Although there's a fast route between Baton Rouge and New Orleans on the interstate, I decided to take the scenic route along the Mississippi. Small side roads on both sides of the Mississippi from its source in Minnesota to its mouth in Plaquemines Parish south of New Orleans are together designated as The Great River Road for purposes of tourists wanting to travel along the river. While once a major thoroughfare, the river is now secondary in terms of transportation and commerce to road and rail traffic, so many of the cities and towns along the Mississippi’s length are now like places left back in time. Even the many of the bigger cities on its shores like Saint Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans are among America’s most economically sluggish. In terms of tonnage, there’s still a lots of freight moved up and down the river on barges, especially coal and grain and other products for import or export, but that kind of commerce no longer employs huge numbers of people on the river or wharves on its shore towns.

The Mississippi has become popular for river boat cruises which seem like a nice way to see part of America in style, especially if on an old-fashioned style paddle wheeler stopping in many of the cities and towns along the way . That’s something my parents sometimes talked about but were too much of homebodies to ever do. The sort of said "Thanks, but no thanks!" when my brother and I offered to take them on such a cruise as a gift. Maybe someday I’ll do it, maybe when I’m old and cruising is more my travel speed, but by then I will probably have seen almost all the sites on shore already.

Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans the Great River Road follows the banks of the river very closely, although you rarely get a view of it from the road because of the levees built along the river for flood control. In such flat countryside the wide, muddy meandering river isn’t really the most scenic anyway and most of the towns along the river are poor and not much to look at. This stretch in Louisiana’s “Plantation Alley”, one of the greatest concentrations of Antebellum plantation houses along the river, many of which are open for visits by tourists while others function as inns or B&Bs. Most of the plantations are still in private ownership or in a few cases state historic sites . As far as I know the federal government hasn’t come in anywhere and chosen one to be part of the National Park system, a significant hole in a system which attempts to include units that represent all eras and threads of American history and culture.

My first stop was Nottoway Plantation House, a short distance south of Baton Rouge which also functions which nowadays also functions as an inn and events venue. Built in 1859 Nottoway’s claim to fame is that it is the largest Antebellum plantation house in the South at nearly 53,000 square feet of floor space. The architecture is a mix of Greek Revival and Italianate and beautiful exterior and sumptuous interior décor make up for its lack of a sweeping entrance drive of moss-draped Live Oak trees. It’s another one of those perfect looking plantation houses, but a little different from the others I’ve seen.

About twenty miles or so downriver I came to another plantation house named Bocage. Built in 1801, Bocage is more typical of the original Louisiana style of plantation home than the grand porticoed and pillared Antebellum homes. It is unfortunately only open for events like weddings and not available for touring indoors at other times.

Probably more impressive than the historic homes and their surroundings are the many massive petro-chemical complexes that line the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge. These huge industrial plants which refine much of America’s petroleum and transform some of it into industrial additives and plastics as well as fuels give the stretch of river its other nickname “Cancer Alley” for the elevated rates of cancers the people living in the area experience. Although I could only view them from the road at a distance, I found them to be quite fascinating. I don’t have many pictures, though, for reasons I explain in a later blog entry.