The City of New Orleans, Saturday 4/25/15

Waking up on the steamboat for the last time, the realization that our trip was almost over hit us. We had a wonderful breakfast aboard, gathered our belongings into our backpacks, and headed off the boat and walked the mile or so to the Amtrak Depot. Our departure was scheduled for 1:45 pm, so there were a few hours before we really had to be there, but we passed the time reading, talking with newly made friends from the trip and eating lunch at the Subway in the depot. We made ourselves useful by watching other people's things as they left, and were glad when they came back and told us they ate lunch at Mother's, the home of the po-boy sandwich, a great lunch spot we visited on our first trip to New Orleans. We boarded the train and it departed on time in the midst of a severe thunderstorm warning. It wasn't long before we cleared the rain and headed along the banks of Lake Ponchartrain  and I55 toward Memphis. Amtrak is a comfortable way to travel even on these old tracks, but there are drawbacks. We were in the last train car and they announced they would come by and take dinner reservations for the dining car, but they never showed up. When they started announcing the first dinner seating, we got suspicious. We didn't wait any longer to go to the club car and get dinner. A good thing, too, as the second dinner seating came not long after, then the third with nary a word for those of us in this full car. We didn't even see a porter on the whole ride! Times change. But, we got to ride on the City of New Orleans, so that was fun. We arrived in Memphis and took a city bus to the hotel, along with about 100 of our closest new found friends-standing room only on the bus-got our bike and luggage, and headed up to our room and crashed about midnight.
With that, our tour officially ended, but our vacation isn't over yet. We drove to Nashville and got to spend a few great days with Caitlin and Will and celebrate their engagement, meet his parents for the first time, and enjoy some great food and time with them. Continuing our tour of antebellum houses, we toured The Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson. Game night with Caitlin, Will, and Katherine was a blast, even though I got trounced at Ticket to Ride (congrats Will on a great victory). Marge fared a little better.
Lastly, now we are visiting Kris (Marge's sister) and Clay in Bellville, IL on our way home. Today, we went to one of our favorite places, the St. Louis Zoo. It was a beautiful day! Tomorrow, we may be out riding some of the trails, but we will see. It might be nice to be back on our bike again. It has been a wonderful vacation.
Thanks for reading!

New Orleans, Friday 4/24/15

We woke up Friday tied up to the dock behind the Riverwalk Mall in New Orleans. It brought back fun memories of our first visit here when we attended the National Catholic Office for the Deaf Pastoral Week conference near here. We brought our bike down to the truck, then our bags (yes, all three suticases and our two bike panniers) to the trucks to be loaded for depature to Memphis. We elected not to join the short ride this morning in New Orleans for a number of reasons. Suffice it to say, we enjoyed a relaxed end to the bike portion of our tour. After breakfast, we enjoyed watching the ride come back and the dis-assembly and packing of many of the bikes into shipping containers. Watching how people manage travelling with such big bikes, and the creative ways they solve these issues, was very entertaining. At mid-morning, we joined two other couples and took them on a tour of the Frech Quarter. Since we were the only ones in the group who had been here before, we were the "experts." We stopped at Cafe Le Monde for bignets (a must for any tourist here), then walked to Jackson Square and into the cathedral of St. Louis. There our timing was perfect and we were serenaded by a high school choir. We walked behind the cathedral down Pirate's Alley, stopped at our favorite little bookstore here (William Faulkner's old house), and then headed down into the heart of the French Quarter, to the French Market, and then back. We stopped for lunch at Coop's Place, a little Creole/Cajun restaurant/bar, and then over to the Word War II museum. After that, it was back to the boat in the rain. We took as short a route as possible and headed straight to the convention center, where we were somewhat protected and finally got indoors. We walked into and through the Mall and took a door that opened right outside our gangway. Good choice!

Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral

Heart of the French Quarter

WWII Museum: Semper Fi!

