Baton Rouge also has very few skyscrapers for a capital. I would guess this is related to how much hurricanes suck. Yet, surprisingly, the tallest building in the city is the capitol.
Of all the states to not rip off the U.S. Capitol, I wouldn't expect Louisiana to be one, as it seems like a very hurricane sturdy design. But instead, Louisiana said, "No, we will not give it to the bully known as 'Nature'," and made what I assume must look like a giant concrete hand giving the finger to the Gulf Coast from space. Well...good for them. This state continues to be unexpected in good ways.
Whoever does the gardening at the Louisiana State Capitol, good freaking job. I'd seen some well maintained capitol flora before (Utah and California particularly come to mind) but never with such a huge landscape and wide variety.
This is a statue of Huey Pierce Long, Jr., the 40th governor of Louisiana who, after being assassinated, was buried here in the capitol grounds.
I'm not sure at how many capitols I have or have not taken pictures of these Liberty Bell reproductions, but there's a whole lot of em. At first, I just thought it was boring, so I only took a picture of the first one. But seeing them at nearly every state capitol makes me feel like I'm uncovering a conspiracy. Doing some research, I find out the true story is they were made for every U.S. state and territory in 1950 as part of a U.S. Savings Bond drive. While Wikipedia currently claims there were 55 of the replicas made, the text on the plaque states there were 53.
Here's a bust of George Washington. Just, y'know, cuz.
The Mississippi River runs right beside the capitol. Cannons used to be mounted on this spot to shoot enemy ships during the Revolution.
I depart from Baton Rouge en route for New Orleans. I've got something scheduled around 2, but I should be able to see the downtown area a little and have a quick lunch first. Coming into the city, it's not hard to tell New Orleans is bigger than the capitol. There are more skyscrapers here (goes against my hurricane theory), and the city feels overall more spread out. I head for Bourbon Street which leads me into the famous part of New Orleans. I'm not sure if there's a name for this part of the town, but it's best known for being where women take their tops off and general debauchery occurs during Mardi Gras: a must visit for any American sight seer.
Even though the weather is dreary and it's not Mardi Gras, it's very hard to find parking in this place. Driving isn't the easiest either with the narrow one way streets, hard to spot stop signs (I definitely ran at least one), and pedestrians who in no way realize cars are capable of killing them. The area overall looks like Charleston but tighter and with less modernization. This image from my car camera gives a fairly reasonable idea of how the area felt:
And that's the only image you'll get, because after finding a parking spot, I decided to leave my camera in the car: in a place nationally known for its celebration of vices, I don't need to make myself a target for theft or harassment. FYI, my camera bag is a fanny pack that I wear across my back in an attempt to make it look cooler, but sometimes it slides down to my side and ends up looking like a purse: harassment-target.
After walking about 30 feet from my car, I remember the parking spot was metered. Returning to put money in, I pass a larger-than-I meter maid whom I'd already passed after leaving my car initially and who was now headed towards my car: bitch was gonna let me leave without paying and not say anything so she could write a ticket. Luckily, I was more physically fit than her, so I made it back in time to pay.
Headed again to Bourbon Street, I try finding a restaurant where I can eat Bourbon Street chicken. It's been one of my dreams for a while to eat Bourbon Street chicken on Bourbon Street. Looking at the immediate restaurants around me, none seem to be advertising the style of food I'm looking for. I even GPS "Bourbon Street Chicken" and fail to find anything. I look for so long I get worried I may run out of time to eat, so I finally just pick a generic themed restaurant, figuring they must have a version. I get a water at the bar before the bartender tells me I need to go upstairs for food. Going up and being seated, the waitress immediately ask,
"Do you know what you'd like?"
"No, I'll need a minute." You just handed me the menu.
"Okay, I'll be back."
Opening the menu, I look...and I look, and I look, and I look...this place doesn't have Bourbon Street chicken. How is it so hard to find Bourbon Street chicken on Bourbon Street, or do all these restaurants just serve generic chicken flavored chicken and think that counts as Bourbon Street chicken because of where they're located, because that is not the same thing and they should know it!
So instead, I start looking for something Cajun. As time goes on, the waitress doesn't return. She doesn't even walk nearby me. After 12 minutes or so of waiting, I know there's no way I'll be able to get food, eat it, and make it on time, so I get up to leave, and that's when she comes back.
"Have you decided?"
"Actually, I just remembered I have something scheduled in 40 minutes, so I'm gonna have to go, I'm sorry."
"Ooo, that's okay. Be sure to come back later to see us!"
Spoiler: I didn't.
