Friday we had a pretty short drive ahead of us, just 150 miles west to Natchitoches. My friend from Louisiana taught me how to say that many years ago, and it isn’t what you think. It’s “Nach-a-tish”. Yes, really! It kind of comes out more like Nackadish. I need a Louisianan to tell me how to pronounce Worshestershire sauce, because they’re really good at eliminating syllables. I remember working with people in the south, and my name lost a syllable, and I was just “Kar’n. 😉
I saw that the American Queen was still at Natchez. I wonder if they really use the paddlewheel for propulsion or if it’s just for looks? This is a big giant river, and the level came up a few feet just while we’ve been here. Rain and snow melt all the way to Canada affects the water level here.
Mid-way across the river, we found ourselves in Louisiana again.
Originally when I planned to come to Natchitoches, I thought we’d stay in the nearby National Forest. There are some rustic, free campgrounds there and we could ride Kawi a bit. But since it’s been rainy and is going to rain while we’re here, I erased that plan and chose a pecan orchard instead. Yep – the Pecan Orchard RV park. THOSE are pecan trees. They are everywhere in this area of the country, and interestingly are still bare like winter. There’s no sign of life on them for spring yet. We would have full utility hook-ups here which will be nice.
They even have a swimming pool, but it was a little too cool to use it… both air and water temp. We did get Kawi out of the living room since we plan to stay for three nights. You can see our set-up, just beyond the fence.
Aaaaaand, a mini golf! Although we didn’t play. It was kind of strange that the whole time we were here, there was no park host or anybody that we ever saw that checked up on stuff. 🤷♀️
We were all settled in by 2:00, so decided to go into town to see what is there.
We first went to the Visitor’s Center, which is right in the old historic district. The town is set right on the Cane River, and has a cute historic vibe. One of the “attractions” is the old Mercantile stores, Kaffie-Frederick, so we checked it out.
Yep – it’s one of those General Mercantile stores, like an 1850’s version of Walmart. Everything from kids wagons to clothes to electrical fuses and pick axes. It was fun and interesting to wander through.
Once we’d walked past all the boutiques and restaurants, I owed Kenny a beer, so I found the local brewery – Flying Heart Brewing. It took us forever to get there, only one mile from downtown. The little historic downtown is set along the river, and there are two bridges that cross the river. In mid-afternoon, traffic of people coming into town to get across those two bridges was brutal. Our light would turn green – we wanted to go straight. But everybody in front of us wanted to turn left to cross the river, but the bridge was already full of traffic from the people crossing our street, so there was no place for our left turners to go. Grrr! It took about 20 minutes to get through one stop light! sheesh! Once we got to the brewery, we were surprised at it’s setting. It was a huge place in some kind of industrial lot. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any beer that I liked. Their milk stout was sour, and that was weird. 😝
We had a storm Friday night, with thunder, lightening, and tornado warnings. 😳. The wind really rocked us for awhile, but thankfully no twisters here. We heard about a devastating tornado that hit about 200 miles northeast of us in Mississippi, where several people were killed. Ugh – I don’t want to live in tornado country! At least with hurricanes in Florida, we know well in advance that they’re coming.
On Saturday, the plan was to go see some local plantations. The Cane River National Heritage Area is known for its historic plantations, Creole architecture, and was where the French and Spanish colonies crossed paths. The National Park Service manages two plantations here. The first we went to was the Oakland Plantation, which consists of the main house and there are still 17 outbuildings, which is unheard of after 200 years – especially surviving the Civil War. The plantation was founded in 1785 on a Spanish land grant, and originally grew crops of tobacco and indigo. After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the main crop became the more lucrative cotton.
The first building we noticed as we entered the property was this, which was the carpenter’s shop. I was intrigued by the rought hewn timbers and the way they are notch-fitted together!
We were invited into the store. All of these items are original to the store, which operated until the early 1980’s!! Back in the sharecrop days, the tenants would come in an get items ‘on credit’. At the end of the year, their ‘income’ to the plantation was weighed against their ‘purchases’, and often times, they owed more than they earned, so they were indebted to the plantation and continued to stay as tenants.
Hand picked cotton is full of plant stuff! Lots of seeds and leaves and sticks.
This was the main house, which has been added onto throughout the centuries. It was interesting to see the 1950’s kitchen that was added on – it was like standing in my grandma’s kitchen! The original house was just four rooms on the main level, and was built by enslaved laborers out of cypress wood with “bousillage-filled’ walls. This was a combination of things like horse hair, grass, and clay. Once hardened, the walls would be covered with a white plaster. The main floor of the house was elevated on pilars, which is the level you see above the fence.
This is looking out toward the river from the front door. There was this big entry garden, then a big lawn through the giant Live Oak trees, a road, then the river.
We went to to the street which goes along the river, to look back at the house. These oak trees were planted in 1825, making them 200 years old!! They actually serve a real purpose besides looking grand as an alley toward the house. Yes, they provide shade, but that shade also provides a cooler ground temperature which draws a breeze from the river. The house was designed (as all southern plantation houses are), to encourage flow-through ventilation. It gets miserably hot here in the summer.
These buggers are giant!
And it IS an impressive grand alley view, too.
