We started the day off in the Barataria Preserve section of the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park. This is a must see NPS site as it provides trails that take you through a swamp/bayou. Due to recent rains only the trails that consisted of boardwalks and pavement were accessible. So after a walk through the visitor center display, we headed out on the 4-mile round trip walk (consisting of 4 trails that connect) through the wetlands. This turned out to be a wonderful walk and very easy to do as it is all flat. If you are in the area, please take the time to do the whole walk. Along the way we were in awe of the wetlands and the display of life that is so different from Arizona. There is one section that got a little boring – the Palmetto Trail – but stick it out if you go because it is so worth it in the end. The second mile of the walk is amazing as the scenery is very calming and peaceful. On this portion of the walk we saw a nutria (non-native rodent), approximately 5 foot alligator, a turtle, and an egrit. On the walk back, we saw a swamp rabbit.

Once back to the car, we headed on to the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center, another portion of the Jean Lafitte NHP in Thibodaux, LA. This unit focuses on the Acadians; the ranger was very informative on the history of how the Acadians came to be here in LA and helped provide a good segue to the exhibit. The cultural center has a very well-designed exhibit and again is worth seeing to learn more about the Acadians and their unique culture. We wrapped up the visit to this unit by walking through an exhibit of paintings from a local artist. Kim found a couple of paintings featuring “Big Mama” that she would loved to have purchased.

Once again we hit the road, heading to our hotel for the night in Luling, LA. We checked in and took a nap prior to heading into the French Quarter for NYE. You know you are getting old when you have to take a nap in order to enjoy NYE.

Because it was NYE, and adding in the Sugar Bowl crowd, we figured we actually would not be able to find parking but we did. And it was FREE! We walked through the French Quarter, looking for a relatively inexpensive place to have dinner and after some time walking along the streets of this unique section of the city, we decided to return to Oceana for a second time. The food is THAT good.

We once again found it hard to decide on what to order but ultimately went with trying different items than what we ate the night before. Kim ordered the blackened chicken platter and Scott went with the seafood po’boy as he had been told it was a must have if in LA. The blackened chicken was ridiculously delicious. Scott found his meal to be just on the “ok” side but was glad to be able to say he had tried it.

A little after 11pm we headed out to the streets carrying our “drinks” (aka Coke and Dr Pepper) and made our way toward the river. This was an adventure because basically at one point you just couldn’t move. And yes there was a lot of naked breasts as women tried to entice people on the balconies to throw down some beads. Despite the crowd and noise it was great to be in NOLA for NYE.

We finally made our way to the river and found a good spot to view the fireworks with 12 minutes to spare. At the stroke of midnight we all yelled Happy New Year and then the fireworks began. And NOLA puts on a great show.

After the fireworks ended we made our way to the Café Du Monde, a coffee stand that had been running continuously since 1860. This was on Kim’s must do list. The café was super crowded as everyone decided that’s where they wanted to be as well after the fireworks. We opted for the “to go” line. Kim enjoyed a café au lait and Scott a hot chocolate. We also got an order of beignets, that we saved for the next morning.

To top the night off we walked all of Bourbon St and enjoyed the crowd, which was surprisingly light considering the circumstances. We got back to the car just in time for the rain to start and drove back to the hotel.

Spending NYE in NOLA was a pretty awesome experience overall.

We had already driven a substantial portion of the parkway during our 2008 summer roadtrip, so we knew what to expect. The pleasant drive offers plenty to stop and gaze at. We took full advantage, stopping as many times as we could during the more than five hours we spent on the parkway. The most surprising was at Emerald Mound, the second-largest temple mound in the continental United States. It was pretty amazing.

Unfortunately, we didn’t quite have enough time to see all that we wanted to at Natchez Trace, as we also needed to stop at Natchez National Historic Park. We made it just in time for the last guided tour of the Melrose mansion, the best preserved antebellum mansion in the South. The tour was quick but enjoyable, and we wandered the grounds for a bit afterwards. The Park has three units: an old fort that’s not open to the public, the Melrose, and the home of William Johnson, a former slave turned slave-owning barber. Yeah…weird, huh? We ran out of time and weren’t able to get to the Johnson home before it closed, though we did take some photos of the exterior and read more about the site and the man.

