Another great night of sleeping, we both woke up pretty refreshed in the morning. We had a busy day planned, so we were out of the hotel by 8:15.

A short drive later we were deep in the French Quarter on the hunt for the elusive beignets at Cafe du Monde. Unlike yesterday at 10AM there was no line and we got a great table with a view. The beignets were good, I think between the two of us we had a ½ cup of powdered sugar on our plates. We were serenaded by a gospel trumpeter while we ate.

The Central Grocery, the inventors of the muffaletta, were closed on Monday. But with it being Tuesday we crossed the freshly washed street and waited in line. Yes, I did write freshly washed street. There are a number of horse drawn carriages in the area, so it looks like they wash the streets down between 6-9 AM (since there is no stopping / standing / parking at that time). Unlike Mackinac Island, they did a much better job. On the other hand they have fewer horses. On the other hand there are more drunks using the streets. Bet you didn’t know I had three hands.

Anyway, the Grocery opened at 9 and the dozen of the early risers tromped in to place our orders. The sandwich staff didn’t look happy, but I’m guessing they are used to seeing people right away. We also got a small container of their famous olive salad to try on our sandwiches at home.

Next we drove across town to the printing plant of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Susan had co-workers that she wanted to meet. While we were there we got a tour of the building. The presses were not running since it’s a morning paper, they print overnight. But they are huge, two story monsters that cover half a block.

Back in the car and started the ride out of New Orleans. The good times had indeed rolled, but we needed to roll on. We crossed out of Louisiana and headed back through Mississippi.

First stop was “Gulf Coast Gator Ranch” in Moss Point. We had been stymied in seeing gators in the wild. My son has lived in Florida for quite a while and has never seen a wild gator. So we were going to get a gander at a wild gator even if it was at a ranch.

The ranch is run by a family that has been in the Gator business since the 60′s. The second season of Gator Boys on Animal Planet was filmed on their ranch. And when I say ranch, I really mean their 440 acre swamp that is next to the Grand Bay Wildlife area. They have small gators ranging from a few inches to 5′ in pens along their building. There is one 24” one that you can hold.

Behind the building is a fenced in 3 acre “pond” that is home to 70+ gators. We got our cup of gator food and tossed some out into the pond. The gators took notice and swam over to get some treats. The gator chow floats so they swim up and snap it up.

But we were on the prowl for “wild gators” so we climbed on the airboat (a first for us), donned ear protection and headed out into the swamp. A few minutes later we were in a secluded area. Our guide, got a bag of marshmallows out and tossed one into the water. Pretty soon, a gator came out of the weeds and snatched the tasty treat. While tossing more sugar at the gator we got a lecture on the lives of gators and what the big differences between crocodiles and alligators.

We cruised around the swamp some more and got to see two more gators and an a number of turtles. Airboats are cool, but they are really, really loud.

We had confirmed wild gator sightings, with pictures! Off to our next stop.

In Mobile is the USS Alabama one of the WWII era battleships. It’s been turned into a floating museum. It’s been in place since the 1960′s and they have done a good job in keeping it in great shape. For the next two hours we climbed through the ship, looking at how 2500 men lived to fight in the war.

Since it was Veterans Day it was busy aboard with families roaming about. The ship is very impressive, very claustrophobic. Not sure that I’d last long in the space with all those people since it felt crowded with 200 people aboard.

Next door to the USS Alabama is a small airplane museum. We did a quick tour through it, we had been to a number of plane exhibits. We had both done submarines, so we passed on the two that were docked there.

Next was the drive back to our marina with stops for veggies, food, beer, wine, etc. We got back to the Marina about 6PM. Two dock carts (a standard dock cart is about three times the size of a standard kids wagon) later and we were done for the day.

We had Central Grocery muffaletta dinner! They were wonderful. Even though they had been made 9 hours before, the bread was fresh, the meat and cheese combo was perfect and just the right amount of salt and olive oil from the olive salad. While the ones from Napoleon were good, these are clearly number one.

Our tour of the Big Easy was a great success! Laissez les bons temps rouler!

We both slept well, we had a king sized bed, that keeps us from waking each other up with our alleged snoring. Continental breakfast was at the hotel. They had raisin bread which was a treat for me.

First stop today was the post office. We had borrowed a guide book from the crew of Reunion and I wanted to get it returned. I’ve also been lugging around the cruising guide to the North Channel that I had promised to send back to our friends on Katya Looking in Canada. The post office I picked was in the Federal Building. Which means we had to go through a metal detector, etc. to be able to get into the post office. I think I would have cut a new door into the Post Office part to save the hassle.

From there we walked to the French Quarter, our destination Cafe DuMonde. When we got there we saw a huge line of people waiting to get in for beignets, and a longer “to-go line. We decided to pass, we would go on Tuesday.