I return to my car and drive south, to Jean Lafitte Airboat Tours. I've always been curious about what it's like to ride in an airboat ever since I saw the movie The Waterboy. Unfortunately, during none of the tour did we ever ramp onto land, though I was genuinely expecting it to happen several times: I'm still not sure if it's something you can really do or not. After picking up my ticket, I drive to what looks like a house, built in front of the swamp Jean Lafitte Tours owns. There's a terrarium of baby alligators and frogs in front of the building for people to see. They're caught in the swamp to display here and switched out with new ones after a certain amount of time.
Behind the building is the dock where the airboats are. After waiting a little while, an employee announces my name along with a couple others. Our airboat ready, we meet our captain. I forget what his name was, but I remember the strong sense of irony I felt when he began to talk and reminded me immediately of an ex-coworker I had who was from New York. I thought it was funny because the coworker was a very proud New Yorker, and here was a man with a nearly indistinguishable accent who grew up in the swamps of Louisiana.
Joining me on the tour are an old man and his daughter. The Captain gives each of us a set of earmuffs: the airboat is loud. For anyone who doesn't know, an airboat uses a giant fan rather than an underwater motor to move itself: an underwater engine would easily get stopped up by the marshy vegetation. The airboat is a lot noisier because of it though. The vehicle felt a lot smoother than a normal boat. Rather than having the front lift up into the air because of force coming from below, the whole craft stays level because the force is pushing from directly behind.
After traveling through the bayou a little, the Captain spots an alligator sitting on a bank of the marsh. He pulls in slowly and shuts the engine off as the alligator continues to stay still. And then, the Captain walks to the front of the boat, gets low enough to grab some grass so we don't drift away...and starts splashing water at the gator's face. "Oh my God, this man's about to die," I think, waiting for the alligator to spring forward, grab his hand, and pull him under, followed by me trying to figure out how to operate an airboat since the only person who knew how is dead, and I'm not getting out to swim. (I took my GoPro instead of my regular camera for the airboat ride.)
But the gator remains surprisingly still. The Captain says he's seen this one out here before, so I figure it's probably used to/tired of the attention. This being our first stop, it's also the first time we've had a chance to talk to our Captain. This isn't something I particularly feel the need to do since I try not to talk if I've got nothing to talk about, but the old man is sure to take advantage. His daughter sits quietly while he begins asking some questions, which quickly rolls into him telling some stories about himself. You know, old people stuff. When the Captain responds in the affirmative as to whether or not he fishes these waters, the old man let's him know he used to fish the Mississippi River as well, but up in Minnesota or something, wherever he was from. His stories were pretty entertaining, but that's mostly for the fact they were stereotypical old man stories about things that weren't particularly astounding, similar to how I ramble in my blog sometimes.
While backing away from the big gator, the Captain notices an adolescent, just a few feet long, coming towards the boat. In response, the Captain reaches nearby and pulls out a bag of marshmallows. "Gators love marshmallows," he says, "We call em swamp crack." And though I wouldn't have guessed it, it was absolutely true: after throwing some out to the first adolescent, which quickly gobbled them up, another one started coming to us from the bank. The Captain said the reason gators love marshmallows is because they can only see in black and white, so the marshmallow is very bright to them and catches their attention. "And I guess they got a little bit of a sweet tooth, too."
For his next trick, the Captain puts his hand in the water with a marshmallow to get one of the adolescents to swim up to the boat. He then throws the marshmallow down and waits for the gator to start eating, and then he puts his hand under the gator's head and lifts it up out of the water.
I'm quickly starting to realize people from Louisiana give less craps about anything in the world than anybody else ever did, and I mean that in the best way possible. I'm sure our Captain isn't the first one to splash water at a gator or put his hand underneath one while it eats. These people couldn't give two shits about the ways those actions could possibly go wrong, and that to me is awesome. My theory was assured even further later in the trip when the Captain started telling us about some of his old fishing habits from when he was younger. These habits ranged from the very tame, such as using a shotgun to shoot the fish, to the not as tame, such as using an electrified pole to zap all the fish within a 10 foot radius.
After passing what was essentially a tug boat gas station boat...
...we reach an area with some small birds the old man several times mentions, "look like chickens." The Captain mentions to us here how, due to the logging of trees growing in the swamps, every year, more and more of the marsh is washed away. "Yea, I'm really into conservation now, ever since I had my kid. I wanna make sure all this stuff is still around for him when he grows up."
This is also where, due to some conversation with the old man, the Captain ask, "You ever heard of a coon-ass?"
"I'm suddenly very uncomfortable," I think. "Coon" has a certain negative connotation in South Carolina that I'm not a proponent of.
"No," the old man says.
"Really, you ain't ever heard of a coon-ass?"
