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.