New Orleans...not

Started out this morning with intention of going to Gretna parking the car, jumping on ferry and getting off at Canal street in New Orleans french quarter.  We had all our directions from the internet and things were going great until I followed hwy 90 into New Orleans because I neglected to take the 90 business loop that would have kept me below the river. After we figured out we were in the city already we managed to get ourselves turned around and back on south side of river where a closer inspection of the map showed I should have taken that business loop.  No problem...backtrack over a half hour and found our turnoff to get to the Gretna ferry.  Found parking with no trouble, parked gathered our things after noting that we had just missed the ferry which runs on the half hour and it was now 11:35. We wandered over to the terminal anyway only to discover the doors were locked and nothing inside except some construction equipment. In parking lot a couple of guys were loading a small machine onto a truck and I asked them why the building was locked up.  They said this ferry is not operating, the only ferry operating is the Algiers Point ferry. At this point, having been lost and stressed enough we decided not to attempt locating another unknown point but instead headed back toward Houma where we also wanted to see some sights.  We stopped at Houma info center to make sure we have correct directions and inquire about ferry.  Woman there told us that the Algiers point ferry is called the Gretna ferry and she wasn't aware of another Gretna ferry....now we were totally confused because that was a ferry at the dock as you can see in the picture.

Gretna ferry terminal

That is a ferry sitting at the end of the walkway.

Visitor info gave us directions to a museum in  a plantation house and to the birding boardwalk.  We stopped for lunch of crawfish pasta and soft shelled crab and then went to the Southdown Plantation House at 2:45, just in time to catch their last tour of the day at 3pm according to the pamphlet we had. Unfortunatly someone forgot to tell them the hours because the admission/gift shop was locked up tight although the washrooms and slave quarters were available for our use.

Cajun pet

soft shelled crab

my new gator buddy

Deb wondering about our lunch choices

restaurant where we ate lunch

Southdown Plantation

Southdown Plantation House

Southdown Plantation House

Terrebonne Museum

live oak in front of the museum

Following our bathroom stop we headed south along the bayou to find the birding trail and boardwalk.  We had been told approximately where to find it and that it was well marked.  An hour later we were almost to the gulf of Mexico when we passed by a boardwalk. No signage but this has to be the place so we turned around, parked and walked out only to find a sign board that was damaged and no notices posted, some of the boards were water damaged.  We heard some birds but saw none.  This "birding trail" was actually a short boardwalk leading out to some water. Disappointing but at least we enjoyed the scenery along the road. Most of the homes were built on very high posts and appeared to be newer so obviously were damaged in hurricanes over the past few years. Interesting to note that some were a few feet above the ground while others were  10 or 20 feet up.  Deb noticed that some had outdoor cage type elevators, a must I'm sure for old people like us who don't do stairs well. We did stop to enjoy some pelicans in the bayou.

On the way back to the motel we stopped to get an appetizer portion of fried gator to add to our leftovers from lunch to make up our dinner later.

fried gator in a box

 We should not have bothered since neither of us liked the taste after the first couple of bites.  Even a wonderful chocolate chip cookie was not enough to cleanse our palates.