St Augustine to West Palm Beach Florida.

After being founded in 1565 St Augustine was attacked and burned by English privateer Sir Francis Drake. Then it was plundered by English privateer Robert Searle and most of the inhabitants were killed. However it was also USA's first legally sanctioned free community of ex-slaves. However nowadays it is a holiday town selling stuff to tourists.


The picture says it all.






We have started the boat hunt and it has been pretty depressing so far, junk interspersed with dirty junk and some really dirty, worn out, rusty and rotten junk.


This picture shows rot, dirt and clutter. This not untypical of the boats we have looked at.




We have only seen 2 boats so far where the owners have made any real attempt to finish the necessary repairs and clean the boat to make it presentable.

I had had high hopes of one particular boatyard in the centre of Florida but even the boat broker was a little ashamed of the standard of the boats he had on his books. Some have been lying in the open for years with little or no attention yet the owners are asking high prices. Mind you they may owe that amount of money on the boat. Still there are plenty of boatyards to go and brokers to visit.

We were able to sit outside tonight in cool comfort which is a pleasant change from the hot and muggy nights we have endured recently.





Temperatures have been over a 100F in the shade and the “feels like figure” has been over 110F.

I had originally been thinking about getting something around 44 feet but so many people of our sort of years with 44 footers seem to be downsizing saying that it is too much boat to handle anymore so perhaps it is time to get realistic and look at something smaller.



The best bet we have seen so far is an a boat called an Endeavour 40.

Creole slave plantation and HOT HOT HOT

We visited the Laura Plantation just outside New Orleans. The plantation was established in 1755

By this family




and like almost every other major plantation was built on the banks of the Mississippi and continued functioning as a plantation into the 20th century.



This was the plant that it was all about, sugar cane. It made the Duparcs and many other growers incredibly wealthy as the demand for sugar in Europe soared.











The house was built in 1805



by a French Créole family. Like most people we only had a sketchy understanding of the word creole. Here it is used to describe a family of French origin but who lives in Louisiana but it is also used as the name for the language spoken by the mixed-race Creoles and enslaved blacks.

It was a patois used by slaves and planters alike. It continues to be used to some extent today and is similar in some respects to the everyday language spoken in parts of the Caribbean.

The house has been repainted in traditional creole colours. It was built on brick pillars to cope with the flooding


and the timbers were old growth bald cyprus from the bayou, a hard wearing long lasting wood that is resistant to insect attack.

This is an original timber with the marks used by the skilled slave carpenter still visible.

The plantation was run by Laura Locoul Gore for 30 years and when she sold it part of the deal was that it be called "Laura" forever.


The interior of the "big house" is furnished with original antiques. Some pieces were donated to the plantation by families of the original owners and some areas inside the home are unrestored.



The slaves lived in a much simpler style


without protection from the yearly floods or systems to catch the cooling breezes.

One story from the early days of plantation life bought home to me how slaves were thought of. Realising that the most valuable slaves were young men, women being much less costly, they purchased some young girls and proceeded to raise a crop of young men, keeping the females as breeding stock.

At it's peak the plantation supported around 200 slaves. This was the maximum that most slave owners would allow as the risk of an uprising was ever present in their minds.

We are heading East now towards Jacksonville in Florida and it is HOT HOT HOT. 100 degrees yesterday with high humidity and the same conditions are forecast for the next few days. Air conditioning, fans and lots of rehydration therapy are the order of the day. I just wish I could get access to my favoured therapy, Theakstons Old Peculiar.

Louisiana Baton Rouge, The Bayou and New Orleans

We head down into Louisiana and the first stop was Baton Rouge, but not much of the old town stil exists so we looked in on the rural museum.

The small exhibits were displayed pretty haphazardly,



in some cases just in piles of similar items with no signs giving any information. They may be building a new museum and just warehousing their stock.

The outside exhibits were better organized. We saw some slave quarters, overseers quarters, a smiths shop and the plantation commissary. When we looked around it I was reminded of the line from the song “I owe my soul to the company store.”

This building was initially puzzling to me, why apply boards on the diagonal. However all was explained; it was the jail and by overlapping boards in opposite directions with lots of nails it was possible to make a wall that could not be cut through with an axe.

There were some coffle chains left over from the days of the chain gangs and I could not resist seeing what it would have felt like.








