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.