Trip to New Orleans
October 13-28, 2010
Page made March 19, 2024
Mike and Judy Henderson
Before Judy and I were married, we took a trip to New Orleans so she could meet some of my family. I only recently found these pictures and decided to make a travel page for that trip. Since it was so long ago, I can only approximate our trip.
Even back then, I took a picture just as we were leaving on a trip. Here's Judy in front of my 2000 Mercedes S430 that we used for the trip. It was a comfortable car but was ten years old. The date in the EXIF of this picture is Wednesday, October 13, 2010. Using the EXIF dates in the pictures allowed me to reconstruct the trip.
Three of my sister's children lived out west: Dawn was in Phoenix and both Michael and David were in Austin. The fourth child, Donna, was living in Destrehan. I had made serving trays for each of them and one for my sister.
I did them six sided, not for any particular reason but as a compromise between a rectangle and an eight sided one. The center radial match is six sided and of waterfall bubinga, with an accent strip of bloodwood (most of them), and walnut edging. Although not shown, the backs are done in a 12 piece radial match of claro walnut.
We headed to Phoenix first and visited Dawn and her then husband, Doug. I don't have any pictures of that visit. I don't remember where we spent the next few nights, but we didn't meet David and Michael in Austin until Sunday, October 17.
I'm fairly sure we spent the night of Saturday, October 16th in Fredericksburg, TX, where we stayed in a B&B.
I contacted Michael and David, and we met at a restaurant on October 17th. Here are a few pictures.
David and Holly.
Holly with Sophia, Michael's daughter. That was 14 years ago, so Sophia would be almost an adult now.
David, me, and Michael.
Sophia, Andrea, and Holly.
Jay and Andrea
We stayed at a hotel in Austin, and left early the next morning, Monday, October 18th. We drove all the way to Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana. There are 28 oaks in the allée. Mature oaks, perhaps 20 years old, were transplanted along the allée in the early 1800's, leading to the house. The plantation house we see today was built about 1837. It was originally known as the Bon Séjour Plantation.
Judy at Oak Alley.
Looking down the avenue of the oaks towards the river.
You can't stay in the main house at Oak Alley - it's a museum. We stayed in one of the outbuildings.
Here I am sitting on the porch of this outbuilding
writing in the guest book. My dad,
Boyle James Henderson (1908-1980), worked at Oak
Alley early in his life (late 1920's to early 1930's?) and knew
Andrew and Josephine Stewart who had purchased Oak Alley in 1925.
When I was young, maybe around 1952, Dad took
us to Oak Alley.
Maria Josephine Armstrong Stewart (1879-1971) was still living and she gave us a tour of the house.
Her husband,
Andrew Stewart (1872-1946) had passed away
a few years earlier. I was too
young to remember anything about the house, however.
We went to a restaurant close to her house. At the end of lunch, Judy went to the restroom and when she was gone, Aunt Patsy took my hand and said, "God has blessed you!"
I thought that was a really nice acceptance of Judy. But when Judy returned from the restroom, Aunt Patsy didn't say the same thing to her about me. I suppose Aunt Patsy knows me too well.
After lunch, we checked into the Ormand B&B.
Ormond is an old plantation house, built in 1787. Like many old plantation houses, it went through many owners and gradually fell into disrepair. Around the turn of the century, five Schexnayder brothers purchased the plantation. Here's a picture of the Schexnayder and Zeringue families in front of the plantation house in 1913. Note that in this picture, the garconnieres are not connected to the main house, except by a walkway. We would call the space between a garconniere and the main house a breezeway.
The Schexnayder family sold the plantation in 1926 and it went downhill from there. Here's a picture of Ormond in 1934. In this picture, the roof of the garconnieres has been extended to cover the breezeway.
Ormond was purchased 1942 by Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Brown, of Brown's Velvet Dairy Company in New Orleans. They did major renovations to the property and added modern conveniences, such as electricity, gas and indoor plumbing. One obvious thing they did was to connect the garconnieres to the main house. See the picture of the house today (above).
When I was growing up, the Browns were the owners. In fact, the curve in the road in front of the plantation was known as "Brown's curve."
Mrs. Brown was Lelia D. McIlhenny (1903-1967) of the famous McIlhenny tabasco sauce family on Avery Island. After she passed away, her husband, Alfred Whitney Brown (1903-1987) sold the plantation.
When we checked in to Ormond, we discovered that we were the only guests they had. They gave us an upgraded room on the second floor with doors opening to the front balcony. They also gave us the keys to the place because the staff was going to go home for the night.
A picture of the bedroom with one of the doors to the balcony.
Every old plantation house has a ghost story and Ormond has one about a young girl who died in the house and now haunts it, especially in the room across the hall from the room we were in. Judy said she wasn't worried because I was on the side of the bed closest to the door so the ghost would get me before it got to her. But we had a quiet night. I guess the ghost wasn't working that night - probably some union limitation:-).
In the evening we went to a restaurant with Donna and John. After dinner Donna and one of her daughters (don't remember which one) took us back to the B&B. We offered to show them the house since we were the only people in the house - the staff had given us the keys to the front door and gone home. But the daughter was afraid to go into the house - she was afraid of ghosts!