We continued on into the French Market with a ton of little stores and galleries. Lots and lots of tourists looking for things to take home. Past the stores is a flea market where vendors have stalls that they sell out of. Almost anything with New Orleans on it could be purchased. Since we are touring and will be touring more in Florida I picked up a new belt pack. It even has a place for a bottle of water!

Walking away from the river we went to the St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest in the city. It is very beautiful inside with lots of stained glass and ornate sculptures.

From the Cathedral it was time to walk the famed Bourbon Street! It was just like the pictures, bar after bar for blocks and blocks. The pictures don’t really show how narrow the streets are. It’s a one way street, with not a lot of room to park on one side. The streets were semi-crowded, and almost everyone but us had a drink “to-go”.

One of the things to eat is a muffalato, a sandwich with ham, salami and cheese. What makes it special is the olive salad and the bread. The place to go is the Central Market, but they are closed on Monday’s. So the second best place is Napoleon’s. We met the crew of Mara Beel and had muffalatos for lunch. Very good, very tasty!

After lunch the two boat crews split off and we headed for Arnaud’s to see the collection of Mardi Gras costumes. Arnaud’s is a famous restaurant that has the exhibition in the back. But they are closed on Monday’s, so we missed out. Or maybe not.

Susan had seen a sign for Mardi Gras World, she called the shuttle and they came and picked us up. The driver had a cajun accent, luckily we had spent time with the captain of Moondance so we could understand him. He gave us a short tour of the area and suggested more places to go.

Mardi Gras is HUGE in New Orleans. Because of the number of Krewes that have floats and the number of floats there are 5 different parade routes in the city. In the 12 days before Fat Tuesday there is a parade every day on every parade route. Each krewe fields 14 or more floats for their parade.

The Blaine Kern Company makes floats for 12 of the krewes. They have almost two dozen warehouses across the city. They give tours of their design, sculpture and painting center. They call it Mardi Gras World and it is something to see. (www.mardigrasworld.com)

The first part of the tour is a chance to try on costumes and get your picture taken with some of their sculpture. (Think of getting dressed up for the Renfaire). Susan was purple and gold and mine has silver with a red cross on the front. We got some great pictures, and yes of course there were hats involved!

They show a movie that explains the history of Mardi Gras and how it has grown across the years. Surprisingly the major cost of a float isn’t the basic infrastructure ($20-40,000) or the cost of renting the decorations ($8-12,000) but the beads, doubloons, stuffed animals, cups, etc. that get thrown to the crowd. A single float will toss over 4,000 lbs of beads out.

After the movie we get slices of King Cake and go on tour. The sculptures are made of sheets of Styrofoam that are cut with knives and animal curry combs. The foam is then covered with a layer of paper mache to give a smooth paintable surface. Paint is a latex paint for the base white and the colors, then a clear coat to give it a shiny surface.

The reason the decorations are rented is that Kern removes, stores and then reuses the larger objects when possible. We saw an example of a head from a few years ago that had a “Napoleon Hat” added for a naval themed float for this year. The warehouse we were in had one krewes worth of floats under construction and thousands of decorations from prior years. It was really amazing. When the official tour is over, they let you wander through the warehouse. I could write pages about everything we saw, take a look at the pictures.

After all of that we were pretty beat, so we took the trolly back to the room and rested for 90 minutes. Then it was back to the French Quarter to “Irene’s”. On the trolly we caught up with the crew of Mara Beel our dinner companions.

“Irene’s” was a suggestion from one of Susan’s co-workers that lives in the area. It was an excellent choice. All four meals were great. Susan had escargot stuffed mushroom caps and soft shelled crabs papardelle. I had lasagna which had layers of sausage and veal parmesan with a bolognese sauce.

After dinner Susan and I walked down to Frenchmans street and the Maison Jazz Restaurant. There was a combo (drums, guitar, trombone, trumpet, soprano sax) that played old style New Orleans Jazz. We managed to get a table front center so we had a great view. We stayed for their first set and called it a night.

Rather than walk to the trolley, we opted for a $10 cab ride. We were back in our room just before Looper Midnight. Our second day in the Big Easy was a great success.

Once again up late, I’m happy to get off the 5AM wake-up times. We both used the marina showers for a change. This is a pretty random event for us, the showers on shore need to be an order above what we have on the boat for us to use them. Lots of hot water in a clean big space is the criteria. We’ve only done a few, our gold standard is Richmond’s Marina, very few places make it past that level.

Anyway, we were up, clean, dressed and ready to roll out 8:30AM. Three hours later than our normal 5:30AM departure times we are becoming Looper Slackers. McD’s for a quick breafast and then the long trek to NOLA.

Susan plans these trips with lots of effort. One of the best parts has been we go to places like Milwaukee, I say want to do “Z,Q,P” and she pulls together food, events and all the places to go see. She is the master of finding things.

