Houmas House Plantation & Gardens

January 19: There are many lovely old plantation mansions available to visit in the area between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that we missed seeing on our trip to New Orleans a few years ago, so we decided to spend a couple of nights in a campground in Baton Rouge and spend the day visiting two of those plantations.  It was a tough choice, but we narrowed it down to Houmas House (also known as the Sugar Palace) and Laura Plantation ( a Creole plantation), but once we reached Houmas House it proved to be such a rich environment to that we decided to just spend the day there, leisurely exploring and experiencing this beautiful home and gardens.

Houmas House built its fortune on sugar cane, a major crop in this area. At one time the property encompassed 300,000 acres, with 98,000 of it planted in sugar cane; at that time the plantations contained a slave population of around 1000, both to work the fields and maintain the plantation buildings and families. In 1857, the plantation was sold for $1million to a self-made Irish immigrant, and subsequently became one of the wealthiest plantations in  the country. The website for this plantation contains an intriguing history page, including a film clip, which together do a much better job of describing the history of this amazing place than I can do in a brief blog entry, so I've provided a link here to that page for those who might want to know more, and will focus the rest of this blog entry on photos and on impressions during our visit.

One of the significant advantages to being able to travel during this "off-season" is the dearth of tourists at the various places that are prime tourist destinations during other seasons.  Houmas House Plantation was no exception to this; we were able to enjoy a leisurely tour of the house in a group of just 4. Our tour guide was personable, enthusiastic,  knowledgable, and humorous - it doesn't get better than that!

 Unlike most such homes that are open for tours, nothing here was cordoned off, nothing had plate-glass blocking visitors from entering. 



We were invited to sit on the furniture and imagine ourselves visiting or living there as the tour guide spun her tale of this magnificent house and property.


She invited photo-taking, handed us artifacts to touch and handle, invited us to try out the pool table in the gentlemen's smoking room, briefly played the piano and treated us to a chorus from the theme song from the Bette Davis  1964 film "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte" which was filmed on location here.  

The current owner, Kevin Kelly, actually lives in this home with his two Labrador Retrievers, and makes the place available for weddings and other special events.  The property has also, not surprisingly, been the location for a number of movies in addition to the Bette Davis one, all of which are listed on the web site for Houmas House.  There is a magnificent self-supporting circular staircase in the center of the home, which was featured in the Davis film (which I am now determined to see someday) and is the dream staircase for showcasing many a bride's wedding gown, according to the guide.  

Several rooms in the home are used  for special dinners, which are served by the on-site restaurant (also described on the website).  We had a delicious lunch at the main restaurant building, oyster and shrimp "po boy" sandwiches.

The old live oaks surrounding the home are magnificent, as are the various gardens.

Interestingly, the man who has been head gardner for the past 20 years is also an artist, with an interesting and unique style, who has his studio in one of the outbuildings on the property, so it is not surprising that in addition to the historical and traditional statues dotting the grounds, gardens, and fountains, there are also modern and whimsical pieces of garden art, along with strange pairings of plants (Swiss chard among the roses in the rose garden, for example) creating an eclectic and altogether delightful atmosphere.

John and his new friends

One of the traditional ponds & statues

This little fellow is 'holding up' one of the massive branches of  a live-oak

This flying pig guards the kitchen garden

At the end of the tour, my camera said "battery exhausted", and I couldn't blame it

Frogmore Plantation

January 18:  The area around Vicksburg and Natchez is home to many former and current cotton plantations.  We drove by a few fields that had not been picked, but most of the fields were in their winter dormancy.
Given the choice of many historic homes to visit in this area, we read about a number of them and chose to visit Frogmore Plantation, which is of both historic and current interest; it is also across the Mississippi from Natchez, located near Vidalia, LA.

Frogmore (the family name of the original owners), is unique in that it is still a very large active cotton farm (now called Frogmore Farm), but also because the owners have a very strong interest in preserving and sharing the history of this region and specifically Frogmore Plantation.  To that end, they have worked hard to both salvage existing buildings on the original site and to locate, purchase and move other structures from the appropriate time period (pre-Civil War) to the site to recreate the appearance of the original plantation outbuildings.  At Frogmore, the plantation house itself is not available to tour - the owners still live in that home - but the reconstructed slave quarters, commissary, and old cotton gin and cotton storage buildings are available to visit.


When we called to inquire about tour times, we discovered that the facility was closed for the winter and available for tours only by special advance arrangement.  Hearing that we were traveling through the area from Michigan and not likely to return in the spring, they arranged for a guide to meet us at the plantation for a private tour. That's Southern hospitality at it's best!

This one's for you Mick and Katie Kish!