"Nope, what is it?"
"You've heard of a redneck right?"
"Yeah."
"Well a coon-ass is a redneck in a swamp."
I breath a sigh of relief: that was pretty funny. The Captain tells us everybody on one side of the Mississippi is a coon-ass, and everybody on the other side is a redneck, though I don't remember which side was which.
We start riding to our next spot, at which point I see the old man turn his head to look at the surroundings for a second...and then he doesn't turn it back. He's just staring, blankly, out into the swamp with a smile of childlike wonder on his face. And this is when I begin to think, "Oh my God, this man is dead...his poor heart just couldn't handle the excitement of an airboat ride anymore and it gave out on him." Luckily though, while waiting anxiously for his daughter to realize what had happened (I wasn't gonna tell her), he ended up moving again.
At our next stop, the Captain surprises us by bringing out a 2 foot gator he'd somehow been hiding on the boat. It's one of the baby's that had been captured for display, and now it was time to return him to the swamp, but before doing so, we all get a chance to hold him (his mouth was bound shut). He felt like a leathery bag of dense sand.
Some of you may remember the time I was looking for a snake someone would let bite me so I could then fill the wound with ink to have a tattoo, because I come up with good ideas. I never found a snake though, so I shortly consider asking the Captain if I can have this gator bite me instead. But then I remember I don't have ink or disinfectant, so rather than a cool tattoo, I'd just be giving myself an infection.
We finally start to head back to the dock. On the way, the Captain points out a small sunken fishing boat. "That showed up last week. Somebody just abandoned it there and burned it down. Not sure why, but they made sure to do a good job of it." Because Louisiana, that's why.
The airboat trip was definitely one of the most entertaining things I'd done in a while. I'd recommend it to anybody looking for the full Louisiana experience.
Leaving the swamp, I head back into the city. Even in the metropolitan area of New Orleans, driving isn't particularly carefree, which is why when I got stuck behind a delivery truck on a road whose other lane was under construction, I had to force my reversal through a very active intersection in order to go anywhere. Thank you to the people who were willing to not kill me.
Not being on a schedule now, I park at a parking garage several blocks from Bourbon Street. The first place I head to isn't on Bourbon Street though: I'm going to Cafe Du Monde, where my friend John has suggested I try the beignets. I've never had a beignet before, and I'm not really sure what it is, but Cafe Du Monde is VERY crowded, and beignets are clearly their most popular item. After waiting in line a while, I order 1 bag of beignets. What I'm given is 3 pieces of deep fried dough drenched in more powdered sugar than any human could ever need. The beignets are made fresh, so I needed to let them cool a little, but once I finally got a taste, 3rd degree burns be damned, I had to eat more. It's hard to describe how delicious they are. But luckily/surprisingly, Cafe Du Monde sells their beignet mix online, so anyone wanting a taste doesn't have to go to New Orleans.
Having had dessert, I'm ready to eat dinner, so I head back towards Bourbon Street. On the way, I pass an outdoor jazz band, consisting of several trumpets, trombones, a cowbell, and a sousaphone. At first, they sounded like complete crap. They weren't in tune together. They didn't hit notes together. But then I readjusted my ear, remembering this is jazz and not classical concert, and it became very entertaining. Hearing jazz in New Orleans was on my list of things to do, so I'm lucky to have run into them.
Deciding not to stop at the restaurant from earlier, I find a place with better ratings that seems to specialize in cajun cooking on Bourbon Street...that also doesn't serve Bourbon Street Chicken. So instead I get some sort of Creole trio thing, with crawfish ettouffee, red beans and rice, and gumbo. It's fair. I definitely would plan my eating establishments before hand if I ever visited again though.
Heading back to my car, a nice young man working outside the strip club lets me know, "It's titty time for you, sir!" I get the feeling Bourbon Street may count as the red light district around here.
Leaving the downtown region, I realize it's still fairly early, and I've done everything I wanna do in Louisiana: it's been a pretty great state and I suggest everybody go at least once in their lifetime. So I decide to head north into Mississippi. I'd planned on staying at a Rest Area in Wesson, but when I get there, there's a security guard and signs saying, "No overnight parking." Rest Areas that don't let you rest: I just don't get it. And unfortunately, the next Rest Area on this interstate is in West, Mississippi, about an hour past Jackson, which is my next destination. Knowing I'll have to get a hotel for the night, I just drive until Jackson and get one there. But I know already, this isn't going to work for me: if Mississippi won't allow overnight sleeping at Rest Areas, Alabama probably won't either, and I don't wanna pay for another hotel tomorrow. That means I've gotta get all the way to Florida in one day.
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