Why I'm in the Smokies

Granted, there are many reasons we bought a house in Asheville, and they are similar reasons to why I want a getaway home in Nederland, Colorado. Wonderful mountains, gorgeous lakes and waterfalls, cool town atmospheres and the perfect weather. I actually prefer the snow in the Rockies over the lack of snow in the Smokies, but it's nice to have such temperate weather in Asheville too.

I digress....

As I had my morning walk, I could not help but be struck with the beauty of Beaver Lake as the fog remained from the early morning before starting to roll off and up the mountains. After being too sick to even walk much last week, it was extra nice to simply be out ... running errands ... taking my lake walk in sweater weather .... and simply appreciating life.

...and when I get home? Yes, it is sweater weather in the morning and evenings after all, so there's nothing more relaxing and calming for me than turning my head from working to see this scene, slipping over to the rocker for a cuppa, and then migrating back to work.

I always knew the day would come where this flow of life would be normal, and thankfully we were patient with the timing, place, and planning. And lucky.

My Great Colorado Deluge Experience

Coming from the sunny and humid New Orleans the previous week, it was an even greater shock to transition to not only much cooler temperatures than normal for a September Boulder, but also a very very wet one. The first day of constant rain was mostly just 40 people sitting at tables with an attitude of "I'll nick an umbrella from the hotel". The second day was glum for most of us, and nearly suicidal for most local Bouderites as rain for more than an hour is typically the maximum. The third and fourth days of constant rain was a growing empathy for how drowning rats must feel with a certain "who cares" if one has an umbrella or not. It wasn't just a little sprinkle. I mean RAIN. Constantly. Add dam breaks in a couple counties and .... well, you can imagine.

Personally, my heart was crushed. I did go out for the conference and it was well worth it, but secretly, I was very homesick for Colorado and needed the "other mountains" in my life. Not only could I not see them despite being right next to them, but I had no way to access them even by foot. Let's just say the pathways were blocked....

At least I managed to get into Idaho Springs and Nederland for our mountain village "fixes" before the Deluge actually started. Eric got his pinball hour and I got my street wandering. Unfortunately for Eric, he fell in love with the fantasy setting machine, but it runs about 10k for the cheapest available. While it is truly awesome to hit trolls with the balls, it looks like Captain Hook will be our sole pinball entertainment at home :)

The essence of Colorado, for me, is sitting 8k feet up just outside of Nederland and staring at the gorgeous lake; something I did often while living there and that I do every time I visit, although the winter vistas are much more stunning. Someday I'll have a second home there. Some day! (Thank God that dam didn't break .... *shudder*)

Meanwhile, while we did get a taste of helping clean up from rock slides on the road, which was one of the more enjoyable and rewarding community efforts I have experienced, we were mostly trapped and wishing we were ducks. More tragic were the restaurant closures of my favourite places. Apparently the locals felt the urgent need to resolve the rivers flowing through their yards and pull their belongings from the lakes in their homes. While the absurdly huge Challenger that Eric and I rented was able to get in many more places than other vehicles, no one was traveling certain paths.....LOL....

New Orleans Review

All in all? A complete ball of fun! With breakfast starting at the bar (below was photographed at 9am) and post-dinner ending with live music, it's really difficult to improve on that. Explorations included down the peninsula to the marina south of Venice, over to the Gulf, and west where so many plantations sat beside the Mississippi. Food was divine, although my body went into complete crave mode for rabbit food and water when I returned.

Click here for full photo album.

Click here for several music clips from New Orleans.

Returning won't be hard - my favourite hangout was the coffee shoppe next to Garden District Book Shop. Add in all the wonderful little secrets that a colleague so generously shared with me, and the least I can do is return the favour! Below are the best spots in the immediate region. Click on the icons for notes.

Meanwhile, if you decide to go, make sure you do the self-walk in the Garden District, and do a toured walk in the French District. It is well worth your time with all sorts of interesting tidbits to discover.

View The Southern Adventure in a larger map

Music - The Soul of New Orleans

I cannot experience enough music. While a complete food addict and lover of history, it would not be a complete journey here in the Big Easy without the music. Thus, this post exists to convince you that it's worth your time and effort to come down for music, if nothing else. Firstly, be aware that music is everywhere and if you're on Frenchman Street, constant. Before I torture you with the pleasures of Frenchman Street though, take a listen to a night at Tipatino's Music Club. Funnily enough, I went to hear the brass band; however, the steel band blew me away. They could have played all night and I'd have been just fine.

Note for watching clips - let it buffer first!

Meanwhile, the street music is no joke. Brass band after brass band litters the French Quarter in the nicest possible way. In fact, I don't think I've seen more sousaphones in my entire life as much as I have just in the past days! Even the bars along Bourbon Street have live music pounding out regularly, allowing yourself to wander the bands much like exhibits at a museum. This example isn't the finest playing I saw, but they certainly were having fun, and it's a good view into street life here.

Now, onward to Frenchman Street, easily the best street in New Orleans, although the dreamy shoppes and boutiques on Royal Street are really close. I have posted the video clips in order of the night. I believe the quality of the music goes up in such order as well, although I have no complaints with any of them. Let's start with the honky tonk yet loveable band with a washboard at 8p. 