A park ranger gave us a tour of the house, and picture taking was OK. The only thing I took was this one of the bedroom, since this furniture was from the 1800’s. The house was lived in by several generations of the family, and the whole living room was 1950’s vintage. The quilt on the bed is original from the 1800’s – the park service found it in a trunk.
This shows part of the house being open underneath. There was a section under the children’s bedroom that was walled in, with a staircase that went up to the bedroom with a trapdoor. When the lady of the house called, an enslaved woman who lived on the dirt floor below the bedroom would come up the stairs to tend to the child, without having to come through the house. It is the brutal honest ugly truth which is part of our country’s history, that slaves were treated as property, much like a horse or cow. The park ranger had a hard time telling us about it, but I agree with her: We don’t want to forget, or hide from the truth, but learn from it so that we don’t behave that way again.
The only part of this plantation that was ‘hosted’ by a ranger was the main house, and her tour was free. We did talk with another ranger in the store and he gave us some history of it. The rest of the area was just a self tour with signs to read.
Some of the outbuildings had roofing material for siding. We walked all over the plantation looking at buildings. Some of these buildings were originally slave quarters. Then after emancipation (freeing of slaves), they became tenant or sharecroppers quarters (freed people who lived and worked on the plantation).
This was interesting! It is called a Pigeonnier, or pigeon house. It is where pigeons were housed and bred, and served to emphasize the wealth of the planter, as young pigeons were eaten as a delicacy called “squab”. This plantations had two, and were generally placed near the front of the property so that people could see how wealthy the owner was.
This plantation was even used in some Hollywood films, including John Wayne’s The Horse Soldiers in 1959.
After we’d visited all of the buildings at Oakland, we drove down the road to Melrose Plantation. This one is privately owned, and tours are not free, so we purchased a tour and got to learn about this place’s history. I liked these old buildings, showing the rough hewn timber with notch fitting on the corners.
This one is a bit more rustic, with that mud type mortar between the boards.
We saw these kinds of chairs all over town in Natchitoches. I don’t know what the story is about them, but they all have names in the metal at the bottom back at the seat.
This was the “African house”. Quite an interesting roof, huh? One of the primary stories of this plantation is the story of Clementine Hunter, a black woman who was once a cook at Melrose. She could not read or write, but she became a celebrated folk artist. The top floor of this building has big 4’x8’ murals of plantation life painted by her.
The gardens are really pretty, but not nearly as elaborate as they were originally. Our tour guide said that this place used to be like The Secret Garden, but it was too much for the current owners to keep up with.
This giant oak tree has “resurrection ferns” on it. The ranger at Oakland told us about them since it had rained last night and they were all green today. These little ferns can lose up to 75% of their moisture, and look all shriveled up and brown like they’re dead. Then when exposed to water, they come back to life and turn luxurious green again. Most other plants can only lose about 10% of their moisture before dying.
This dining room was in the bottom floor of the big house. I didn’t take any other pictures, but this one showed some cool stuff. Originally this “floor” of the house was open, which was by design to prevent flooding of the house from the river. This plantation changed ownership several times in its history. A German family owned it at one time, and they finished the lower level. The big beams going right to left are hand hewn cypress. Cypress is an extremely hard wood that even termites won’t get into. The smaller beams that run away to the far wall was an earlier addition to the main house.
Here is the front of the main house built in 1832. The two end pieces were add ons. The history of this place was very interesting and it was hard to take it all in. There were various families and stories throughout the years since it was founded in 1796. But the original founder was Louis Metoyer, one of ten French-African children of slave Marie CoinCoin and Claude Metoyer. It is a very interesting story. Marie was born a slave into the household of Natchitoches founder Louise de St Denis. She was a housekeeper/slave for Mr St Denis, and when she was 26, he leased her to Mr. Claude Metoyer. Marie (black slave) and Claude (white French) had a 19 year relationship and 10 children. He eventually purchased her and several of their children, and granted them freedom. This house and plantation was built by one of their sons – a once slave.
After our tour of Melrose, we went on down the road to the Magnolia Plantation which is the other one owned by the National Park Service. However, the main house is privately owned, so the park service owns just the out buildings. It was kind of strange, because there was nobody here, but many buildings were open. I don’t know where the ranger was?
These are eight of the original 70 slave quarters buildings. I walked out there, but they were all locked up.
On our drive back to the RV park, there were pecan trees everywhere. Some orchards like this, and some just here an there in people’s yards. They are a very common tree here!
We enjoyed the plantation tours and history, we saw the downtown and the awful traffic there. The weather forecast was calling for more stormy rainy weather on Sunday afternoon. My pencil plan had us staying here until Monday, then making a long 360 mile drive to Inks Lake State Park in Texas. We decided that since we have already seen everything here that we were interested in, why not split that drive up into two shorter days, and go stay somewhere in-between tomorrow. The farther west, the better the weather will be. So I found us a nice National Forest campground about 140 miles from here. I couldn’t make a reservation for tomorrow, but it showed over a dozen ‘first-come-first-serve’ sites available. We decided that even though we’ve paid to be here tomorrow night, we’d rather avoid the yucky stormy weather that is coming, and a super long drive. And it’s only $10 to stay at the National Forest campground – with water & electric!! Time to erase a plan and make a new one.