We headed south from Baton Rouge into the delta bayou and stayed in a lovely little RV park The sites were laid out around a pond full of duck and frogs with dragonflies everywhere. The owners have lots of space and are working on the next phase. This was somewhere we were reluctant to leave but the swamps were calling.

BAYOU and SWAMP TOUR with BLACK GUIDRY the CAJUN MAN

This is quite a famous tour with an ex military guy as our guide. The tour had 20 or so people on a well used pontoon boat, this was in contrast to the very new looking big aluminum airboat which blasted off before us with only three on board.

We were soon pootling along canals [ dug artificially ] and bayous [ natural waterways ] learning about Bald Cyprus knees and oil company pipelines. He turned into a dead end stopped the engine and let out a weird rumbling roar. Within seconds a dead log started moving towards us



and soon was begging for his dinner.







He stopped again announcing that he was lost and pulled out is Cajun squeezebox. He gave us a few bars of Zydeco but stopped claiming this was not his forte and swapped to his guitar for a rendition of the Cajun national anthem “Jolie Blon”.







After entertaining us he “remembered the way home” and we were off again. He was very scathing about the locals who fished this area for pleasure on their metalflake bass boats with giant outboards who set off in the morning with a cooler full of beer. He said the accident rate on the water was so bad that they have a special boating while impaired law to deal with it. As he said that we were overtaken on the outside of a blind bend by a couple of good old boys doing at least 30 knots.




New Orleans or “The Big [Sl]easy” was next.

We decided to stay at an expensive campground in the centre and use their shuttle bus but befroe we committed ourselves we stopped at the Bayou Segnette State Park and did a recce. As I am writing this we are still there. The park is delightful with swimming pools free laundry and free WiFi plus it is 1/3 of the price of the city park and very quiet at night with no “WOO WOO” train whistles.

To get in to New Orleans we drive to the Algiers ferry which drops us off by the French quarter.

Every one has heard of Mardis Gras in New Orleans so we toured the factory responsible for many of the floats. We learned of the history behind todays krewes and why they throw stuff like beads and plastic coins to the watchers.

Some of the big figures are over 40 years old and have appeared every year with a new coat of paint and sometimes a new head or face to fit the current theme.



But this bird was brand new, carved from plywood and styrofoam before being sprayed with a platic coating then painted.





Nowadays motors move the dragons jaws but only a few years ago sweating floar riders would be inside the "props" doing it by hand and there are still a few old floats where they do it this way.

The oldest established krewe is Rex who have been going since 1872. The all-male krewe is responsible for the concept of day parades, for the official Mardi Gras flag and colors – green for faith, gold for power, purple for justice – and for the anthem of Carnival, “If I Ever Cease to Love,” as well as for one of the most popular throws, the doubloon.

Our guide told us that the individuals who ride the floats are responsible for buying their own "throws" and on average they spend 400 to 500 dollars a year on plastic junk to throw away. ??WHY??

There are so many krewes with floats and riders desparate to throw stuff away that there are many separate parades during the Mardi Gras season.

We learned that while it is illegal to smoke on a float drinking is OK. As long as you can stand and throw you can parade. However the law also says that everone must be tied to the floats and we saw the harnesses and ropes they use for this.

RIVERBOAT NATCHEZ

We took a trip on the Natchez. This is the last steam driven paddle wheeler running out of New Orleans.


Built to a traditional design and using engines from a much older boat it keeps tradition afloat.


She was pretty special but it was a pity that the guide doing the commentary was not up to the same standard.
YOU WILL NEED BROADBAND FOR THIS


We were greeted by a Calliope recital before departure then learned more than we wanted to know about the oil terminals, grain terminals, sugar terminals and [ we both fell asleep at this point and missed the next bit]





We did get a look into the part of New Orleans flooded to a depth of 15 feet when Katrina broke through the levees.



Back at the dock we headed into the French quarter with its lovely old ironwork and found out why it is called "the big sleasey" when we hit the end of Bourbon Street.

Strip clubs, hookers and cheap boooze were everywhere but behind and beside the sleaze were muscicians belting out Jolie Blon and Delta Blues.

I liked the one called

" I got the
Fuzzy Dummy
Empty Sippy Cup
Lost Blanky
Dirty Diaper
Delta blues "

Some more on Vicksburg and we head down the Mississippi to Natchez

We got to tour a lovely old house filled with original furnishings





from the time of the civil war.






It had been hit several times during the siege of Vicksburg and one of the cannon balls is still in the wall.



It came through the door here









and finished up here.





