East Coast Trip Day 6

Day 6,
We spent the night at Pontchartrain Landing RV Park. This RV park is located on a canal that leads to Lake Pontchartrain. This is a good size lake covering about 650 square miles and has canals that lead to the ocean. There are several large luxury yacht builders and repair facilities near us. Some of the yachts we are able to see look like they would cost somewhere between 50 and 100 million dollars. A little more (actually, a lot more) than I could ever afford.

 We drove downtown to the WW2 Museum. It is rated as the number 1 WW2 museum in the US.

It was awesome. It had just about every kind of vehicle that was used in WW2 by the US. There were tanks, landing crafts, motorcycles, artillery, trucks and Aircraft.
Anyone that comes to New Orleans, needs to visit this museum. We were there about 4 hours and only saw about 50% of it.

Military Harley Davidson 

Great Recruitment Posters 

C47 Cargo Transport

Higgins Landing Craft

Military Jeep

 Nazi Flag

 True Hero's

 Awesome Stories

 Must Read

Nazi Uniform and Paraphernalia

 Sherman Tank

Jeep pulling a Homing Pigeon Trailer

 General Motors TBM Avenger Torpedo Bomber

North American P51 Mustang (my favorite WW2 Plane)

 Boeing B17 Flying Fortress

B17 Specifications

Where this B17 came from.

 SBD-3 Dauntless Dive Bomber

 VOUGHT F4U CORSAIR 

After returning from the museum, we took the dogs to a pet area at the RV park and threw their favorite ball. Sue tried to get a photo of them chasing the ball but they all came out a little blurry. This was the best of the bunch. They look like evil possessed puppies. Ellie has the orange ball in her mouth. This ball is like her Heroin. She literally goes nuts for the ball. This is one of the few toys we have to put up when we are not throwing it to them as the two will get into a fight over it and literally keep fighting until we break it up. Both have bite scars from these fights. 

 Our Sweet Puppies

East Coast Trip Day 5 & 6

Day 5,
Travel day, nothing to report.

Day 6,

Got off to an early start today and headed for New Orleans.

We stopped at “Laura”, a Sugar Cane Plantation in Vacherie, LA. It was a very eye opening experience to actually see how the Plantation owners lived as compared to how the slaves lived.

 

We were told that you had to be a French Citizen and Catholic to own a plantation in Louisiana.

Sugar Cane Plantations on the Mississippi River in 1858

Approximately 450

Laura Locoul (The last owner of the slave worked plantation) was born when Lincoln was president and died when John F. Kennedy president. Laura sold the plantation for $20,000. 

The Family Tree of he Duparc-Locoul family

 

To own a slave there were rules the Master and the Slaves had to abide by. You will have to click on the photo to read it as the originals were faded.

Rules of Discipline by King Louis of France

 

Runaway Slaves were dealt with harshly. We were told that one slave that ran away was recaptured and branded with Laura's great grandmother Annette Prud 'Homme's initials on both sides of his face. Laura's was just a child and unaware of this punishment until years later. As a result she later sold the plantation for a song at $20,000.

Runaway Slaves from the Duparc Plantation

Slave values were based on age, gender and capability. Even a slave considered a "Lunatic" was worth $10,000. Check out the value of the slaves below.

Slave Values for the Duparc Plantation

When we left the motorhome for the tour, We placed both dogs in their dog kennel. When we finished the tour and got back to the motorhome, we saw Ellie standing in the drivers seat looking out the window at us. Poor Wall-E was still locked inside his. Ellie has somehow figured out how to unzip her kennel.



East Coast Trip Day 4

Day 4,
We woke up to the temperatures in the low 30's. A little colder than we were expecting. With wind chill it felt like the low 20's.

Wall-E, Dug and Ellie under the Lone Star

Cameo with the pups behind the state of Texas

 

 

Louisiana here we come

 

Wow, what a bridge, straight up and straight down



 

We drove about 250 miles making only one detour. We visited the Creole Nature Trail and drove through the Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge. We saw quite a few birds of all types. We managed to get a few photos of the birds. I'm not exactly sure if I got the names right. We were greatly surprised to see what we thought were Flamingo's which we were told we wouldn't see, go figure. The birds are actually Exotic Roseate Spoonbills.

 

Geese? I don't know what kind

Same here

More Geese?

Some kind of duck?

Mallard? with a big bill?

Dark Ibis

Great Blue Heron, huge bird with 8' wingspan

Flamingos? No, they are Exotic Roseate Spoonbills

 Bayou Swamp Land, probably full of Crawdads

Old State Capital Building

From there we drove through downtown Baton Rouge to see the old state capital building. It is a beautiful building overlooking the mighty Mississippi. We managed to drive through downtime at about 4:30pm with all the traffic. The motorhome pulling the jeep was quite large to be cruising the downtown area in but we managed to do it without hitting a thing.
Our final stop for the night was at a Walmart parking lot in Baton Rouge.