A tourist day

As planned, I headed out today in quest for some Louisiana pecans.  (I say peh-cons, some people say pee-cans, and there are several other pronunciations.)

First up was Natchitoches (pronounced knack-eh-tish) Pecans at Little Eva Plantation.  I was hoping for some fresh roasted nuts, but it seems this is not the season.  October until January is the time for those.  Oh well, who knew?  Not me.  I didn’t end up empty handed however.

The pecan trees are just leafing out, and it looks like there’ll be another crop next fall.  I was able to purchase some honey-roasted pecans along with some dark chocolate coated pecans, and just couldn’t pass up a luscious pecan roll and praline pecan patty.  Hey!  I’ve run out of sponge candy, and nuts are more nutritious than sugar is, right?

Did you notice all the purple flowers in front of the pecan orchard above?  Well, these flowers are blooming all over the roadsides here in Louisiana.  I know they’re not bluebonnets, but I’m not sure what they are.  At any rate, they’re beautiful.

There are two pecan plantations each located on opposite sides of Hwy 1.  I had hoped to visit both, but the Louisiana Pecan Plantation appeared to be closed up tight.  The lady at Little Eva’s told me that it had been sold last fall to new owners.  They apparently didn’t understand all the work involved in raising pecans, and shut down for good last December.  That’s a shame.

The next stop on my tourist expedition was the Grand Ecore Visitor Center.  As you can see, it’s an Army Corp of Engineers project along the Red River. 

The Red River empties into the Mississippi River.  There’s a lot of history in this area about how the Red River impacted early settlement here.  This is a very nice visitor center, and as usual, I learned something new for the day.

There are four ports, so far, along the Red River from Shreveport until it gets to the mighty Mississippi.  Apparently there is a lot of barge traffic along this river.  That was my learning point for the day.

I’ve never thought much about barges and commerce, but this visual brought it home to me.  Each barge can carry as much as 15 railcars and 58 18-wheelers!

Think of all the savings in fuel, and so much less pollution.  That was amazing to me.  There are lots of other displays here, and I especially enjoyed the interactive presentation about eight specific individuals that have lived and explored here over the last 300 or so years.

After my time inside, I stepped out the back door to this view on the observation deck of the visitors center.

        Can’t really get over how brown the rivers are here compared to the sky blue colors I see up north.

I had one more stop on my itinerary today, but I’ll save that for a separate post.  I’ll probably talk about that tomorrow as it seems I may be sitting out some severe storms tomorrow rather than moving on.  I’ll just see how things look in the morning.

I do want to say, though, that my biggest challenge here has been learning to pronounce Natchitoches correctly.  I want to just sound it out, and knack-eh-tish just doesn’t compute!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy