Texas BBQ: Augie's and The Salt Lick

Augie's BBQ in San Antonio

It's not a visit to Texas without barbecue.  We took a walk off the beaten path to find Augie's BBQ in San Antonio where I had a sublime brisket sandwich and a cold Lone Star beer. 

Cozy warehouse-style BBQ on the edge of San Antonio's downtown.

Brisket sandwich

Augie's was arguably great, but our guide book told us the best barbecue in central Texas was The Salt Lick in Driftwood, Texas.  Just on the outskirts of Austin, we made a detour to try out this institution.  I had brisket again (for comparison's sake), plus some Shiner beer (bottled in Shiner, TX) and some delicious sides.  Verdict?  Both are worth going out of your way to get. 

Salt Lick menu

The big barbecue fire pit at The Salt Lick

Benjamin and Steven are ready to dig in.

Brisket and sides 

Safari Texas style: Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch

Texas-style safari at the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch

Hungry ostrich

Between San Antonio and Austin lies a whole new style of safari -- the drive through safari.  For less than $20 a person, with a bag of food pellets included, you can drive your car through a maze of wildebeest, cattle, deer, donkeys, llamas, bison, zebras, gazelles, antelopes, oryx, and watusi.  But the most dangerous part of the safari is the Massai Savanna section containing the ratites - the flightless birds.  Our hands (and rental car) were mercilessly pecked by these big birds.  We discovered ostriches are pretty big in person (they can reach heights of 8 feet) and they are not afraid to stick their big fuzzy heads in your open window.  

Got any yummy pellets? 

Pecked to Death at Fort Sam Houston

Outside the original quadrangle of Fort Sam Houston, with the 90' water tower in the distance.

Before we left San Antonio, we took a side trip to Fort Sam Houston.  This is one of the biggest Army bases in the U.S.  Still very much an active base, we had to register at the visitor's center before we could enter. Then we wound our way around to the "quad," the original Army fort,  originally built as a supply depot in 1876.  Inside the eight-acre courtyard we discovered a free range zoo of peacocks, ducks, geese, egrets, deer, and two aggressive wild turkeys.  These turkeys nearly pecked Steven to death before we could escape to the Fort Sam Houston Museum, right inside the complex. 

Deer, albino peacocks, regular peacocks, and a really aggressive turkey

Once inside the museum we discovered that animals have been roaming the quadrangle for over a hundred years.  Rumor had it that they were introduced into the yard when Apache war chief Geronimo was held prisoner at the fort for six weeks in 1886, on account of his desire for fresh meat.

 

Geronimo and members of his band were prisoners of war for six weeks at Fort Sam Houston in 1886.

 

Remember the Alamo

Then

Now

No visit to San Antonio is complete without a visit to the Alamo.  Back in 1836, nearly 200 Tejanos and Texans battled General Santa Anna's Mexican soldiers at the Alamo, outnumbered ten to one. The former Spanish mission had served as the Texans' refuge for nearly two weeks as the Mexicans began their assault.  By the thirteenth day, all the Texans were dead.  They included Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and Commander William Travis, but also a black freedman by the name of John.  It's an amazing and sobering event.  But now the location is filled with peaceable tourists and costumed soldiers, and across the street are t-shirts shops and Ripley's Believe it or Not.

Costumed solider and Texas Ranger (note cowboy hat) now keep the peace. 

It is customary to take your picture in front of the church, now a shrine to the fallen soldiers.  We did the same.  Not pictured: the line around the block to get in.

Benjamin and Steven in front of the Alamo

Quackimodo on the River Walk, San Antonio

Holiday lights and a tour boat on the River Walk

A wet River Walk, San Antonio, TX

After fueling up at the first WhataBurger we saw in Texas, and then shooting through Houston without stopping, we arrived in San Antonio late at night.  Our hotel in San Antonio is right on the River Walk, a flood control system that has been beautified with walkways and landscaping on both sides.  The River Walk was completed in 1941 and revamped in 1968.  It is one of the most visited tourist areas in America.

The Original Mexican Restaraunt on the River Walk. 

When we arrived, most restaurants had closed, but we managed to find a 24 hour Mexican restaurant on the River Walk. The food was fine (including the ginormous Margarita), but we did not expect to see Quackimodo, the resident duck.  He was thrown beneath a boat on the river, and his neck is now permanently twisted, earning him the name Quackimodo.  He likes to toddle around picking up fallen tortilla chips. 

Quackimodo makes the rounds. 

Addendum: The River Walk is very extensive and each section of the walk is different.  It is an artistic cornucopia.  I would need an entire book to do it justice. Suffice it to say, give yourself plenty of time to wander.  And consider taking a river boat tour.  

The River Walk is extensive.  

