November 21, 2008--More pictures of Louisiana

On Friday of our vacation we went to see some plantation houses. We stopped at the first one which was by Thibodaux and is owned by the college there. It's vacant and not kept up very well, and we couldn't go in, but we walked around the grounds and looked at the oak trees. This time we went with the the wife of my husband's college buddy and their younger daughter. When she told us that these trees were oak trees, I said, "No, they aren't!" Well, they aren't anything like the oak trees I'm familiar with, but apparently oak trees in Louisiana and oak trees in Indiana are two totally different kind of trees. These oak trees are live oaks. They are an evergreen tree and have small, smooth leaves. They live up to 600 year, and the branches come out and go back down into the ground and come back up again. They are unbelievable. You can see how they do that in this picture:

We went and stood on the balcony of the house and our friend took pictures. Here's one that shows almost the entire thing without making us look too tiny. Can you believe this house is just sitting vacant?

Here is another picture of our family, sitting on the part of the oak tree that came up again out of the ground. You can also see in the foreground what the leaves of this tree look like--they aren't anything like oak tree leaves up here.

After that we went to see another plantation called Oak Alley. This plantation charges to go inside, and we weren't allowed to take pictures in the house. We did take some outside, though. It is very well kept up, and it's absolutely beautiful. The walkway out of this house goes all the way down to the Mississippi, although you can't see the river from the house. They used to, from what I understand, but the river is actually higher than the land around it and there's a levee keeping the river from flooding the land. I'm pretty sure part of that levee is the mud that the river brings down it. Anyway, the view is still fantastic from the balcony of the house, because there are oak trees lined up on either side of the walkway--huge trees that are hundreds of years old. It is so beautiful. This is what it looks like from the balcony of the house. Could you imagine looking out at this everyday? Could you imagine walking down that sidewalk to get the mail?

Here is the house. This plantation house has been the site of several movies. The family that built it only had one surviving child. I can't imagine a house this huge and having only one child.

When we were done with that, we went across the road and went up on the levee to see the Mississippi river. We watched the barges going down the river powered along by the tugboats. The kids kept wanting to roll down the hill, but with the river at the bottom I discouraged them from doing that. Timothy wandered off a bit and suddenly started screaming. He had gotten into a nest of fire ants. I grabbed him and started to strip off his clothes, but he wouldn't let me take off his clothes in public. I rushed him to the van and put him in the front passenger seat and undressed him, killing the fire ants. He was only bit four times, thankfully. I checked his clothes the best I could, but was reluctant to put them back on without a good washing, so we decided that was a good time to head home. I did realize on the way back that putting him in my seat to take his clothes off wasn't the best idea--I got bit twice on the way home by fire ants in the van.

Although I personally didn't get to take pictures of the barges on the river due to Timothy's fire ant escapade, our friend took pictures and sent me all the pictures she took, so here is one more picture for today--the Mississippi river and a long barge.