Galveston, Texas - New Orleans, Louisiana

July 3 - 6, 2021:

I driving on Route 10 and make a stop in the town of Port Arthur,Texas where I go exploring around the historic downtown area with its many closed and abandoned beautiful stone buildings. I’m thinking, this is an oil rich boomtown area, how did they let this happen ?  I then see that something positive is occurring here, the core downtown buildings are under renovation or restoration, they are being saved ! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur,_Texas

Frank Trost took the famous photo of the oil well gushing

The photo studio

One of the immense old buildings in town under restoration

Another beauty for the past

 I then made my way to the Museum of the Gulf Coast which to my surprise was open.  It is an outstanding museum, one of the best museums I’ve seen, not to be missed.  The 2nd floor contains exhibits on southeast Texas musicians and local sports stars that is incredible, with Janis Joplin the key exhibit as Janis was from Port Arthur, Texas. 

Arthur was an ambitious man

With quite a vision

Janis had considerable vision too !

This museum was filed with well done exhibits such as this

Another local hero, Johnny Winter

I was quite taken with this bridge when leaving town

I then continued east into Louisiana stopping for the night at Lake Charles.  Lake Charles is a large town but I didn’t explore it, I continued on in the morning  towards New Orleans and into Cajun country.  

Instead of taking the faster and more heavily traveled route 10, I took the slower route 14 east route which was all country, passing through several small towns.  My first real stop was Lake Arthur, LA where I found a small but quaint downtown right on a lakefront.  There is a town park with a bandshell and a group of musicians were playing to a crowd of about 8 people.  It was kind of strange as there was no event, possibly it was a practice session for them, but they were playing some real cajun music.

I liked the look of Charlie's Place

I then continued driving passing through the towns of Gueydan and Kaplan, then made a stop at Abbeville, LA which was most interesting.  The French heritage is everywhere here in buildings, street signs and the beautiful central square, this was definitely the high point of my day.  As usual it is hot, 100 % humidity and the skies are threatening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbeville,_Louisiana

Mural of the giant omelette celebration which takes place every November

They has a nice series of murals on the cajun cowboy culture

Especially like this one

Cane Sugar was major industry here

  Continuing on I approach the town of New Iberia and get onto route 90 which is a little faster route bypassing most of the towns until Morgan City, LA where I just need to make another stop.  (It kills me to bypass any of these towns, they all have something wonderful in them.)  Morgan City has two huge side by side bridges that can be seen very well from the old business district waterfront.  I then explore a few blocks of the old downtown until it starts to rain and then it’s back on the road. 

Another great bridge view

I decide that I will stop for the night at Houma, LA from which gives me an easy ride in the morning into New Orleans.  I didn’t see much of Houma except for the heavily commercialized new business district filled with chain restaurants and lodging where I overnighted at a Walmart.

It’s now Sunday 4th of July as I follow route 90 and route 10 into New Orleans.  Once coming into the city, I had no real directions to follow, I was winging it, (not smart when entering a major city), so I just took the exit for the business district.  I then stopped and got my bearings and headed towards the French Quarter looking for any parking space.  I made a few circuits around before just pulling into a lot, out of desperation, that was rather pricey.  Then using my iPhone for navigation, I took off on foot into the French Quarter after carefully noting my original starting location (very important).  I am now walking down Bourbon Street like all tourists do, but I’m actually failing to see the charm of it all.  I’ve been here several times now, it’s always been decadent, that’s is the charm, but now it seems to have morphed into just trashy.

Getting through these streets can be stressful

A typical french quarter view

One of the more interesting windows

Many shops

The classic New Orleans view of Andrew Jackson in front of the cathedral 

I wondered into a few shops, it’s mostly tourist stuff, tee shirts to take home to prove what an outrageous good time you had on Bourbon Street, Cajun foodie items, etc.  I am sort of over that stuff these days.  The best tee shirt I saw said;

"When this virus is over I still want some of you to stay away from me"

I saw the long line of people outside the Cafe du Mond to eat and I just wonder why, it’s not that fantastic, but I did get a nice cold daiquiri nearby to avoid having a heat stroke.

I next found my way back to the van and drove to the Canal Street area where I found the entertainment area where all the fabulous movie theaters were located.  Sadly, they are all closed now although It appears there are restoration efforts going on a couple of them, but little progress, but at least they are protected.  I also found the area that they refer to as the birthplace of jazz, where many of the early innovators played, they have signage up to recognize this area, but little has been done to restore any of it. 

