Tues - Oak Alley

These first few pictures are actually still from Laura.  The buildings shown here are some of the slave homes at the back of the plantation.  They would be found between the home and the crops.

Again, you can see one of the pots used for boiling down the sugar cane next to one of the slave homes.

Our tour guide, Rose, was telling us about how the tales of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox were collected.  The slaves had brought lots of folktales with them and  told them in the evenings to their families. This story was first recorded by Joel Chandler Harris in his collection of American African fables, the Uncle Remus stories. Harris retold the fables in the dialect used by the African slaves. Later retellings have been in standard English, which makes the tales easier to read but takes away the charm of the original.

Do you know what is in this jar?  This is the boiled down sugar cane syrup that made the southern plantations so rich.

Our next stop was just a few miles down the road - the Oak Alley Plantation.  We ate lunch here before we started our tour.  It consisted of all the southern foods, including crayfish, shrimp, sausage, jambalaya, gumbo, okra, red beans and rice, etc. 

As we walked to the plantation home we stopped to look at a few displays - this one was of the machinery, pulled by mules or oxen, that was used to harvest the cane.

We also saw a display of what a civil war officers tent would have looked like.  Hard to imagine they would carry the furniture with them during the war.

In the next building were two restored vehicles - this one was a Ford truck so Gary thought I had better make sure we got a picture to show Jason!

 
The dining room of the home shows a few key differences with Laura - the walls are painted white instead of bold colors.  The fan over the middle of the table was operated by one of the slaves while people ate their meals.  A bucket of ice was often positioned below the fan to help cool the diners.  An early form of air conditioning!

The master bedroom had the cradle for the baby as well as a bed for the house slave to watch over the baby as everyone slept.  It was her duty to stay awake and keep everyone safe from snakes and other varmints that might come in through the open doors during the night.

This cradle is one of the few actual furnishings that still remain from the 1800's.

The reason Oak Alley got its name can be seen from this view off the veranda, looking toward the Mississippi River.  There are 28 stately oaks lining the path out from the plantation, each over 300 years old.  It's hard to tell how massive they are unless you look at how small the people look who are walking down the path.

This view of the plantation was taken from the levee above the Mississippi.  If you look closely you can see the big house at the end of the row of oak trees.
We stopped at this point of the way out of the plantation so we could take a good look at the river,

This is it - the mighty river itself.  We had watched a ship go by while we were still at the house but could not find one to take a picture of when we actually got to the levee.

You can see the two buses we are using for our trips around the area.  We were all returning to the bus so we could go back to the campground.  Today was a beautiful weather day - we needed it!  Unfortunately there is a lot of rain in the forecast but we can always hope that prediction will change.

Tomorrow we have a day off to do whatever we want to do and then we will meet at the "tent"at 5:30 pm for a shrimp boil for dinner.  I think we will do a load of laundry, straighten up the RV and go for a walk around the camp.  Most people in our caravan already know someone else on the trip so we need to get to know some of them so we will have more social time!