Tickfaw State Park and Lake Fausse Point: Hammond, LA a (March 3-10) and Lake Fausse Point State Park, LA March 10-17, 2014

The place to buy a great steak

 Tickfaw was a quiet time – we went into Baton Rouge a couple of times – had to get a store of Jerry Lee's wonderful pork boudin, tasso, and whatever else looked interesting. Other than that, it was catch-up time for laundry, cleaning, mending, etc. The high point of of our time was finding Tony's Seafood and Market and their fried crawfish boudin balls. Jerry Lee's still takes the blue ribbon for best plain boudin.

I had wanted to get to the Atchafalaya (uh CHA fuh lie uh), 

and Lake Fausse Point seemed like a good choice that would keep up somewhat on our way west. As we headed out we crossed over the Mississippi and I managed to get a good photo of the multiple-barge tows which tug boats move up and down the river. It's mind-boggling the amount of 

The place for great fried boudin balls

cargo they can carry – a full 15 grain-barge tow equals the same amount that 225 rail hopper cars or 870 semis can haul. I-10, which stretches bridge-like above the swamp for miles and miles is still a delight for me, in 

spite of my dislike of bridges (maybe it's only the really high ones that bother?) and I love the great view.

As we neared our destination, we found the GPS (Rich calls it Dumbellina) had routed us over a pontoon bridge and another bridge with a 9 foot high limit, which we would never have cleared. 

Pretty church and bell tower in Baton Rouge

After some hurried navigation, we took the only other route we could find. Unfortunately, we were surprised with roadwork on the two-lane road that took us from Henderson to our campground at Lake Fausse. It was a scary trip and it's also a good thing I didn't realize just how concerned Rich was – it would have scared me to death!

We made two day-trips that we really enjoyed while we were at Lake Fausse Point – the first was to the Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site. This was a wonderful stop and the three historians we spoke with while there were incredibly knowledgeable and friendly. We

Tug with large tow

met Debbie, a native of the area first and she was brim-full of information about Cajun and Creole history as well as all sorts of other things.

For generations, this beautiful spot has drawn visitors – historically, the cultures of the Cajun and Creoles met here and enriched the area, while in legend, Evangeline searched near here for her lost love Gabriel in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem of the same name.

The Cajun people were originally immigrants from France, the who settled in Nova Scotia. The British decided they wanted the rich land on which the Acadians

I-10 in southern LA

Swamp from I-10

We're on our way to the Atchafalaya!

successfully grew many crops, so in 1755, moved them out and put them on ships – some of which went to the Caribbean, some back to France and some were dropped off on the eastern coastline of America near Charleston, SC, if I remember correctly. From there, they worked their way over to Louisiana where in 1765, they settled and began to farm the land and harvest the seafood that abounds.

 French settlers held lands on Bayou Teche prior to the arrival 

Bee hives were all along the bayou

of the Acadians and many of these were descendents of the first wave of French settlers in Louisiana. These folks called themselves “Creoles,” meaning native, since they were born in colonial Louisiana.

The Longfellow-Evangeline site in St. Martinville, was originally a vacherie, or cattle ranch, then later developed as an indigo plantation. In the early 1800's, Charles Olivier inherited the 
property and under his management as a sugar planter, the plantation attained its great prosperity. By the 1840's, Olivier had made many improvements to 

Our scary drive to Lake Fausse

the original working home (a place for the manager to stay while at the property) his father had built and turned it into the family home. The structure is an example of the simple and distinctive architectural form called a Raised Creole Cottage, and shows a mixture of Creole, Caribbean, and French influences. The ground floor wallls are fourteen inches thick and made of bricks from the clay of the Bayou Teche, which at one time had been part of the Mississippi River. The upper story walls consist of a mud and moss mixture called bousillage, which is placed between upright cypress slats.

Longfellow-Evangeline - artifacts

Longfellow-Evangeline - artifacts

 Our guide for the house tour was Christie and she pointed out the dark stains on the legs of a pie safe which were made from water – not from floods, but from dishes of water in which the legs were placed to discouorage ants and other insects. (I remember my mom keeping the sugar bowl on the table in a bowl of water for the same purpose, years ago.) In a small room on the ground floor where the house servant would have slept, she pointed out the single length of rope that is strung from side to side through holes in the wooden frame (think lacing up a shoe), then from head to foot to hold a cotton mattress stuffed with cotton or Spanish moss. This rope is tightened every morning, as it stretches during the night and would sag too much to be even minimially comfortable. It must have been a tedious chore since one had to go from hole to hole in the order it was strung and I can't imagine it would have been nearly as comfy as our beds today. As she showed us the bed and the work involved in tightening it, Christie reminded us that this is where the phrase we all heard as children and have probably repeated to our children “Night, night, sleep tight” came from. The rest of the phrase “don't let the bed bugs bite” was not said in jest, as bed bugs, chiggers, mites and who knows what else were common inhabitants in mattresses. In the dining room, we saw the forerunner to our ceiling fan, a pookah, used to chase flies from the table. In the separate kitchen we saw corn husk brooms, and many other implements used in kitches of the era.

