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.