A little disappointed, we started the drive towards Baton Rouge, our destination for the night. It rained most of the drive – hopefully that’s all the rain we encounter on the trip, in spite of the forecast. We arrived in Baton Rouge and looked for an obvious hotel chain to steal some wifi and find a good hotel deal. It took a surprisingly long time to find a hotel; I think we were already outside the city limits when we were able to stop. Having already passed the city, we looked onward to New Orleans, found a nice but inexpensive hotel, ate some dinner, and finished the day’s drive.

Tomorrow and Wednesday, we’ll hit the Jean LaFitte National Historic Park and Preserve (there are several subunits) and the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park, and hopefully experience a bit of what the city of NOLA has to offer too. We’re still looking for a hotel for New Year’s Eve.

The visitor center was small but decent, and the park ranger was very helpful. In fact, it was a little creepy how involved she wanted to be in our visitor center experience – she’d routinely leave the front desk to wander over and start talking to us about the site while we were reading one of the displays.

We had two main options for seeing the site: a 2.6 mile walking trail or a 2 mile drive. We decided to start with the drive, then hike a bit from a visitor contact station at the midpoint. In actuality, we spent most of the time driving with frequent stops for pictures.

The site protects several earthworks – most notably six concentric semi-circle ridges (best seen from the air) and a huge bird-shaped mound. It’s one of the oldest and most significant earthworks in the Western hemisphere. Specifically, it demonstrated a major advance in the sophistication of peoples in the “New World.” Unfortunately, the site wasn’t discovered until someone saw it in an aerial photo, after decades and decades of plowing. There was even a state highway built through the site. Argh.

We drove through and took photos, even though it’s incredibly hard to see the ridges in 2009. The main mound is very impressive – I’m not sure the scale is easily understood in pictures. It was estimated to require more than 10 million 12-gallon baskets of dirt to complete. Wow. We parked and walked up one side and back down the other, then ditched our plans to walk the trail through the ridges and to a couple of the smaller mounds. It was very cold and windy, and we had already spent an hour longer there than anticipated. It was a good idea, as the ridges are barely noticeable; some of them are only a foot or two higher by this point.

After leaving Poverty Point we drove the hour or so to Vicksburg National Military Park. Vicksburg was the longest campaign of the Civil War and helped to seal the fate of the South. The Union’s grand plan for victory in the war was to cut off the foreign trade routes South, which meant controlling the coast and Mississippi River. Vicksburg was the last missing piece in that strategy.

The site itself, like the other four major Civil War battlefields, is littered with granite monuments detailing the troops movements during the battle. There were also some very special “state” monuments, including the fabulous Illinois monument which seems like it should be in Washington, DC. The only structure original to the battlefield is the Shirley House, which is currently closed for stabilization. Speaking of being closed (or open, as the case may be), we ran across an odd sign as we entered the visitor center. If you go to Vicksburg, make sure to watch the introductory film at the visitor center; it’s one of the better ones out there.

The highlight of the park, however, has to be the USS Cairo. Located and salvaged more than a hundred years after its sinking near the battlefield, the only remaining Civil War-era armored battleship is really something to see. Seriously.

Unfortunately, by this time we were quickly losing daylight and the park was getting ready to close, so we had to breeze through the last part of the driving tour before heading to Jackson. We gave Priceline a chance at redemption and Shatner came through for us with a nice and quite friendly Courtyard by Marriott for only a few bucks more than the craphole we stayed in last night. Well worth the added cash, no doubt about it.

Tomorrow we drive down the Natchez Trace Parkway to its terminus, then tour the two antebellum homes preserved at Natchez National Historic Park. We’ll stay in Baton Rouge or New Orleans.

The first stop at Cane River Creole NHP was the Magnolia Plantation.  We walked the self guided trail, listening to the site descriptions via our cell phone.  See cell phones ARE important.  The National Park Service has established a way for the information about stops on self guided tours to be accessed via cell phones.  It works pretty well.  At this plantation we could go inside what used to be the overseer’s house, a former slave quarters building, blacksmith’s shop, and gin barn.   The main house is still owned and occupied by the descendants of the original owners and is not open to the public.  While here, we (mainly Kim) picked pecans.  The NPS allows up to a gallon of pecans to be picked by one party, not for resale use. Kim thought it was cool and managed to fill up a container provided by the NPS.