We met our guide for an interesting, albeit soggy tour of the quarters and explanation of the workings of the old gin, followed by a film showing the modern gin.  It was a beautiful, blue-sky day, following almost two weeks of non-stop rain, so the ground literally squished beneath our feet, but the guide took us around the buildings, sharing information about the lives of the slaves, overseers, and subsequent sharecroppers who inhabited these buildings, and to the edge of field where cotton had been allowed to remain standing so visitors can get an up-close and personal experience with a cotton field and pick some cotton if desired. The tour guide emphasized the necessity and value of the slave labor for maintaining an active and thriving cotton plantation in the years leading to the Civil War, when the entire process of cotton production was manually extremely labor intensive, and then compared it to the present day mechanized approach to the growing cotton.

Having seen similar buildings in other tours of historic places, the old beds, ragged quilts, open-fire cooking was not new to us, although always interesting to see and compare to our modern conveniences. We were, however, surprised to learn that the term 'cotton gin' is short for 'cotton engine' (did a teacher somewhere in our youth point that out to us?) and also somewhat surprised to learn of the wide variety of products made from cotton plants in addition to the cloth that we typically envision when hearing the term 'cotton'.  The plants actually produce two different crops: fiber, and seed.  Only 5% of the seed from any harvest is returned to the field as seed for new plants; the remainder is all sold to the cottonseed processing industry, which in turn provides raw materials to food, pharmaceutical, agricultural and cosmetics industries.  Cotton fiber is still sold and moved in huge 600-800 lb. bales.

I'll leave you with a final fascinating factoid about the value of cotton seed: the current owners of Frogmore Farm, George and Lynnette Tanner, operate a gin that processes the cotton from 50 other farms for free; in exchange, they get to keep the seed, which they in turn sell. That seed is how they make a living, and through which they have become recognized as leaders in the cotton industry in the US.

Blues Highway

Jan 17:  US Route 61 is also known as the Blues Highway. "As the major route northward out of Mississippi, U. S. Highway 61 has been of particular inspiration to blues artists."   

In keeping with the spirit of the road, we were listening to the B.B. King channel on Sirius radio as we drove I61 south from Memphis, TN.  This is not a musical genre with which either of us is very familiar, but it certainly is intriguing and now we both want to hear more and learn more about the blues.  We stopped in Clarksdale to visit the Delta Blues Museum; while interesting, this museum is more of a memorial to blues greats than an institution that educates attendees about the blues genre and its artists.  We'll have to learn more about this music before we can truly appreciate the artists celebrated in this museum.  

Driving this historic road however reinforced how/why the musicians from this area gave birth to the blues; this is a very poor region by and large, with huge farms field interspersed with small, run-down towns - hardly towns really, collections of shabby, small residences with a small church and an occasional "juke joint" along the road or a hard-up auto-repair shop.   Hard to know where (or if) children who live here go to school; we saw a few boarded up school buildings, but the active ones were few and far between.   Life certainly is far from easy here for the majority of the residents.

When we travel like this, periodically we like to stop at a small local cafe both for the local atmosphere and also for what are inevitably simple and good meals.  Along this stretch of 61, there were no such places, no grocery stores, no gas stations, no stores - period.  It would be a bad place to run low on gas, that's for sure.  We finally stopped in a larger town at a Subway store; while there, a fellow came in and asked us if the Airstream parked out front was ours, then asked a few questions about it, ending with "Would you be interested in sellin' it?  I've been lookin' for something like that."  We turned down his offer, finished our sandwiches, and headed back down the road, heading toward Vicksburg, our destination for the day.

Day 2

It was a long day traveling between Louisville, KY and Memphis, TN.  Due to the slick roads caused by the night's sleet and snow, we held off leaving Louisville until after the morning rush-hour traffic and associated minor accidents had been cleared, so we got a really late start.

We encountered no bad roads, but instead really large stretches of beautiful iced landscape in both Kentucky and Tennessee all through the day's drive; large conifers hanging heavy with iced needles, small trees leaning over sideways from the weight of the ice, tall-grass areas and roadside shrubs with each stem, each leaf, each tiny hair covered with frosty white.  Rivers in these states are overflowing, flooding huge areas of forest and field, belying the supposed drought conditions that this country as a whole has been experiencing. I tried to take some photos of this beautiful frosted landscape "on the fly", but they just don't do justice to the reality, so I have nothing to post here that reflects the beauty we passed through earlier today.

There was a lovely sunset as we approached Memphis, TN, which is reflected in the photo at the left.  Today was a really long, tiring day of driving, with traffic slowed by some major road construction and a few accident scenes being cleared, as well as an unusually high number of traffic stops by police causing slow-downs as the traffic flowed around the unlucky drivers having been pulled aside.  We've decided to avoid other days of driving this long if if can possibly be avoided; we didn't pull into the campground until early evening when it was already dark, and we were all tired from driving/riding/supervising (see photo below to see who was supervising).

