Louisiana, had no shoulder. The best Bud could do was find a straight patch. Fortunately there were enough curves that folk’s weren’t going fast and everyone saw us in plenty of time to make their way safely around. Two people stopped to make sure we didn’t need any help. In about a half hour the spare was mounted and we were on our way.

We didn’t see any obvious reason for the flat, but today when we looked more closely, we found the two inch slit on the inside sidewall. No repair for that so we got to replace our three and a half week old tire. Ah the joys of the road.

We stayed four more days around New Orleans, on the southeast side of the city at St. Bernard State Park. Matey was enthralled by the armadillos, which as you can see were pretty fearless.

Yesterday we drove on south along a lot of causeways…

to here, Grand Isle State Park. Unfortunately, the only critters here are mosquitoes, and there are so many of them I suspect they have driven the other creatures out.

Some of those causeways were so rough that this cupboard door came open. It’s hidden by the main slide, so I didn’t know it had come open until I put the slide out and had to stop at the crunching noise to remove the broken door.

A new one is on order and the old one is now glued and taped, but there was no way to straighten the bent handle. Fortunately the slide was not hurt.

On the way down we stopped at a Dodge dealer because Bud keeps finding fluid seeping from the transmission housing and when we went to check the level it didn’t register on the dip stick. But the dip stick was a replacement due to a safety recall. The original came loose on some trucks and let fluid splash onto the turbocharger where it ignited. This replacement was stamped “not for use to check oil”. Huh? The service guy at our dealership told Bud on the phone that it seemed logical that we should add fluid until it came up to the dipstick. Glad we checked at another dealership. They brought out an actual calibrated dipstick, which was at least 14” longer than ours. The fluid level was fine. Evidently there is a second replacement that clips in and is useful for reading the fluid level. In the three weeks our dealer had the truck to fix the transmission leak they didn’t think to give us the newer replacement.

This morning to escape the mosquitoes we took Matey walking on the beach in town. It’s a nice wide beach.

But the view is somewhat spoiled by the oil platforms dotting the horizon.

This isn’t the crystal sand of the Florida panhandle. This sand is awash with the silt that has built this delta.

We went to buy some seafood, but the seafood company still seems to be reeling from hurricane Ida which hit here in 2021. It’s the larger building in the background but wasn’t open and may not be doing retail sales at all now.

There were still a few houses around that hadn’t been repaired.

This was an interesting place to come and they are trying to come back, but we are glad we decided to only stay one day.

Yesterday we went with Jim and Goody to tour Oak Alley Plantation, about 45 miles up river from New Orleans. You can see how the plantation got its name. Interestingly, these oaks were about 50 years old when they were dug up and transplanted to form the allee.

You can do that sort of thing when you have 220 enslaved people at your bidding. There are six of the twenty slave cabins left at the plantation. You can see some of them at the edges of this photo. In the distance is the back of the “big house”.

220 people lived in 20 cabins to support the five members of the Jacques Roman family, a creole family who lived in the big house. This was a sugar plantation so the work for the field hands was brutal.

While we were waiting for our tour of the mansion Goody and I walked up the allee for photos of the front of the house. That’s Goody taking her picture.

This is my picture. That’s Jim in front of the door and Bud is in the red cap just to the left of the pillar.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the house, but I took one of the second floor gallery.

From the second floor you can almost see the levee and the Mississippi River at the far end of the allee. The plantation was 1100 acres, but it was fairly narrow and deep. Every plantation fronted the river as that was the main transportation for people and goods.

To either side they have recreated gardens.

One of these would have been a kitchen garden The slaves had their own gardens and at night, after they had done their days work, they would work in those. They grew and sold corn to the Roman family so they could buy chickens and pigs to supplement their diets along with the vegetables they could grow. Fortunately the Romans left detailed records so we know quite a lot about their lives.

This beautiful magnolia tree is only about a hundred years old and was planted long past the time of the Romans. Jacques built the big house when the plantation was earning good money in 1839. Unfortunately, he died young of tuberculosis. His son, Henri, was only nine. The plantation fell into arrears under overseers as Jacques’ wife Celine had no interest in the business. Ten years later Henri came back after graduating from college and tried to get the business going. That was 1860. In 1861 the civil war started. In 1863 came the end of the war and the emancipation of the slaves. As our tour guide put it, the enslaved people could now leave if they chose, and they left. Henri did not have the resources to keep the place going. So this beautiful mansion was an operational plantation for only 22 years. After that it went through a lot of owners, fortunately the last one had plenty of money to renovate and modernize the house and then set it up as a museum for us to share.

After our beautiful and informative tour we all came back to the trailer and Bud made a tasty lunch of fish tacos, using up the last of the whitefish he bought in northern Michigan. Jim and Goody left in the afternoon for one last night in the Big Easy and then home to Florida.

