Cajun Country tour

Sunday, January 20
We stayed away from New Orleans today and headed south and west into Cajun Country. Lots of French influences here. The names of the towns are French and many of the folks that live here are descendants of Acadian settlers, those expelled French-Canadians from Nova Scotia and other areas.

How these folks made a living off the land here is a testament to their ingenuity and hard work. much of the area is swamp or low lands that can't support agriculture. The settlers had to learn new fishing techniques, new crops that could grow in wet environments, and survive in an unforgiving environment of bugs, snakes, and other critters that would kill you. But survive and flourish they did and those French influences also survived to today.

Let's turn right today.

Let's get off this freeway and turn south toward the Gulf.

Quite a feat to build highways in this area.

Channels and bayous for shipping and fishing cross the landscape.

Cotton, sugar cane are grown. 

A draw bridge crossing a bayou.

Lots of boat traffic on these channels.

Some very large boats too. This one is in dry dock.

Beautiful back road drives.

We drove through the cities of Houma and Thibodaux.

Lovely Catholic churches in every town.

We made our way to River Road. This took us along the west side of the Mississippi.

Large dykes keep the Mississippi within its banks.

Sugar cane.

We stopped at Whitney Plantation. It was an old sugar cane plantation. River Road had lots of plantations back in the day. Several still survive as tourist stops. 

Whitney Plantation had a great museum. This was a neck collar used on slaves.

Indigo is a dye used for clothing and was a primary crop grown prior to sugar cane becoming dominant

Sugar cane was to become an important crop. Interestingly the plantation owners depended on the slaves and their knowledge of sugar manufacturing to make profits for them.

Many of the slaves were freed after the Civil war, but a lot of them continued to work on the plantations as free men and women.

Whitney Plantation

Sugar cane along the levee.

Another plantation on River road.

Storage barn 

Plantation building on Laura Plantation.

Huge bridge over the Mississippi.

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Barges, ships on the Mississippi.

A very old refinery along the shore on the Mississippi. As plantations no longer needed workers they found work in the industrial plants along the River.

Swampy land along the highway.

Highway 55 heading north from Cajun Country toward Interstate 12. 

Lots of bayous, swamps, quaint small towns, prosperous large towns, and many miles of awesome southern Louisiana countryside. A very enjoyable day exploring.
.....and that was Our View From Here!