Tomorrow is another day, and we'll try to make it one in which we begin our exploration of interesting places, rather than just pushing forward to reach a final destination.  Weather forecast looks good for the next few days in the areas where we hope to be.

On our way again!

We left home around 9:30 this morning, starting our next travel adventure.  Michigan weather since Christmas has been relatively mild, but of course we got hit with some sleet once we got the camper pulled up to the house to pack for the trip.  Still, once we got off our own road (which was fairly icy), the rest of the roads have been dry and good so far.
Leaving Michigan:

We're spending tonight (hopefully ONLY tonight) in a small KOA campground just outside Louisville, Kentucky.  That was about a 7 hour drive with a couple of stops, so enough for one day.  We've been tracking road reports and weather fairly diligently the last few days, so thought we had a good window of travel opportunity lined up.  Once we arrived here, however, we found that the local news is calling a winter weather advisory, with sleet and snow predicted starting this evening and lasting until tomorrow morning, which is why I made the comment at the beginning of this paragraph that I hoped we would only be spending one night here.  Our decision to move on as planned or stay and wait for roads to clear will be totally based on road conditions and safety considerations, so no worries.  We've come in from a bit of a walk to stretch our legs after being in the car all day, we have heat, light, food and wine, so we are fine.  More tomorrow....

Vancouver Visit with Mark and Claire

During our Vancouver visit, our days were so full that I did not even attempt to blog; on our return, we needed a couple of days to take care of things that had piled up in our absence and to begin preparations for Christmas.  Today I'll share "the rest of the story". Fair warning,  I will probably be wordy, as I am wont to do, and there will be lots of photos, but full photo collection will only appear on a Picasa album to follow later.

Our first two nights in Vancouver were spent at the FairmontPacific Rim Hotel , courtesy of Mark.  The room Mark had reserved for us there was extraordinary, with a beautiful view over the harbor, and he had also arranged to have this “light snack” waiting for us when we arrived in the room  – both lovely and delicious!  Just about everything on the plate was made by the restaurants at the Fairmont Pacific Rim, where they make their own food from scratch (including the meats on this platter) like some high-end restaurants might, but unlike most hotel restaurants do.

This change to "from scratch" preparation that Mark and his Executive Chef instituted a year ago is unique among hotel restaurants, and is making a significant impact on how hotel food is perceived here, making theirs truly destination restaurants for the discerning public not just for hotel guests.  The photos I took of our room at the hotel don't do it justice, nor do those of the view overlooking the harbor and Canada Place on the lower right in the photo below (on the lower left is the green-roof of the convention center).

We spent the first two days exploring Vancouver and eating wonderful meals, mostly incredibly fresh and well-prepared seafood, which is difficult - if not impossible - to come by in Richland/Kalamazoo, MI.

Our first evening in the city, Mark and Claire took us to a sushi restaurant where they often meet up with each other and with friends after work.  The next day, we walked around Gastown a bit, past the famous steam clock and had lunch at the aptly named "Meat and Bread" restaurant where I had the best pork sandwich I have ever eaten and John had an outstanding beef sandwich).  Later that afternoon we attended the Cirque du Soleil show "Amaluna". Having never seen one of these performances before, we found it breathtaking, tho' Mark and Claire have seen others that they said were even more spectacular.  

Before the performance began.

Following the performance, Mark had arranged for us to eat at the Lobby Lounge and Terrace at the Pacific Rim, where - following cocktails - we had the freshest, sweetest, most varied, lovely, and massive sushi platter that I have ever seen or tasted.  (Forgive the superlatives - there is just no other way to describe this experience.)  As though that was not enough, the sushi meal was followed by a beautiful tray of varied deserts - my sweet tooth was in heaven! Unfortunately, I was too busy savoring the meal to take photos of the food, although John did get a couple of the sushi, and a lovely hostess took a photo of the four of us enjoying our time together.

In the afterglow of having decimated the sushi platter!

The following day we traveled to Vancouver Island by ferry.  We were fortunate during our visit that although this particular time of year can be extremely wet and blustery in Vancouver, our days were reasonably mild (cool, not freezing), if overcast and slightly damp. Although you won't see much sunshine in the photos from this trip, we never had to resort to the full rain-suits and umbrellas we had brought with us. At 290x50 miles (460x80 kilometers), the island is the largest Pacific island east of New Zealand, with much to see and do.  Since we only had three days available to spend here this trip, and on two of those we would spend 1/2 a day just traveling to and from the island, we limited our experience to the towns and surrounds of Tofino and Ucluelet.  As before - we feasted on seafood in much simpler, homier restaurants than in the city, and prepared simple breakfasts and snacks in the condo that we rented. I don't really have the words to express the beauty of this area, the massive old-growth forests with lush growth of ferns and moss,  the rocky coast, sounds of sea pounding on rocks and cliffs, so here are some photos that say more than I am able to.