We made our way to the second, and possibly the more well known, unit of this park called the Oakland Plantation.  We walked around some of the grounds before Scott began feeling ill.  After checking out the store, we went back to the car where Scott tried to relax, eat something and get over the strange feeling he was having.  Due to how he felt, Scott skipped the guided tour, leaving Kim to attend by herself.  The tour was worth attending.  The house was occupied by descendants until 1998 when they vacated and the NPS took over.  From the porch, we could look down into the “bottle garden” and see the ends of the wine bottles the family used as edging in their garden beds.  It was an interesting way for the French Catholic family who built the main house to reuse all of their empty wine bottles.

Because the house was in continued use by the family, there were some obvious updates that occurred over time.  The main examples of more modern items were the updated bathroom and 60s style kitchen.  During the depression, the family moved the cook’s house further away from the main house and made it into a hunting/fishing cabin to make money to keep the land with the family.  At another time, again to make money to keep the land with the family, they opened up a little museum of farming equipment under the house.

After the tour, Scott met up with Kim, as he was feeling a little better, and we finished out the tour of the grounds.

Then Kim took over driving, heading toward Monroe, where we are staying tonight.  After driving 30 miles south instead of the east direction we were supposed to be going in (don’t ask) Kim managed to get us to Monroe by 7pm, only about an hour later then we should have arrived. 

After deciding on a fairly cheap Days Inn for tonight, we scoped out the eating scene.  Originally we were going with Subway but apparently they do not exist in Monroe anymore (Note: We saw NO fast food joints here).  After some debate, we decided on Olive Garden and shared a pasta dish along with unlimited salad.  The hope now is for an early night tonight so we can wake up early and be at Poverty Point National Monument by the 9am opening. If we can make it to Vicksburg as well, then we will be staying most likely in Jackson, MS tomorrow night.

Overall, today was decent as it was great to finally see an NPS site that had more “meat” to it.  We are looking forward to tomorrow.

After leaving Van Horn, we continued east with only a couple of short stops on our way to San Antonio. We were there last winter but ran out of time to check out Riverwalk. Our original intention was to have Christmas dinner in the city, since we figured that there would be a selection of open restaurants to choose from. As we got closer and started to research our options, however, we had trouble finding a single place – beyond Denny’s of course – that was clearly open. So we called one of the nicer hotels near Riverwalk and asked the concierge, who verified that several restaurants were indeed open in the area.

After parking, we strolled down the walkway and scouted the place out a bit. We still didn’t notice anything open, in spite of it being crowded with people. After stopping into another hotel, we were directed to an Italian restaurant named Paesanos. We had a very nice meal and even took home some leftovers. We walked back to car and headed towards Houston, a smile on our faces and full stomachs.

Since we had spent most of the holiday driving, we decided to check out a nicer hotel for the night. We tried the Name Your Own Price feature of Priceline, landing a 4-star hotel for only $51. Or so we thought. When we arrived, we realized that we’d have to pay $16 to “self-park” our own vehicle in the garage and pay another $11 for basic wifi access (the hotel didn’t even have it available in the lobby). To add to the insult, the room would lack a refrigerator and microwave, which meant that we wouldn’t be able to eat our leftovers. Annoyed, we headed to bed early for what we hoped would result in an early start to the following day.

Both Kim and I started the day out pretty tired – ok, very tired. Kim was at work until after 3am and each of us got less than 3 hours of sleep. When I arrived an hour later than expected, she had slept through her alarm and still had some wet laundry that needed to dry before being packed. We grabbed breakfast and ran a few errands while the laundry finished, managing to hit the road about four hours later than originally planned. Not a big deal; I can’t recall the last time we’ve left on time for a roadtrip, and we always manage to make the time up.

Kim tried to catch up on sleep while I drove east. We stopped in Lordsburg at a rest area to take a quick hour nap. Unfortunately, when I awoke, the car battery was completely dead. My dad had taped the headlights into the on position so he wouldn’t forget to turn them on at night (don’t ask…). That works ok when the key is removed and the lights automatically go out. But it works far less well when you still have the key set in the aux position like I did.

