In and around Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 I was in Baton Rouge for a couple days visiting cousin Betsy and her husband Gerry.

 I enjoyed a variety of Southern food, including jambalaya, bread pudding, boudins & cracklins, BBQ brisket, étouffée, sausage, crawfish, and hushpuppies.  Just a couple pictures here; I was too busy eating to take many more!

Betsy and Gerry took me on a tour around Baton Rouge and we drove through the LSU campus.  These photos are from the wonderful Capitol Park Museum:

We visited the capitol building and took in views of the Mississippi River and surrounding area from the observation deck on the 27th floor.

Betsy and I spent a day visiting two plantation sites.  The following group of photos is from the Audubon State Historic Site -  Oakley House, where James Audubon worked part time tutoring the plantation owners daughter and began work in earnest on painting his Birds of America illustrations.  We saw some of the full-size original prints that were produced there among 70 that he completed at Oakley House.

This 1848 map shows many plantations lining the Mississippi River.  Many of the names are still familiar now.

The leather pails shown here were filled with sand and used to snuff out fires when whale oil burning lamps spilled their contents.

The fixture hanging over the dining table is a Shoo Fly Fan.  A domestic servant sitting in the corner of the room operated the lamp by pulling a rope, keeping flys away from the table and moving the air to provide some cooling.

This louvered porch offered a relatively cooler place to sit on hot days.

This picture is from the Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site, not far from the Oakley House.  The house, garden, and other buildings have been very well maintained here.

After the plantation tours we stopped at Francis for lunch.  On the way in to place our orders we noticed this sign beside the building:

The lunch special was brisket over a baked potato topped with mac & cheese.  The baked potatoes had already sold out, so it was instead served over a mound of french fries.

I had a pulled pork sandwich instead of brisket, and it was also quite tasty!