We also took the National Park Service tour of the battlefield which was a waste of time, just lots of monuments. The only interesting stop was a museum dedicated to the ironclad gunboat Cairo

which was sunk by an early mine





and recently recovered and restored.

This is the damage that the mine did.



It was built like a catamaran at the back to protect the paddle wheel.




The North built 7 of these in 6 months. This is the only one to survive and as it went down in a few minutes it was a time capsule as the Mississippi mud preserved most of it.

The Park is also the site of a big military cemetery



used from the civil war until the 1960s.






DOWN THE NATCHEZ TRACE

Getting off the main road we followed part of the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway which commemorates an ancient trail used by animals and people that connected southern portions of the Mississippi River, through Alabama, to salt licks in today's central Tennessee.

It was also used briefly by riverboatmen who, having floated down the Mississippi would walk or ride on horseback North back up the trace.





This is one of the old stops on the way. They used to sell the travellers a meal for 25 cents and space to sleep on the porch.



We will look in on one of the mound building peoples sites today and then head on down to Baton Rouge in Cajun Country for some Zydeco!

VICKSBURG or THE SOUTH SHALL RISE AGAIN (maybe)

Vicksburg on the banks of the Mississipi was the scene of a pivotal battle during the American civil war.

It was also the start of another battle which is still going on across most of the world today.



In 1894, a Vicksburg businessman named Joseph Biedenharn became the first to put Coca-Cola in bottles and sell it by the case in surrounding areas. His soda factory is now a museum and we looked around the original facilities.

DUE TO THE VERY SLOW WIFI CONNECTION AT THE MAGNOLIA RV PARK WE WILL FINISH THIS BLOG WHEN WE GET SOMETHING FASTER!

MORE MEMPHIS and GRACELANDS

CAROL'S BIT.

GRACELANDS, home of Elvis Presley. We headed up Elvis Presley boulevard , past Heartbreak Hotel,










The Lisa Marie, Elvis's private jet named after his daughter. He had another private plane as well with TCB on the tail




( taking care o' bizness )











and one of his cars on display.

Used to be the Pink cadillac.




We go to the RV park just down the road, within walking distance. This was fortunate because, the last time I was here the famous gates at Gracelands were down for cleaning.



This time they were up but open, so I walked down at 6.30am to get a good shot of them. Not a particularly good idea, Memphis is a high crime area.

Everyone has to be bussed into the Mansion from the souvenir area opposite, no one is allowed to just walk in. This was a very organized and state of the art tour. We were given headphones with numbers on. Each area had a number for us to tune to, and we could diverse for extra information if we wanted to.


Gracelands is a mansion sized house and has been left as it was when Elvis was there. He was an honorary member of the FBI and a black belt in Karate, so we passed through his target practice room and gym.

Anyone who is not an Elvis fan , may have the impression that this was just another pop star. He was not. He could sing for a start, and could also act. Unfortunately his manager Col. Tom Parker had a tight grip on what Elvis did, and made both of them a lot of money.
After Elvis died of a heart attack, brought on by PRESCRIPTION drugs, Parker came in the firing line for pushing too hard, and allowing the dependency on drugs to take over Elvis's life.

We got to the area with his working history,
it is full of awards, silver, platinum,gold discs. Covering the walls from floor to ceiling.












His costumes ( you can even buy a copy in the shop, for a price).












All of his films are here.




Including the only two straight part ones that he made Wild in the country and CHARRO ( guess where my dog's name came from, it took me years to get the sound track for that)


Elvis always wanted to play straight parts, instead of the musical ones that he mostly did. They were the bread and butter films though.





There is even an area covering his army days,




he did his two years service, and Tom Parker kept his career going until he came out.

Most Elvis fans learned the German words to Wooden Heart, the song he sang for the film GI Blues.






We came to where he and his family are buried, flowers and tributes come in daily.






In August, which is when he died, this place is packed as fans make a pilgrimage to 'The King '

When we passed the stables and paddock they weren't open to the public. Since then Pricilla has opened them to the public. These contain the horses tack and riders clothes. Some of the original horses were rescued, some bought. Elvis's favorite , a golden palomino called Rising Sun was born in 1961. He was one of four. There are relatives of the original horses still at Gracelands. Sun's Reflection is related to Rising Sun .
The stables were built in 1939 by the original owners, and was bought by Elvis in 1957.