Here you'll find yourself watching a fantastic swing band that apparently had been playing since 6p, but ended at 10p, so I only got an hour in of the awesome music and dancing starting at 9p. I thought it was incredibly cool that the piano player was puffing on a stogie the entire time. Personally, my motivation for picking back up the dancing with Eric has skyrocketed. It wasn't too hard to imagine what 1920's New Orleans may have been like. The hour flew by with the combination of the music and the excellent dancing that was there.

Finally, I'll close with a couple of my favourites from the Uptown Jazz Orchestra; a slightly more pricey affair at $25, especially compared to the $5 or just the house rule of "1 drink per set"; however, incredibly and totally well worth it. I even got to dance with the old guy in the last video, who liked to demonstrate "aging" ... until he starts dancing. Wow. Apparently it is I who is old.

Louisiana's Haunted Plantations (book review)

Louisiana's Haunted Plantations by Jill Pascoe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

Ghosts and Pirates

While it is true that the ghost bug has bitten me rather hard, give me some credit in that if it had to happen, at least it took New Orleans, the most haunted city, and Louisiana, the state of the most haunted plantations to do it! Having always believed in ghosts since my "experience" in Hadrian's tomb (a place in Rome where I will never return), having an existing fettish over Western ghost town hunting, and always having been a freak for literature of the supernatural, it's not hard for me to get more curious.

Oak Alley (above), a rather famous, but frankly, just another one of the load of plantations in Louisiana, is supposedly haunted by a lady in black. The setting of 28 live oak trees dating back 300 years only adds to the romantic idea of ghosts. Of course, the movie setting of one of my adored supernatural writers, Anne Rice, book called An Interview of the Vampire just adds to my peaking at floorboards carefully for hatches where vampires might be sleeping. Alas, there were none. Only slightly more realistically, I picked up a book called Haunted Plantations. I am halfway through it and combined with a book called America's Great River Road for Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, a second foray into the Deep South is being planned.

My own experience with a ghost followed that evening in an old bar now called Sylvain's. This fantastic little secret has it's own mixologist concocting drinks such as prosecco and lavender with a sugar cube. Their Dead Man's Wallet was pretty amazing too with rye, port, lemon, and their own in-house cinnamon syrup. Sweet death. Speaking of death, the lights started flickering in pretty extreme measures that had no correlation with how normal flickering happens with dead bulbs (if six of the suddenly decided to go at once at least). I made a joke asking if the local ghost was making a statement. Startled with the response of "yeah, just one", I suddenly noticed the shot of alcohol being maintained on a top shelf as if it was to be drunk. It was explained to me that their ghost was quite tall, but she like her drinks, demanding a replacement at that moment. How cool! It was confirmed that the liquid does disappear at times with no ability to blame dissipation :) Besides, it's far more fun to bar-tend for a ghost. While I'm not allowing myself to start Haunted New Orleans until I'm done with Haunted Plantations, I was more than happy to commandeer this book, and others, from Anne Rice's favourite book store, Garden District Book Store.

Now pirates are equally cool, although I'm learning that our current literature puts them in a far more romantic light than we deserve. Once a blacksmith shop, the Jean Lafitte bar is full of stories in general, but especially his saving New Orleans in the War of 1812 when he agreed to work with General Andrew Jackson. It is told that the Old Absinthe House attic is where they met to agree upon terms for helping kick out the British. Saved by a pirate. Rock on! I'm extending my reading on piracy and journals from pirates in the book titled The Mammoth Book of Pirates.

New Orleans .... the long way!

New Orleans has always been a place of interest for me, especially in the food category, so living much closer than I ever had before (6 hours), I brilliantly manage to make the trip down into a massive 13 hour challenge. It was all in a great cause though .... fantastic food! Having just been to a women's entrepreneur type of conference in Seattle, I picked up the Cake n Whiskey, a great magazine full of entrepreneurial stories. The one was about Helen's Bar B Q in Brownsville, TN; a story that made me hungry immediately. Never having visited Mississippi or Louisiana before, the long way through Memphis and straight down western Mississippi was a happy excuse for Helen's.

Before Helen's, however, was of course hunger around Nashville. Since I was already on a roll for finding "amazing dives", I searched for the cheapest and highest rating place on the Find. Eat. Drink. app. Voila, Mas Tacos Por Favor popped up, adverting Mexican street food to die for. As you can see by the photos above, this is no lie. Their pulled pork tacos are the best, in my opinion.

Back to Helen though .... surviving the snack attack in Nashville without lowering one's self down to fast food, BBQ was a mere two hours to go. Every mile and moment was utterly worth it. Essentially a roadside stand with four walls, this heaven will be well worth the 14 hour round trip for future BBQ cravings when my own Asheville Luella's down the street simply doesn't cut it. Both Helen and her husband was there, and they are possibly some of the nicest people on the planet. 

Completely stuffed to the gills with the earlier tacos (really should have had just one) and now BBQ with the appropriate pairing with extra crispy Cheetos, it is off on the adventure through Mississippi. Granted, the highway part of it was no different than other southern states, but the detour on the Natchez Trace Parkway between Jackson and Natchez was truly beautiful. While easily distracted with Indian mounds that were starting to appear around 942 AD, there was even older history to see with the petrified forest, otherwise understood as a 35 million year old logjam. Below is one of the many amazing specimens.

Now safely in New Orleans, more posts will be coming on the beautiful and delicious locale. However, before I close, if you are even down close to Fort Gibson in Mississippi, you must stop. When General Grant, from the Civil War, said that the town was too beautiful to burn, he wasn't kidding. The town is antebellum heaven.