It was hard to see Jim and Goody go but we distracted ourselves today with a round of disc golf.

The course we found was gorgeous and challenging.

And it had armadillos, so Matey was rewarded for the two days he spent waiting for us while we toured. (The armadillo is in the grass, you can see its tail sticking out.)

Matey, at least, was happy to have things back to “normal”.

Our goal when we left Hot Springs was to get back to our original itinerary in time to meet my brother and sister-in-law as planned in New Orleans. We made it. We’re camped less than 10 miles from the city at Bayou Segnette State Park.

They are staying at the Hotel Chateau in the French Quarter. Like most buildings in that oldest part of the city, the hotel sits right on the street.

Behind it is the lovely courtyard it shares with its neighbors.

We started our tour today at Jackson Square. We boarded the Hop On Hop Off bus for a tour of the city. It was so cold that we opted to ride all around the city and got off back at Jackson Square.

I love the huge live oaks, like this one that sits between the square and the Mississippi.

We walked into the French Quarter to the Royal House Oyster Bar for lunch. None of us had oysters, but we did have a good meal.

After lunch we continued our walk to meet our tour of the Saint Louis Number One Cemetery. This Catholic cemetery was founded in 1789, after the great fire of 1788 had filled the existing one.

Our guide explained that the first graves were structures of brick, like this, designed to keep the caskets from floating up out of the swampy ground.

Those quickly evolved into more elaborate structures.

Even though the cemetery is only two acres, it is still in use today. Families own the tombs. The heat, which reaches 300 degrees inside the tombs, along with the high humidity reduces the remains to ashes in a year. After a year and a day the tomb can be opened, the ashes pushed back to a slot and a new body put in. The name is added to the marble slab fixed to the front. Slabs are replaced once they’re full.

The condition of the tomb depends on the family that owns and tends them. If no one is left who cares for them the tombs begin to erode, though there are untended tombs hundreds of years old.

Owning and tending a tomb is expensive, so some people got together in mutual societies to build and tend tombs. This is the largest, and is an Italian burial site.

Our guide showed us some of the famous tombs, including this one for Marie Laveau, the Voodoo queen.

People still come by to leave tokens and ask favors of her. They mark the tomb with three X’s, representing past, present and future.

This is the burial site of Homer Plessy, a black man who got on a whites only railroad car in 1892.

He was arrested and his case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 1896 in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, ruled against him and established the doctrine of separate but equal treatment of races. That was the law until overturned in 1954 in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education.

This city of the dead makes an interesting contrast to modern downtown, seen in the background.

The cemetery lies just away from the Mississippi on the far side of Basin Street. When it was built this was outside the city limits. In New Orleans everything is named in reference to the Mississippi, either towards or away, or upriver or downriver.

We never did hop back on the bus. From the cemetery we cut back across the French Quarter to Jim and Goody’s hotel.

We continued through this picturesque city to where our truck was parked, back near Jackson Square. It was a fun, if chilly, day but altogether too much walking for Bud.

We finally got our truck back, and with just one more stop at the dealer to tighten the bolts they missed (even though they kept it over the weekend, so they would not be rushed and miss anything) we were good to go. I had booked our site through Wednesday, and we left on Thanksgiving. We drove out of the lovely Ouachita Mountains around Hot Springs to the flatter land of northern Louisiana. We arrived at Jimmie Davis State Park to find nice concrete pads, good internet, a clear sky for the satellite TV antenna, walking paths and even a disc golf course. But alas, since this was a last minute booking I was able to get us only one night.

Friday we moved on to Lake Fausse Pointe State Park in southern Louisiana.

This was more typically what I have always thought of as Louisiana; jungly woods with saw palmettos and cabbage palms in the undergrowth,

and lots of water and cypress trees.

It had nice walking paths but too many trees for satellite TV and no cell service so no internet.

A fellow camper saw me walking around the campground with my phone trying to get a good enough signal to make a call, or at least send a text. “We can sometimes get a signal there between that post and the fire ring”, he said, “but if you can’t, walk out on the bridge at the entrance to the grey box.” So I did.

While I was wandering around the bridge taking photos and searching for a signal a teenage boy on a bike came by. “Trying to get a signal? I was trying this morning and the lady at the gate told me to go over onto the levee.”

So I walked out the entrance road…

and up on the levee where I got enough signal to call my mother and my brother.

I love being connected to friends and family and I appreciate it more when I have to work at it. I love being surrounded by nature, it feeds my soul. And I love the kindness of strangers which I encounter on a regular basis. I am privileged to have these, and I am grateful, very grateful.

We have now moved to Gulpha Gorge Campground, which is part of Hot Springs National Park. Notice our tow vehicle. Not quite big enough to pull this trailer. We took our truck to be serviced on Halloween. Bud had called the dealership months ago to let them know there was a small oil leak and to make an appointment for service. They wouldn’t make an appointment and told us to bring the truck in when we got here. It’s now November the 15th and all we know is that it is not an oil leak, it is transmission fluid. After that determination they pulled it back out of their garage until they had time to deal with it. They may have gotten to it Monday or yesterday as they said they would, they haven’t called. Meanwhile, we have a rental car, very expensive. We may get about half that cost reimbursed. Thank goodness our son-in-law has a Tundra set up for towing which he generously let us use.

Monday we used his truck to take the trailer to have new tires put on, have the wheel bearings checked (they were all right) and have the suspension greased. Then we towed it here, to Gulpha Gorge.

Meanwhile, I was fitted for a new crown on my eye tooth. I had gone all summer with the tooth built up with amalgam. Now I have a temporary crown. The new one is expected this week; here’s hoping. I do have a bit more time. Because of the delay in fixing the truck I cancelled two upcoming camping sites and instead booked us into the local commercial campground we stayed in last spring when Bud had his knee replaced. At least there we can extend our stay as needed. We were up against our 2 week limit at Lake Catherine State Park, and when I tried to extend our stay at Gulpha Gorge I found it was all booked up.

It’s not been all pain and waiting. We’ve been able to get back out on our “home” disc golf course. It’s a lovely place.

And Jamie had time to bring her dog, Bria, and hike with Matey and me.

A great bonus was that I was here to go with Jamie to Indianapolis to watch Adler’s band perform in the Bands of America Grand Nationals. We left Thursday afternoon for the nine and a half hour drive. An added pleasure for me was that I spent Friday afternoon with my cousin Doug and his wife Pat. They live in Indianapolis and kindly came downtown to pick me up at the Convention Center. So I had a great visit with them while Jamie helped the band set up in her role as Prop Parent. I was back at Lucas Oil Stadium for the preliminaries in plenty of time for Lake Hamilton’s performance at 6:30.

This is a recording from high in the bleachers of the start of their Saturday semifinal performance. The first few seconds are the end of their set up, you can tell when the actual performance starts. Not only did they make the semifinals for the first time ever, they ended up taking third place in Class 2A.

Jamie and I left before the kids did on Saturday, grabbed about four hours sleep in a motel near Memphis, and passed the buses with the band kids early Sunday morning about 10 miles outside of Hot Springs. It was quite a weekend.

Of course, I would have had time for the fun things had the truck been done within the two weeks we were at Lake Catherine and we could have moved on this Saturday as planned. Oh well, life on the road has some pitfalls.

We are back at Hot Springs, where our daughter lives and home base for us. We arrived at Lake Catherine State Park on Monday. It’s been clear and cold. This is mist from the cold air at dawn touching the water of the lake.

I plan our trips months in advance. As I was making reservations last spring I hoped that we could spend the month in Newfoundland that we wanted and still get back in time to see our grandson, Adler, march in the band. He couldn’t travel with us this past summer because he’s a Freshman in high school and in the band. They practice all summer long, four or five days a week, about 8 hours a day. When school starts they go in early for an hour’s practice every morning and then practice again for about three hours after school three days a week. Despite all the work I knew he was loving it. We were anxious to see the band perform.

On Monday, as we were traveling in, Jamie sent part of the program for the state marching band finals on Wednesday, November first. They were to be held at the War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, about an hour and a half away. Happily, Lake Hamilton, Adler’s school, was performing last, so even though Bud and I both had dental appointments in the morning we should be done in time to ride with Jamie.

There were 13 schools competing in Class 6A. We got there in time to see the last six, listed here.

I’d never been to a marching band competition, it was quite a spectacle. They are very strict about the timing. Each band brings their own equipment and props. They line up in the end zone and along the sidelines at that end of the field while the band before them is performing. A timer on the field makes sure the preceding band has all their stuff off the field within their allotted time. He counts down the last 5 seconds for the waiting band, then they all run out with their props, amplifiers, microphones, stands for the drum majors (students who conduct the band) and of course, their instruments.

And they do have a lot of stuff! Lake Hamilton travels with a semi and three commercial buses. There are 10 band directors and 157 performers. I’m not sure if the 157 includes the three drum majors or not.

They had a huge array of props, this is part of the parent, student crew that worked on props. Jamie is peeking out near the left side. She thought working on props would be one or two evenings for three weeks during the summer, but it turned into many, many hours.

As the bands came out and performed I was very impressed with the quality of the music and the performances. By the time Lake Hamilton came on I was very nervous. I wanted them to do well! I decided not to even try for pictures, it’s too hard to capture and I just wanted to enjoy the experience.

From the first note I knew they would do well. They had so much sound and movement and everything was spot on.

Then came the awards. First place visuals – Lake Hamilton.

First place sound – Lake Hamilton.

First place overall – Lake Hamilton!

Neither the band, nor we, could have timed it any better, though they worked a lot harder to achieve their timing!