Following the Historic Cane River Road

Well, our latest little road trip wasn't as exciting as Dorothy's following the "yellow brick road," but we definitely enjoyed last Friday's excursion to Natchitoches, LA, where we saw an old fort, ate Natchitoches meat pies, toured a plantation, and found a few Walker-family houses.  The day was absolutely gorgeous with sunshine and a high around 75F.  We left Ruston around 9:30am and headed south on HWY 167 to Winnfield, where we got on US 84 west to Natchitoches.  We arrived a little after 11am, and made a quick drive thru beautiful, historic down town Natchitoches, with its brick paved streets, and French/New Orleans style architecture right on the banks of the Cane River.  We decided to spend some time before lunch at the Fort St. Jean Baptiste museum and really loved the 15-minute video, the exhibits inside the building, and then walked around the rebuilt fort.

Me, in front of Fort St. Jean Baptiste....we were pretty sure an Indian would have had no trouble scaling that wall.

There was a short walk from the museum to the fort.

Amanda, posing in front of the prison...notice how cute she looks with her awesome baby bump!

Next, we went to find some local food.  We had heard how good "The Landing" was, and we were not disappointed.  We ordered some world-famous Natchitoches meat pies, a shrimp po-boy, and crab-cakes with fried green tomatoes!  Yummy!!  We even got to talk with our waiter, who is planning on attending Southern Seminary next fall in Louisville, KY.  When we told him we were fellow seminarians and that we recently returned from Africa, he talked to us for a while about ministry and family and the future of missions.  We enjoyed meeting him and left with a smile on our face from the good food and fellowship.

My beautiful wife, inside "The Landing" restaurant....trying to decide between the Shrimp Po-boy or the Blackened Catfish Opelousas.

Brick streets with the Cane River just below

traffic was a bit congested on the narrow streets, but we enjoyed walking around

A typical building front found on Front St. in downtown Natchitoches, LA

After lunch, and a little shopping in downtown, we decided to try to locate a few of my family's old houses, where my grandmother and great-grandmother grew up.  My dad's mom (Frances Thomas Walker) grew up in Natchitoches, and we had the address of the house where she spent her childhood.  We also had the street names of a few other houses where relatives lived and where my Dad remembers spending time as a kid.  We used our handy-dandy GPS and in no time had located them.  We took some pics, and enjoyed showing them to my Dad and hearing his stories of what things were like "back in the good ol' days."  He wants to give us a personal tour of Natchitoches one day soon....that would be fun to hear all his old family stories.

(to be continued....in "part 2")