Louisiana

More than any other state I've visited, Lousiana has felt like a foreign country—complete with its own cuisine, culture, and way of talking. Maybe the state's uniqueness is just more obvious because it's Mardi Gras season, with purple, gold, and green king cakes at every gas station (You insert the nonedible baby yourself—whoever gets that piece hosts the next party. Got it?), but John and I have loved learning about all the differences that set Louisiana apart from the rest of the country. And the people down here couldn't be beat. It's a little European, but it's still the south, so you're always made to feel right at home.

• Just east of the Mississippi, in East and West Feliciana Parishes, lies Louisiana's plantation country. We camped across the street from Oakely Plantation, where John James Audubon came to paint birds and tutor a young debutante. Although the tutoring arrangement didn't last, this woman later became the mother-in-law to one of the second generation at nearby Rosedown, an enormous plantation John and I toured later that day. The house was from 1835, and most of the furnishings inside were original, thanks to four spinster sisters who sealed up each room like a time capsule as the last of their family died off.

• We crossed the chocolate-milk brown Mississippi at St. Francisville and then took another little ferry across the Atchafalaya at Melville—I couldn't believe these two tiny towns still ran boats.

• We came across a jar of pickled pigs lips at a gas station, which the attendant discouraged us from buying. “Do a pig have lips?"she asked as if it were a riddle. "Think about it.” Her Cajun dialect wasn't as thick as some of the others we came across, including a blonde guy in a bandanna that had John asking “Habla Espanol?” (We learned later that Creole has bits of French and Spanish in it.) I felt like I could have used a translator. They probably felt the same way.

• In Washington, Lousiana, we stayed in a cozy little cottage that was part of the Country House Bed and Breakfast. Owner June was a charming hostess, who told us fascinating stories from her life on a plantation, and later in the French Quarter. She is also a painter who wrote and illustrated the book I Ain't Got Nobody (T' Go Crawdaddin' Wit). John and I loved just sitting on the little porch of our cabin at the end of a day. It seems like every house in the South has a front porch. I like that.

• After crossing the rivers, the landscape became strikingly flat as we rode through floodplain. The conditions are good for growing rice—and catching crawdads. We saw plenty of both kind of fields. A kid at a hamburger stand explained to us that the fields are flooded with water and the crawdads actually “sleep in the mud” before finding there way into one of many triangular traps. Something odd happened as I was riding through these wet landscapes—I rode through a storm of tiny black birds. The sound was deafening, and above me was a river of flapping wings. Luckily a semi was bearing down the road from the other direction, which caused the sky to part for a second. I guess I stepped in on their migration. By the time John came up, they were gone.

• Begnets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde, boudin and pork cracklin' for John, shrimp and catfish po' boys for me, spicy crawdads...the food down here is great!

• As if Lousiana culture wasn't enough to take in, there's one more subculture to consider—Mardi Gras. Krewes, balls, masks, beads, and beggars. And in rural Louisiana, where we were riding, the festivities may be even zanier than New Orleans. There's a special country parade, usually on horseback, where people go around to gather up chickens and other ingredients for gumbo. One woman told us that people throw chickens of the roof, and everyone runs around to catch as much meat as they can, which is all put into the same big pot at the end of the night. Everyone is usually “waxed,” as one man put it. It's too bad we're missing Mardi Gras. We've had such a great time in Lousiana—I really don't want to leave!