May 2010

En route from Texas to Louisiana along the Sea of Cortez, with all it's swamps and wildlife. Shortly after we were there the awfull disaster with the BP oilrig happened in these very same waters. Louisiana with all it's flair, savoire vivre, strength and hardship certainly needs a lot of resiliance.

Aligator, crawfish, etoufee, beignets you name it and they eat it and grow or produce itdown here in the Southern part of the states. We saw plenty of rice and crawfish fields and visited the Tabasco factory who's sharp odour you could smell from miles away.

Music all genres, from Jazz in Louisiana, blues and rock in Memphis to country in Nashville. Throw in some all made in America factory tours, amish communities, farmland and architecture it makes for a busy month.

We left Louisiana in the beginning of the month and passed through, Mississippi, Tennesee, kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.

Crawfish "paddock" parcels of farmland flooded and set out with fishnets to harvest crawfish. In the off season the same paddocks are used for rice harvesting.

The concentrated hotpeper sauce first created after the civil war on an exotic 220 acre island in South Louisiana. Now the same factory (only one in the world) supplies 160 countries.

Konriko rice mill in Louisiana, America's oldest ricemill from 1912.

Lots of flooding in the South either created by heavy rain, hurricane's or tornado's breaking levee's and this is how you combat it!

Waterlilies in the Southern swamps.

You have not experienced the South unless you have been out on it's waterways and the easiest way to do it is to join a swamptour on an airboat.

The terrain we went through on the airboat, which kind of "flies on top of the water".

Looooots of alligators in the swamps, not a good place to go for a swim!

We are in New Orleans and ready to enjoy the Southern experience.

The Natchez, one of the oldest steamboats cruising the Mississippi river in New Orleans, we went on an evening cruise with live jazz band on board, quite a treat.

These are the crawfish out of the pond and in "hot water" Scrummy.

Mardigras World was well worth a visit in New Orleans, world largest float builder Blaine Kern opened a museum and workshop you can tour. They build floats for 60 countries worldwide and most of the floats start in New Orleans.

Just anothe day in the city of jazz.

August 29-2005 Hurricane Katrina hits the Mississippi and Louisiana coas,t rupturing levees and flooding below sealevel area's. Old town was spared but most of New Orleans was under water. The rescuers marked the houses so others new that they had been there and what was done..

The Southerns love their food and even on the markets there is not you average fastfood, look at the selection.

Viking factory-what you find in homes of many rich and famous people or on a chefs program- A Viking stove, great tour.

Putting in the irrigation tubes for flooding of the rice/crawfish paddock.

Graceland, in the spring of 1957, at the age of 22 Elvis spend $100.000 on this house on 13.8 acres and lived there till his death in 1977. Ever since it has been a museum and is open to the public.

In Memphis we did the whole Elvis and music thing with a visit to Graceland the recording studios and famous Beale Street, lots of fun.

Bealestreet at night, the strip from 2nd to 4th Street hops with clubs, restaurants, souvenir shops and neon signs and.........hopefull singers.

A serious visitor to Memphis has to visit Sunstudios a historic landmark which started in 1950 and has recorded many famous musicians, Elvis being one of them.

Singing in the studio with Elvisses microphone! Still did not sound any better.

We have had to stop our website photo's for this month in Memphis although we went on to Nashville, Kentucky, Colombus, Louisville, and Indianapolis but the photo's will not upload to our site. So we have left them out and will get it fixed and share them with you at a later stage.

Have fun and if you want to look at June that is up too, without any problems!

May 2010

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