The River Levee Ride, Thursday 4/23/15

Our  steamboat put into an unused ferry site on the west side of the river today for our morning ride's departure point. It was another 30 miler, and, with the threat of afternoon storms, we decided to take it. Besides, there were a couple interesting aspects to the morning ride we didn't want to miss.  First, was our first opportunity to get off the bike and stretch our legs at the "world's smallest church," the Madonna Chapel. It was constructed in the early 1900s in thanksgiving for an answered prayer. It has Mass there once a year on Aug. 15th, The Assumption, and although we missed that ;), we lit a candle and said a prayer. Further down the flat, smooth road along the west side of the river levee, we stopped at the Plaquemine Lock Museum. Although no longer used as a working lock (I can relate since our Locks at St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis are soon to be decomissioned), it was a fun rest stop. We got on the ferry near there and crossed the river and biked down to old eastern unused ferry landing where we met our boat. After lunch on the boat, we had the choice of riding another 18 miles to our next stop, taking the bus, or staying on the boat. We decided to ride the boat and shower. We arrived at our next stop in the late afternoon where we were met by those who biked. We had too many options for the time allotted at this short stop. We could wait a bit for ye old southern crawfish boil, complete with creole band or head across the road to tour of the Houmas House Plantation and gardens. We decided on the house tour. This is one of those places that has been continuously inhabited, and therefore upgraded, over the years. Its original structure dates to the 1700s. That part is now a high-class restaurant and has been on some nationally televised cooking shows. The 'newer' structure is still very impressive. There are many antebellum artifacts and furnishings in the rooms and the first two floors are open to tours, even though the current owner lives there and uses them, too. I guess that is real southern hospitality. Our docent was spectacular, the gardens were amazing, and it was well worth the time. We were on the last tour, and we missed the crawfish, but had to make the hard choice.

The Madonna Chapel: altar

The Madonna Chapel

Some of our group on the ferry.
I bet they don't see this every day!

Angola State Penitentiary, Wednesday 4/22/15

More choices awaited us today. Since we didn't ride yesterday, we took the opportunity to take the morning short ride, a 25 mile ride from St. Francisville to Angola State Prison for lunch. It was a warm ride on MS backroads and when we arrived, we saw the museum outside the main gates. After lunch and listening to a great gospel band we joined half of the group (the other half went earlier) for a peleton-like, guard escorted, tour ride inside the gates of the pen. It was an 11 mile loop on prison grounds, seeing several of the cell blocks that, until recently, held only 30 year to lifers. We stopped twice for interpretive explanations of the prison life and history, met a couple of their guard dogs and horses (they breed them there), and even saw two aligators in their natural habitat! At first, the road followed a levee by a bayou where we saw the gators, or at least their eyes and snouts.

We borded the afternoon bus for the ride back to the boat, rather than extend our ride out any farther. Our afternoon tour stop was at Rosewood Plantation, another beautifully restored house, this time on an actual plantation.

We came back tired, sweaty, but in decent shape for a 36 mile day so early in the season. The training in the gym is paying off!

Funeral hearse built by the prisoners.
Most men in this prison only leave this way.

The Angola State Pen's Main Gate

Rosewood

The Second story balcony.
Note the black trim: this family was in an almost perpetual
state of mourning with the death of both their sons: one by yellow fever at 7 yrs
and the other drowning in the river at 27 yrs.

Natchez, MS: Tuesday 4/21/15

Today was a day of choices. Morning and afternoon rides were offered as was a morning hop on, hop off bus tour of Natchez. We decided to take the morning bus tour. Natchez was a huge river trading stop, the western most point in MS. Many of the richest plantation owners built "town homes" here, and each tried to outdo the others in oppulence. General  Grant deemed the city "too beautiful to burn' during the civil war so many of the ante-bellum homes are intact and now restored to their glory. We saw three homes before lunch: Magnolia, Stanton, and Rosalie. We also had to make a stop at the Basilic of St. Marry in Natchez, the first cathedral in Mississippi. We heded back to the boat after Stanton Hall, a little too late to load our bikes on the truck for the afternoon ride, so we hurridly boarded the bus to lunch at the beautiful Cedar Grove Plantation. It was sunny and warm and good southern food; a perfect day for a picnic on a plantation! We didn't get to see inside because it is a working Bed and Breakfast Inn, but the grounds were georgeous.