 

Buddy Bolden was a jazz icon in his day

Nice mural in the area

They are having fireworks off the pier area at night, as a result the traffic is practically gridlocked in the evening, I find an out of the way place to hide.  People are obsessed with fireworks, I really don’t get it at all.  I stoped at a bar, The Howling Wolf, (loved the name) used their internet, had a couple of beers and ended up spending the night adjacent to Lafayette Square.  It was very quiet except for the heavy rainstorm early in the AM.

The statue was not Lafayette, but he was there

In the morning I see that a couple of homeless types were also spending the night at the park.   I take a look around the block and see a very nice Bank and as I am taking a photo a woman in a car stopped at the light tells me that it was the only bank that survived the great depression.  I thought that was odd, but nice of a total stranger to say. 

I had a reservation for a cemetery tour scheduled for 10:15, the weather was shaky with intermittent rain forecast for the day.  It’s a walking tour and the area where we meet really looks like a “city of the dead” with cemeteries all around.  Both sides of the street are lined with large cemeteries of various denominations.  

The tour guide was very well versed on the history of these cemeteries and the various burial process. it's not something I ever thought about before.  He explained how all the unique burial practices in New Orleans came about mostly from the very high death rates during the mid 1800’s due to yellow fever.  At that time they did not know about yellow fever or how to treat it or to prevent it.  There were many theories about evil spirits and signs from God being touted at this time, sounds familiar. Once the mosquitoes were found to be the cause and controlled and water storage methods improved and medicines developed, the yellow fever situation declined.  

This was a walking tour taking us into a couple of nearby cemeteries to see the various above ground burial Vaults.  The thing that surprised me is that the above ground burial process is actually much like cremation except that the body is not burned, but rather placed inside this vault and the body is consumed by heat.  On an as ended basis, you open the vault, shove the decomposed body into a pit in the rear of the vault, then move a new body in.  It sound a little barbaric to me. The larger vaults can hold an unlimited number of bodies.  It’s all too strange ?  I think I’ll go down to Bourbon Street and have a few adult drinks.

This is a more traditional in ground burial

The above ground vaults are more prevalent 

All those square blocks are burial spaces

Later in the evening, I return and it occurs to me that Bourbon Street actually looks much better at night than during the daytime, the filth and trash is not so obvious and the bright colorful lights add color and possibly even romance to it all.  I went into one bar which proclaims to support New Orleans Jazz and listened to a band.  The band leader, about my age kept watching me and when they took a break he came over to talk to me, he must have sensed I was a music lover.  He asked me where I was from from and when I said Tucson, he said that he had lived there as a child near Fort Lowell.  He had left many years ago as he likes to boat and there’s not any of that is lacking in Tucson.  He told me that the music scene on Bourbon Street is pretty lame these days, most of the good music has moved over to the the Frenchman Street area. 

The mounted police and their horses were a big attraction

It’s again time to do laundry,  it comes quickly here when you soak through all your clothes due to the heat and humidity every day.  It luckily was uncrowded and quick, then a stop at the New Orleans public library which was poor and slow.  

I then parked near the Mississippi River boat dock (another expensive lot), but not much else you can do, and walked around the French Quarter.  I went into the National Park Service Jean Lafitte visitors center for a while and then went to the Frenchman Street area which is only a mile away.  It is a small area but has many music clubs, predominately Jazz oriented and some good street art.  I had a beer in a restaurant / bar /music club called "Bamboula's" which was beautifully redone inside and saw that there was a blues show starting at 6:30.  So, that was my evening plan, go rest a while, return at 6 PM, then have dinner and watch the show.  The Smoky Greenwell Blues Band is lead by a seasoned New Orleans musician of note, Smoky Greenwell.  It was a very good show, but not so comfortable sitting on the edge of the dining room.  I eventually left and cruised around the street where two other clubs had jazz groups playing, one was very good but way too crowded, the other kind of goofy.

The river boat getting ready for a cruise

interesting art on store front

Interior of the Bamboul's music club was beautiful

More of the same

For the record, even after having my two Covid shots, being around all these people, in close proximity to many of who probably haven’t had the vacine makes me a little nervous.  

I spend the night on a side street until about 3AM when I wake in a sweat, (extremely humid here), couldn't get back to sleep and went go for a ride to cool down the van.  I returned to a different spot and then caught a couple more hours of sleep before being awakened by the sounds of a construction crew arriving and parking all around me.  These are precious free parking spots and as I quickly left, they were giving me some dirty looks.

I am now ready to get the hell out of this town, but I need my morning coffee, so I am heading to a convenance store.  I’m heading into a distressed looking area, definitely looks to have been flooded by Katrina, but the store fronts, vacant buildings and walls are covered with very artistic street art.  No way I can pass that, so I stop and it keeps going for blocks.  I finally get my coffee and get on routes 10 and 61 heading towards Natchez, Mississippi.

Next stop is Natchez, Mississippi