So, it’s Christmas eve and we’re stuck at a vacant rest area in New Mexico. Nice. After flagging down a few rest area patrons for jumper cables and plotting strategy, the car muscled up enough juice to get started. We hightailed it over to the local truck stop and I bought jumper cables while Kim drove around the town for 20 minutes trying to recharge the battery. I got a hold of the local auto parts place (about 80 miles away) and talked to a Toyota mechanic in San Diego (thank you Pacific Time Zone!) about our prospects for getting stuck again. We then gassed up the car and…it started. Whew!

We made it to the auto parts store, which tested the battery and gave the thumbs up. We stopped in Las Cruces for a nice steak dinner and proceeded along to Van Horn, Texas. The town’s famous for its Chuy’s restaurant, which is such a favorite of John Madden that he’s dubbed it the “All-Madden Hall of Fame.” They’ve reserved a special chair in his honor, along with what amounts to a Madden shrine.

The town is about 2 hours short of what we had hoped to accomplish today, but considering the late start and battery trouble, I’m feeling good about it. Hopefully, tomorrow’s drive will be less stressful.

The memorial, which is mostly comprised of a small interpretative visitor center, an art gallery, a large amphitheater, and a outdoor mural adorning one side of the building, is situated in a nice park with some other outdoor features, like ramadas, grills, and some other unidentified concrete structures. It’s actually built on land that was once Mexican territory, but had shifted to US hands as the Rio Grande River – the international boundary – shifted it’s course. And that’s really the point of the national memorial to begin with. The site, whose history and importance was greater than we expected, tells the story of how the US and Mexico surveyed, determined, challenged, challenged again, challenged yet again, and finally resolved, its common boundary along what is Texas. The story is too complicated to detail here, but it’s actually a fascinating tale – and one that has lots of implications for the southwest.

After touring the museum, getting our stamps and buying our requisite pin, we chatted for awhile with the Park Ranger, the lone one on duty at the site. Side note: we couldn’t check out the main gallery because there wasn’t a second ranger on duty to staff that building. We had a good chat about some parks, some annoyances of the park service, and the promise of better days ahead. We then took a few more shots outside and left, pleasantly surprised at the site that had until then been of one the banes of our quest. We headed onward to Fort Bowie National Historic Site, in southeastern Arizona, which was next in line – both on our trip agenda, and in the frustrating way we hadn’t yet visited it.

Just a few minutes into driving, however, we realized that Fort Bowie – which requires a hike just to get to the visitor center and ruins – would take a good three hours. Added to the three hours it would take to get there, plus time for lunch, and we would be hiking back to the car in the dark, not to mention arriving home pretty late and well after the playoff football games were over. We quickly decided to pass by Fort Bowie once again, instead tacking it onto a Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument trip we’re planning for the Presidents Day weekend.

And thus marked the last official stop of our National Parks of Texas roadtrip. We made our way back into Arizona listening to the early NFL game using streaming internet radio on my iPhone. A stop for lunch, and another stop for an afternoon snack at Eeegee’s in Marana, and yet another stop in Casa Grande for Kim to exchange some clothes, and…that 6.5 hour drive from El Paso took a bit longer. However, we finally made it home – and in enough time to watch most of the Colts-Chargers game – a little tired but happy to have completed yet another successful national park roadtrip.

Over the next few days, we’ll work to get the final trip summary and photos posted. Check out the trip summary page for updates.

When we arrived at Carlsbad Caverns, however, we learned that there were indeed some tours available – including a special “holiday” tour of King’s Palace by lantern. Even though it would add an extra day onto the trip, we pounced on the opportunity. We quickly made our way down the trail to the natural entrance – an incredibly impressive way to experience the cave. After the 750-foot descent, we wandered through the first half of the Big Room self-guided tour before grabbing a quick snack and making our way to the guided tour meeting place. This tour was a lot of fun – it’s a much different experience to explore a developed cave with only lantern-light. Kim had an especially good time.

After the ninety-minute tour was over, we headed back to finish the back end of the Big Room. With growling stomachs, we took the elevator up to the visitor center, had lunch in the adjoining restaurant, and got our passport stamp and pin.

We then hopped in the car and drove back west to McKittrick Canyon in Guadalupe Mountains National Park to get a passport stamp that we had missed the previous day. Unfortunately, the visitor contact station is closed, and, windy as ever, we decided to skip any short hikes in the area. It was late in the afternoon at this point, and it was obvious that we would not make it to Chamizal before they closed – and we certainly wouldn’t make it home tonight.

