Greetings Iron Butt blog fans, family and friends. Good to have you along.
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This morning we dined at the Waffle House for breakfast and departed New Iberia, LA, for Avery Island, some nine miles away. Avery Island is the family home and manufacturing facility for Tabasco sauce. The island is well suited for making the sauce, approximately 50 acres of pepper fields, down from 700 during its hay day just after the Civil War. The peppers grown on the island today are solely for the seeds which are shipped to other pepper growing areas in Central and South America. There is a salt mine going down 2,000 feet on the island. Salt is used to prevent impurities from entering the brine as the ground peppers and vinegar react in used Jack Daniels barrels for three years. Peppers used for today's sauce come from various Central and South American countries. The island also has gas and and oil reserves and homes for the founding McIlhenny family and some employees. The original seeds from Mexico were given to the founder reportedly by a Civil War soldier. He turned them into a family fortune.
One hundred and fifty four miles from Avery island found us in the Big Easy, New Orleans, LA. We checked into the Holiday Inn, French Quarter, and and grabbed a cold beer and some wings for a late lunch. Yep, still hot and humid here, but no rain.
In the late afternoon we took a walking tour of the French Quarter taking in the sights, street performers, local libations and the two Harley-Davidson T-shirt stores, Bourbon Street and Vodoo Harley-Davidson. More donations to the Harley God.
As the sun went down, Bourbon Street came to life with people, neon lights, loud blaring live music and exotic dancers standing in the doorways of the various drinking establishments. An unidentifiable liquid (I hope it was water) was raining down on the sidewalks from the balconies above lined with people drinking adult beverages and throwing plastic beads to persons on the street exposing various private body parts, I'm told. Of course I averted my eyes.
Around suppertime, we wandered the streets for an hour and finally decided on Felix's Sea Food where were all ordered different dishes including, Oysters on the Half Shell, Jambalaya, Grilled Alligator, Crawfish, Jumbo Shrimp and Deep Fried Pickles, which we all shared. Yum, yum yum! After supper we wandered Bourbon Street some more until we ran out of gas and retired for the evening. Tomorrow, we'll get up and do it all over again.
Today there was a news report that Travel Magazine rated New Orleans among the top cities in the country for entertainment and partying and dead last for cleanliness. I have to agree, at least with respect to the French Quarter, it's filthy. Steve described it as "An adult Disneyland with dirt." I thought that was pretty accurate. It's right here in the diaries friends.
John and the usual suspects.
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