Condo with hot-tub on porch, where we listened to wolf serenades in the evenings.

Now THAT'S a tree!

Lighthouse...and is that sunshine?...

The wind was THIS strong....

The rugged beauty of this area is remarkable and addicting - we will definitely be back for a more extended time in the future.

It was a gift to be able to spend these three days with Mark in unhurried communion with nature and relaxation.

Two more memorable meals our last days in Vancouver were at Chewies Oyster Bar, and Coast, one of the restaurants that Claire manages.  

While this blog entry may sound more like a restaurant reporting than a vacation description, the best aspect of this trip was the time we were able to spend with Mark and Claire.  Since both John and Mark live at such distances from us, our time with them is precious and much appreciated.  Of particular importance to us was the introduction to Mark's world - the culinary world - about which we know so little, and want to learn so much. We reveled in this time together, being introduced to his world, his daily experience, and look forward to return trips which enable us to delve deeper and experience more.

Vancouver-Bound!

12-5-2012

We are on our way to by Amtrak to Vancouver now to visit Mark and Claire.  We love traveling by train; it is so relaxing and interesting.  Our ticket price included two nights in a "roomette" accommodation (a small private room for two in a sleeper car), three full meals a day in the dining car (not gourmet, but really nice meals, with reasonable choices for each meal) and a porter to tend to the needs of everyone in our sleeper car.  The personality and job-dedication of the porter can make a big difference in the experience, as can that of other personnel such as dining room staff. With one exception, of our 5 US train trips so far those personnel have ranged from good to great; only once did we experience a surly train crew.  This is more important that having good stewards on planes, since on a long train trip like ours crossing the country, you spend a fair amount of time with these folks, and are somewhat dependent on their attention to your needs.  This time, we really lucked out.  Our porter had us situated in our roomette with all our things comfortably stowed and complementary champagne in our hands within 10 minutes of boarding! The following morning after breakfast had been served in the dining room, he passed through our car with complimentary mimosas - twice. That was followed by him delivering the local paper to each of us that he ran out and picked up at a mid-morning train stop each morning. Every night after turning down our beds, he offered really wonderful chocolates (good quality dark chocolate infused with orange). He was unfailingly cheerful, responsive, and helpful, and seemed to really enjoy his interaction with all of us.  The dining room staff seemed to be having a ball, despite the challenge of carrying food for 4 at a time in a dining room with limited space, that rocks and rolls unpredictably underfoot. Because of the limited seating space in the dining room, people are seated at the dining booths with other passengers, 4 to a booth, in the order that you enter the dining room. That is actually one of the things we find so interesting about traveling this way: the opportunity to meet and talk with people from varied backgrounds, different walks of life, and different travel experiences.  On this trip, our dining companions included: 1) two young, fairly heavily tattooed young men wearing "gangsta" style clothing - turned out they were from Milwaukee, commuting to their jobs in the oil fields of North Dakota; they work two weeks on, two off, returning to Milwaukee for their off-weeks, living in "man-camps" at drilling sites during their "on-weeks", during which they work 10-12 hour days, 6-7 days a week.  When the weather is good, the commute by car, when it's potentially bad, they do so by train, to ensure safer travel.  They were disappointed that they were not going to be home with their families for Christmas, but figured they'd at least be back to celebrate the new year together.  2) A dear couple in their 80's, married for 60+ years, who were traveling from Minnesota to visit family on the west coast.  This was their first train trip, and they were as yet unsure if they would travel that way again, finding it difficult to steadily maneuver the narrow aisles of a rocking train, but they had charmed the train crew, one of whom had more or less adopted them and walked them wherever they needed to go so that they could feel comfortable. 3) A couple from Michigan, traveling to the coast to visit family, who were enjoying this first train experience so much they were debating trading in their return plane tickets for return by train instead. 4) A couple traveling to the coast to begin a new mission stint with a church on the coast; they had raised 13 children (his, hers, and several adopted kids), as well as served as foster parents for a number of other children, and talked about the challenges of incorporating these children from backgrounds very different than their own into their own household, talking honestly about their successes and failures in terms of trying to provide these children with a family experience that would stand them in good stead when they were returned to their own families or subsequent adoptive families. These two were also total "techies", each sporting iPhones, ipads, and macs, various interesting audio gadgets and other toys.  Who would have thought....?   There were others, but these folks stood out in my mind.

John in our "Roomette"

Dining Car

Observation Car