We ended up staying in a Ramada in El Paso, a decent suite room that comes complete with kitchenette and mini living room. After eating dinner out, we returned to the room to watch the conclusion of a bowl game and plot tomorrow’s schedule. The plan is to arrive at Chamizal National Memorial across town at 10am when they open, spend approximately an hour there, and then start heading home.

Unless we’re feeling anxious to get home early, we may stop at Fort Bowie National Historic Site, the only NPS Arizona site we haven’t done yet. We’re hoping to start working on our trip photos and summary page this weekend.

After sleeping in a bit and enjoying our nice hotel room, we loaded up and hit the road. A few hours of driving later, we found ourselves at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. A very windy Guadalupe Mountains – gusts were above 55mph with sustained winds of 15-20 mph. We did the visitor center and headed off to do a 4-mi hike to Devil’s Hall. Less than a mile into it, we turned around and headed back to the car – it was just so cold and windy that hiking wasn’t much fun. Instead of hiking up the canyon, which seemed to be funneling the wind down towards us at an incredible pace, we headed out to a couple of shorter trails on the foothills.

They were pretty short, but we still enjoyed them and have our eyes on returning – at a less windy future date – and doing some longer hikes up Guadalupe Mountain. The park, even though it’s on the road to Carlsbad and about an hour away, sees less than half of the visitation. That’s a shame, but probably due in part to its low profile and lack of easy, family-oriented trails and overlooks. Instead, most of its trails are long and its scenic drives of the 4WD variety. It also boasts the largest point in Texas, plus an iconic peak named El Capitan (though it still doesn’t hold a candle to the original). At 5700 feet, the park is relatively high and sees snow – it also contains the highest stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route.

After our short hikes, it was getting late and we headed on to our hotel in Carlsbad, a pretty crappy Super 8. Tomorrow we’ll be hitting Carlsbad Caverns National Park, doing the natural entrance hike and touring the Big Room. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get tickets to any guided tours, so we’ll have to save that part of Carlsbad until our next trip out here to see ASU play in the Sun Bowl. After Carlsbad, we’re heading back to El Paso to mark Chamizal National Memorial off our list. From there, it’s about a seven hour drive home. That puts us back home a day earlier than originally planned, but it’ll be nice to have some more time to decompress before the next year really gets started. Also, we’ve gone over budget on this trip due to our hotel stays after we ditched our camping plans because I was sick, so it’ll be nice to save some cash.

I’m not sure if we’ll get a chance to post an update about tomorrow’s events – we’ll return home pretty late at night – but we’ll get a full trip summary up soon on the trips page. Thanks for following along, and Happy New Year.

After arriving in Big Bend, our first order of business was making sure that we hit all five visitor centers to get all of the passport stamps for the unit. At the first visitor center, we chatted with the ranger about our options for the day and night. Apparently, we’re here for the busiest week of visitation – not only is the lodge full, but the campgrounds will be full by early afternoon. That presented us with a bit of a challenge, as we had decided to keep our plans flexible until we saw how much there was to do there. We now had to make a quick decision about whether to camp and stay an additional day (and not doing Carlsbad), or leaving the park at dusk and moving on to a motel in Alpine, 100 miles away. After considering our options, we decided to get the hotel in Alpine, and if we were feeling bad about missing something at Big Bend we could simply get up early and make the drive in.

In the end, we made the right decision – we were able to see most of what we had wanted to, and even though we didn’t get to do any of the hikes we had planned, we definitely got a sense of the park. We’ll be back – next time with a kayak – and can hit the trails then. Part of the decision centered around the date – it’s New Year’s Eve and we wanted to be in hotel with television and internet. Earlier in the morning, I had reserved a Best Western via my iPhone. Since I barely had coverage at the visitor center, I had some trouble getting the reservation made. In fact, I lost the room I was reserving in the middle of the confirmation process – leaving no additional rooms available at the lowest price point. In the end, however, I was able to finangle the staff to give us a better room – a king suite – for the lowest room rate.

After dropping off the bags and enjoying the great room for a few minutes, we headed across the street to the Buffalo Rose restaurant across the street. Though the service was a bit slow, the food was plentiful and we enjoyed the dinner. After that, it was off for dessert and then back to the room to watch some tv, get online, celebrate the new year, and relax after another long day.

Tomorrow we’re off to Carlsbad Caverns National Park.