The next day, Wednesday, October 20th, we were scheduled to go to Madam and Donald's place to help Donald make gumbo.
Since Ormond was a B&B, we had breakfast in the dining room in the morning. The cook had come in about an hour earlier to prepare breakfast for us.
They did a very nice job. We were at this long table, white table cloth, and the food was good.
We were late getting to Donald's and he had the gumbo essentially made. We had gumbo for lunch with Madam and Donald.
This picture was taken in front of Donald's house - Donald, Madam, and me. It was actually taken a few days later but I'll put it here.
I think we drove around Destrehan and up to LaPlace to show Judy the area. We drove by the property where my family lived in LaPlace but the house was gone and it had been converted to a trailer park.
We only spent two nights at Ormond - the nights of October 19th and 20th (Tuesday and Wednesday). We checked out the morning of the 20th and went to New Orleans where we checked into the Soniat House, which had been recommended by my cousin, Phil.
It's a decent hotel, with a couple of problems. The Soniat House is at 1133 Chartres street in the French Quarter. It's fairly far back in the French Quarter, only two blocks off Esplanade and that was one of the problems with the place. There's no parking available in the French Quarter (parking spots are always taken) so they had valet parking. I don't know where they put the cars, but when we would come to get the car, the valet would go running off down the street and it would take a while before he came back with the car.
The second problem was getting out of the French Quarter. The streets are narrow and there's a lot of traffic. It took us 20 minutes just to get to Canal Street. After this experience, we always stayed in a hotel outside the French Quarter.
It wasn't a bad hotel, but it was not like some of the luxury hotels we've stayed in since then. I don't have any pictures of the room we had, but here's a picture of the entrance was - just after you enter the main doors. In the morning, they put out a pot of New Orleans coffee and chicory in this hallway.
I wanted Judy to have a good introduction to New Orleans so I took her to Café Du Monde, near Jackson Square, the morning of Thursday, October 21st. It was only four or five blocks from the hotel so we walked. Café Du Monde opened in 1862 and has run continuously since then (except for a few months after Katrina). I went there many times when I was a teenager.
The above picture was taken from the web and when the Café was busy. When we arrived that Thursday morning, there was no one there. Café Du Monde serves coffee with chicory, either black or au lait, and beignets, which are a type of doughnut covered with powdered sugar. Café Du Monde always serves three beignets to an order.
The problem with powdered sugar is that it gets all over everything. They hose the place off early in the morning - when we got there, the tables were still wet and the chairs were still sticky with sugar.
We had café au lait and beignets. I like the coffee and chicory mix.
I don't really remember, but I think we did some sightseeing in New Orleans the rest of the day. We must have gone to a restaurant that evening but I don't remember where. Apparently, there was a cat in the waiting area. I picked her up and Judy took this picture of me.
On Friday, October 22, we visited some of the popular cemeteries - I don't remember which ones now. New Orleans has traditionally used crypts for burials. Some people say it's because of the high ground water level but I don't know. I think it's just tradition.
On Saturday, October 23rd, we went with Madam and Donald to Bailey's to get some andouille. Donald froze it in his freezer and when we left we took it home, being careful to keep ice on it. But andouille is smoked sausage and will likely keep without refrigeration.
The other major andouille store in LaPlace is Jacob's. Bailey's and Jacob's are very close to each other - Jacob's is at 505 West Airline Hwy and Bailey's is at 513 West Airline Hwy. Not close enough to share a parking lot, as some people say, but close (there's a pawnshop building and parking lot between the two stores).
The next day, Sunday, October 24th, we went to my cousin Phil's place. Here's a picture of Cindy (Phil's wife), Aunt Patsy, and Phil. I don't remember why Cindy has a bandage on the bridge of her nose.
We went to Galatoire's during our visit and I think it was on Sunday.
Aunt Patsy joined us. Phil would go to Galatoire's often and had a waiter, Louis (pronounced the French way, "Louie") but Louis died and Phil had found a new waiter, Shelly Landry, who took care of us. I remember some pictures from that lunch, but I can't find them anywhere.
At Galatoire's, all of the waiters start in the kitchen, working the menial jobs first and then working the line. I think Shelly told us that he had worked at Galatoire's for ten years before he became a waiter.
I was able to find a picture of Shelly on the web.
We must have left New Orleans the next day, Monday, October 25th, because the next picture I have is on Wednesday, October 27th. We were having breakfast in a B&B. I don't know where, but I suspect somewhere near Taos, NM and it would have taken two days to get to Taos.
The reason I suspect Taos is this next picture in the photo sequence was identified by Google as Cebolla Mesa, in the Carson National Forest, which is very close to Taos, and was taken on the same day.
We visited with some friends of Judy's, Lynn and Robert Adcock, who retired to Taos. Robert was a cellist in LA before retirement. They had a house way back in the woods. To get to their place we had to traverse a very primitive road, but their house was very nice and modern. While it was nice, it was a bit too far off the grid for my taste. Here's a picture of me with Lynn and Robert.
That's all the pictures I have from this trip. If we left the morning of Thursday, October 28th, we could have made it home on that day.
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