Longfellow-Evangeline - artifacts

We left the house and walked down a trail to the Acadian cabin and farmstead. Phillip, another ranger, told us stories and explained the uses of some of the tools we found there. He was so enthusiastic and knowledgeable and it was a pleasure to talk with him.

One of the things we learned from Phillip was about the Tornado cattle breed, of which they have two on site. Thinner than standard cattle and carry their fat on their belly to protect them from the intense heat reflected from the ground. Their horns are loaded with blood vessels which cool the blood, like a car radiator. Because of the heat, the horns grew longer and thus more blood vessels, thus cooling the animal better.

For anyone who enjoys a leisurely stroll and as much or little information as you wish, this is a delightful spot to visit.

Longfellow-Evangeline - artifacts

Longfellow-Evangeline

Longfellow-Evangeline - lazy-man's butter churn

Picture made of deceased loved-one's hair

Longfellow-Evangeline - rolling pin bed

L-E: Ladie's rocker with storage and angled back to reflect heat from fire

Detached kitchen

Picture made by intricate paper cutting

Bed with ropes to tighten and chamber pot

Candlestick

Big bellows!

Side saddle

Herb garden by kitchen

The stove...

Corn husk broom

The pie safe with water marks on legs

Homestead

Wood working bench

Ranger demonstrating the use of the bench he made

Ladder for boys to climb to bedroom

Larger porch is on the back facing the bayou - the main road

Tornado cattle

Fish trap

Weaving loom

Sample of weaving

Cotton press

Drill Press

Curly-coated horse

Tabasco plant

 Our second day trip was to Avery Island to visit the Tabasco plant.What an interesting tour it was. The Tabasco brand products are made by McIlHenny Company which was founded in 1868 on Avery Island and the company is still family owned and operated on the very same site. We were talked through the entire process, from January, when the seeds are first planted and cutivated in greenhouses, to planting in the fields, to the pickers matching the color of the peppers to the “le petit baton rouge”, a small dowel painted the color of a perfectly ripe tobasco pepper, and finally, the CEO who walks through the plants, and marks the best pepper plants with a 

Tabasco plant

rope tossed over the plant. It is the seeds from these plants that will be treated and dried for planting the following year. From there, the peppers are sent to the factory and mixed with pure Avery Island salt. The freshly picked peppers are gound with the salt into a mash and stored in 50-gallon white oak barrels, formerly used to age whiskey. After aging for three years, the mash is blended with strong vinegar. The sauce is then pumped into larger white oak vats where the mixture is stirred intermittently for weeks. After agitation, the sauce is strained of seeds and pulp and bottled.

The salt that is mined on Avery Island is the from the largest of five salt domes in coastal Louisiana. In the 1860's, the Union 

Tabasco plant - salt atop the casks

forces temporarily destroyed the mines so important to the Confederates, but now Avery Island, Inc. leases the mines to Cargill and annual production tops out at 2.5 million tons. The extracted salt is 98.9% pure.

Oil and gas was also discovered on Avery Island and Ned McIlhenny, patriarch of the family who owned the area, insisted the Island's natural beauty and role as a wildlife refuge be kept. To that end, the ancient live oak trees were spared, pipelines were buried, and those that could not be buried were painted a green that blended in with the trees and shrubs of the area. And this was in 1942 - hooray for McIlhenny!

 Lake Fausse Park itself was quite different from any at which we've previously stayed – with a bayou on one side and swamp on the others, it was perfect for the area. As you can see in the photos, the water was above the bottom steps of the set of stairs at the back of the restroom/showers but there was a front ramp entrance which was high and dry. Much of the dry land in Louisiana was formed from mud from the river delta. Some of the trails we had planned to walk were flooded, so we took the one option we had left, which was about two miles long and a very nice walk – part boardwalk to get above the swampy ground and the rest was well-marked and dry. We saw little in the way of wildlife other than alligators, pileated woodpeckers, turtles and herons, but there was plenty of beautiful scenery and the weather was perfect. While in camp one day, I saw a summer taniger, an osprey, and a red-tailed hawk, but didn't manage to get pictures. We had beautiful sunsets and it was a delightful stay.

Now we're off to Texas and Mill Creek Army Corps of Engineers Campground – another new one for us.

Restroom with steps under water...