JOHN'S BIT ON ELVIS AND GRACELANDS

I went expecting to be overwhelmed in tacky and unimpressed with a singer that I remebered with some disdain, being much more into the Beatles and the Stones in the 60's.

Instead I liked what was on show. The presentation was excellent and I had not realised how hard he must have worked to satisfy his manager. Even the jungle room with it's green shag pile carpet worked as quirky style rather than tacky. I was also impressed by the fact that he did his two year tour in the army. Even though he lived off post in Germany with some of his family. Also he was a biker so that was another plus point.

Mind you during his life he was exploited and in death he is still a money making machine for someone, maybe Priscilla, hopefully some charities. After all Elvis gave away more than 200 Cadillacs to family and friends.

The Metal Workers Museum was worth the visit.

Along with elegant pots,

[ it is a piggy bank really - put your money on the brass cup and pull the lever]














quirky sculptures











and odd artifacts






they had a working foundry and blacksmiths shop. I was hoping to find some gunsmithing in progress but had to be content with a look at the special anvil that was used and a description of how a Tennessee long musket barrel was formed and forge welded from a short billet of iron. The technique had been lost and was rediscovered by an Arkansas smith who had been asked to make a replica barrel for an old gun.



As well as an entry charge we were asked for a contribution to the cat fund!


We took a tourist trip on a replica riverboat. We were seated on the top deck well before the departure time and as usual I checked out the engineering on view, Carol looks at dogs, I look at welds. WELL they were appalling. This was not welding, this was low flying sparrow shit. I consoled myself by thinking that they had done some DIY modifications to the superstructure, only to find that the hull was a DIY job in some ones backyard and the same person had finished off the superstructure after launching the boat.
As a City and Guilds Certificated welder I know that welding is mostly practice. SO this guy should have been well practiced by the time he got to the superstructure. I was not a happy camper thinking we were heading out on a collection of steel plates tacked together with snot and heading in approximately the same direction through force of habit!

The tour guide raised my anxiety level by punctuating his commentary with famous Mississippi river boat disasters culminating with the greatest loss of life when the Sultana went down killing more than the Titanic sinking.

We visited Mud Island to see the scale model of the Mississippi river created in layered concrete. The idea worked well and as we walked down the half mile of the model we got the feel of the big muddy as it wandered down by towns like Memphis and Vicksburg. The efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers to try to control the course of the river was also well documented.


This part shows the bridges and part of Memphis including Mud Island.


The reasons behind the efforts was not well covered, no mention of the politics that left one town on an unnavigable backwater while another had the channel deepened and kept by their docks. Some towns protected by levees; others allowed to drown in the annual floods as the snow melt raises the water level.

The riverwalk museum covered the history of the area and the river. The history of the boats started with the first rafts, through the days of the steam driven riverboats including the winner of many a race the Robert E Lee and finished with todays powerful pushboats and the string of barges they chug up and down the Mississippi with.


These strings run 24 hours a day, they are refueled and provisioned on the move and is by far the most economical way of moving bulk goods in the USA. The captains get more than $1000 a day which is pretty good money.

We finished off the day with tired and hot feet so it was only right that we had a paddle in the Mini Mississippi to end the day.







Arkabutla Lake

As Memorial day weekend approached and it is the equivalent of UK bank holiday we decided to get booked in somewhere to be sure of having a RV site somewhere.

Fed up with the noise of big city sites with train lines in earshot we settled on a campground at Arkabutla Lake. This area is under the control on the US Army Corps of Engineers who built the dam as part of the efforts to control flooding in the Mississippi valley. Well it was quiet and empty for the first night but even though the forecast was poor it filled up by Saturday mid-day. The site next to us had some kind of extended “redneck” family group. The men had the haircuts, the fishing habit [ big catfish!] and the pickup trucks. They only had one dawg with them though. It was a tiny tiny puppy who seemed to belong to a 5 year old girl. Carol found it difficult not to get involved when we heard it crying but when it got picked up by the little girl it seemed happy enough. The weather forecasters got it right and on Saturday evening the heavens opened and the thunder gods paid us a visit, the unstable weather is supposed to go on for a week.

Still we got out in breaks in the rain to see the beaver pond,



note the chisel points on the tree stumps created when the beavers fell the trees for food and dam building material,







and the sunken picnic tables, the water level is high in the lake due to all the rain.





Next stop Tunica, self styled Las Vegas on the Mississippi, for some poker and shopping then on to Vicksburg and some serious civil war stuff.