Then, it was back on the bus for our last stop at Longwood, one of the most interesting places we've ever seen. It, too, was a town home built by a wealthy plantation owner, but when the war broke out, he lost his land and then died shortly after.  The house was never completed. The workers, mostly from the north (Pennnsylvania), left the worksite at the outset of the war and never returned. They left many of the tools they used in the unfinished portion of the house. The succeeding genertions never had enough money to complete it, so they lived in the finished "basement" until the house finally made it into the hands of one of the garden clubs that administer it now. It's architecture is unique as well, with an eastern onion skin type dome and octgonal design. You can look up from the first floor into the dome and still see all the scaffolding used to build it. Fortunately, the outside brick (it would have been stuccoed later) and roof were completed! Amazing place.

The Basilica of St. Mary

Longword's unfinished upper stories

Longwood

The Natchez Trace: Monday 4/20/15

High water has forced some changes in our trip, especially when it comes to landing and therefore bike routes. Many of the landings out tour guides used in past years are under water this year, forcing changes to plans. Day 3 was the first time it happened. We had to land at Vicksburg, MS and took a bus (the bikes rode a truck) to Port Gibson where out bike route began. There, we rode out of town for a few miles and turned on to the Natchez Trace. We've heard a lot about it from Caitlin and Will, who regularly bike the northern part of the trail. We completed about 30 miles of the southern most portion. The Natchez Trace began as a trail for people to walk back from Natchez to points north instead of taking boats up river before steam was used on the river. Now it is administered by the National Park Service, and it is beautiful: a nice, smooth, two lane (no shoulder), low traffic (commercial vehicles are prohibited) highway with controlled access or a few roads that cross that have to stop. We couldn't have

asked for a better day to bike. Our lunch stop along the way was at the Old Country Store in Lorman, MS. Absolutely great southern fried chicken and hospitality. We biked to our afternoon rest stop, an old "inn" along the way, waited for an hour for the bus to take us the rest of the way, and finally set out. After 5 minutes on the trail, we saw our bus go by on the opposite direction (they got a special permit to drive on it for that day) and at Marge's urging, we decided to turn around and head back. It was a beautiful ride, and someday, we'd like to ride the whole Trace!
I know I'm way behind on these posts, but I'll eventually get them done!

Helena, AR: Day 2

We pulled away from Memphis about 9:30 pm last night during a steady rainstorm. It was still raining when we woke up this morning in Helena, AR. The weather forecast did not look very favorable for the morning at least, so we were given several options: 1) Ride the planned 30 mile ride to lunch and board the bus to bring us to the boat at suppertime, 2) Bus from the boat, pick up our bike at lunch, and ride the 40 miles to meet the boat at suppertime, 3) Ride the entire 70 mile ride, 4) Ride the bus to lunch and the scheduled stop at the American Blues Museum in Clarksville, MS or 5) Stay on the boat. They gave us a little time to decide at breakfast what we would like to do. About half of us decided to stay on the boat for the day. We didn't want to get our stuff too wet right out of the blocks. So, we have had a very restful day on the river. The clouds have cleared this afternoon, revealing a beautiful sunny, warm day and summer-like weather, at least for us. After all, Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, right?
We did, however, get to go into Helena to their theater for a "convocation," presented by a local Baptist pastor which consisted of two prayers, and five gospel songs presented by a quintet called the Hughes sisters, a local choir group, a welcome from a county representative, and ride announcements. Helena is a small town noted for its place as the host of the longest running daily radio show in the country: King Biscuit Time, playing the Blues, as well as a yearly blues festival. Maybe we'll come back some day.

http://www.kffa.com and http://citylinktv.com/channel/helena-kffa/ if you're interested.