The day before we had passed a cotton field. The plants were a lot shorter than I had though. Actually my first thought had been “Snow?!?”. Today we saw another field and this one had a cotton picker and two bales of cotton. When I thought bales, I was thinking hay bales about 2′x2′x4′. These things were huge, 8′ diameter cylinders about 12′ long. They were wrapped plastic to keep the cotton balls inside.

Once we got onto Interstate 10 I started to notice that there was lots of white trash along the side of the road. Then white stuff on the highway. There was clumps of it and it was pretty clear that someone in front of us was driving a load of cotton and there was a hole in the bag. Sure enough in about 4 miles we came to the truck, with a pretty decent spray of cotton coming off the top. We both stuck our hands out the window to see if we could snag a handful without success. When we passed the truck Susan got some shots of it for the blog.

We kept driving towards Mobile and were soon going across Mobile Bay. It was pretty nice, it was calm and very pretty. We passed across the causeway and got a glimpse of the USS Alabama, a place to see we have time on the way home. We went under the water via a tunnel, that explained why we only saw one bridge on our way through last week.

Ride was mostly on Interstate 10. I stopped at the rest area at the Mississippi boarder for a quick walk. We picked up info about a gator tour to visit and a brewery to check out on the way home.

Drive into downtown was good. The Saints football team was in town. Spazzed the time, game started at noon, I was thinking 1 PM (I continue to be time zone challenged.) Didn’t run into a lot of traffic, unlike Eagles games. We could not check into the hotel until 4PM, so being a little late would not be an issues. Due to my fault with the GPS we came through a tough part of town. Which turned out to become a really nice section of town later on.

1 mile later we were at our hotel. We dumped out of the car and headed out walking to the Garden District. This is a 6*16 block area of huge homes with amazing gardens and plantings. These are places I could afford to buy and then go bankrupt with the cost of landscaping year after year.

Lunch was at Parasol’s. It’s a dive bar (our quest for dive bars contines) and has a place to eat upstairs. We came in mid-game so it was deadly loud in the bar, fans in Black and Gold 5 deep at the bar rail. We met Carl, the owners daughter upstairs. He gave Susan the lay of the land and soon had beer, Poor Boy’s and gravy fries that made us think of Canada. Susan’s Oyster Poor Boy looked great. I had the roast beef, it came on crispy french bread.

From Parasol’s we wandered up the streets looking at all the garden homes and how amazing they were. Most are two or more stories, huge porches, fancy fretwork along the eaves, etc. The yards were all a match with careful plantings and flowers everywhere.

In our path to get to our next destination was “Commander’s” restaurant. A great place, above our current dress code level of pants and boating shirts. But they passed us through the kitchen to the bar. Susan had a Pyms Cup, I had a beer. Both were good and we got to watch the action in the kitchen. Even though it was 2PM, the kitchen was pretty busy.

We walked across the street to Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. This is the oldest cemetery, it was built in 1836. It’s been in a number of movies across the years. The graves are all above ground tombs with multiple bodies from a family in each one. There are also some special groupings like fire fighters.

It was interesting to walk through and see the weathered limestone. Some of them are very ornate, some are very plain. It’s still in active use, I saw one marker that was dated 2013. We skirted around tours that were pitching Vampire tours for the evening. We decided to pass on them.

At Parasol’s we had gotten the recommendation to get on the St. Charles trolly and ride it out to the end of town. We did that and rode past more fabulous homes, tons of restaurants, LaSalle University and Tulane. The trip out took about 30 minutes. The car we were on was full, so it’s a popular item for lots of tourists. At $3 each it is also a good value.

At the end of the line we switched sides on the cars and pushed the seat-backs so we were facing the forward. The ride back took a little longer since people were coming out of the bars. Not happy people, since the Saints lost in overtime. Lots of stops.

More homes and more restaurants on the way back. Susan took lots and lots of pictures.

We got back to our hotel (Prytania Oaks) and got keys. We are in a refurbished townhouse that has been converted to rooms. We are in a front downstairs room that would have been the parlor in the original layout. We have a fireplace, but it’s been bricked up. We have windows on two sides, so its light and airy. Susan said it was about $75 cheaper than other places, it is one of her super finds she comes up with.

We flopped on the bed and watched TV and did emails.

For dinner we went to the Blind Pelican, it’s claim was NOLA food and 33 kinds of beer. The beers were OK, I had two different kinds I hadn’t had before. I ordered the roasted oysters. They are done on the ½ shell with hard Parmesan cheese then put on a grill to heat them. I like them that way. Susan being more of a hard core person picked the cheese off. I had fried green tomato stack with shrimp and a pretty good remoulade sauce. Susan’s pizza was a mess, it was ½ cooked. We think the waitress knew it since she ducked us the rest of dinner.

Back at our room I got caught up on blog posts and Susan got to watch “The Walking Dead” on a real TV. She’s been suffering through watching on crappy internet connections, so having a big screen TV and a smooth playback made her happy.

On Monday we will head into the French Quarter to see the sights. We are meeting the crew of Mara Beel for dinner and to listen to some music.