Another ubiquitous tour boat

 

Do Not Feed the Alligators: Cypress Island Preserve, Lafayette, LAI

I wasn't planning on feeding the alligators anyway. 

We didn't have a chance to fit in a bayou boat tour before we left Louisiana to drive into Texas, but something even better happened.  We took a little detour to Cypress Island Preserve on Lake Martin. Not a dozen yards into the preserve, we saw two alligators sunning themselves in the middle of this cypress swamp.  

Benjamin looks out toward our little alligators

Sunshine is spotty in December.  You have to warm up when you can. 

If I had to guess, I would say they were two to three feet long each.  They didn't move a muscle and we had no intention of making them do anything else.  The alligator in the rear is a juvenile, distinguished by his yellow stripes.

Now that we've seen our alligators, we're ready for Texas.

Spalted wood and hair wreaths, Vermilionville, LA

Cajun woodworker in Vermilionville

The Cajun village of Vermilionville held a few surprises for me: spalted wood and hair wreaths. 

Spalted wood

This is how it works: you cut down some pecan or pear or persimmon or other Louisiana native wood and let it sit outside for a year.  (Don't let it sit out longer than that or it will rot.)  Let the fungi invade the wood and create interesting patterns in the wood.  Then dry out the wood to kill the fungi and start woodworking.  Voila!  You have spalted wood.  The gentleman woodworker above creates boxes and duck decoys out of this wood.  

Hair art

Hair wreaths

If creating patterns in wood from fungi sounds a little odd, then stop reading now, because the framed wreath above is made out of human hair.  Before photographs, hair was a keepsake of loved ones and was often used to create intricate flower wreaths.  The example above is not closed at the top, indicating the individuals donating the hair were still alive at the time of its creation.  If a woman entered the convent, she shaved here head and sent the hair back to her family.  Nuns typically never visited home again once entering a convent; her hair was one of the few remembrances her family had.

I will not speak French: Vermilionville, LA

Vermilionville Village in Lafayette, LA

About two hours out of New Orleans is the town of Lafayette, a smallish city on the banks of the Vermilion River.  We spent a night here, enjoying catfish, crawfish and etouffee at the Blue Dog Cafe.  The next morning we headed over to Vermilionville, a collection of homes dating from the 1790s that had been saved from destruction and relocated to the Vermilion Bayou.  Costumed volunteers hang out in a few of the homes, to inform you of the bygone days, when Cajuns (French Canadians originally known as Acadians) settled in this area of Louisiana.   

Cajun school

The school house docent was a Cajun through and through.  His mother tongue was Cajun French, a dialect of French spoken only in Louisiana.  However, by the time he reached grade school,  he was told to speak only English in school.  If he spoke French, he had to write "I will not speak French" one hundred times on the blackboard.  

Cajun with accordian in the school house

Je ne vais pas parler Francais.

Oak Alley Plantation

Steven and Betsy in front of the famous vista at Oak Alley Plantation, LA

Recognize the scene above?  This shot (without us in the foreground) has been used in nearly a dozen movies over the last fifty years. This is the famous Oak Alley Plantation, one of a string of plantations in the lower Mississippi area.  Oak Alley is not the oldest plantation in the area (Destrehan, built in 1778, takes that honor), but I think it is the quintessential idea of what a plantation should look like.

Oak Alley up close and decorated for the holidays

Oak Alley was built in 1839 by Jacques Ramon in an attempt to lure his bride from New Orleans to the country.  It worked.  The Ramons settled into plantation life, raising six children (only three of whom reached adulthood), overseeing sugar cane production, and living the high life.  In fact, after Jacques' death at the age of 48 in 1848, his wife Celina continued spending so extravagantly, that her adult children were eventually left penniless.  The mansion was built entirely by the slaves owned by Ramon.  Between 1839 and the end of the Civil War, close to 200 slaves labored to run the house and grow sugar cane.

Hannah, our tour guide, explains about rum soaked apples and courting candles

The courting candle 

Oak Alley was busy the day we visited; it is often overrun by tour groups.  We waited out the crowds with a mint julep and gumbo in the on-site cafe, then wandered over to the big house.  Hannah, our hospitable tour guide, shared all the secrets of the Ramon house.  I'll let you in on a few too.  Here we see Hannah in her period costume in the receiving and courting room.   Men were offered rum upon arrival.  Women were only offered an apple soaked in rum.  The room also contained a courting candle.  If the father approved of his daughter's suitor, he'd twist the candle up so it would burn longer.  Regardless, once the candle burned down to the top of its wire container, visiting hours were over. A chaperone was always present, though he sometimes turned his back on the couple.  The convex mirror on the wall allowed him to keep spying however.

The multipurpose room

The "multipurpose room" upstairs was for guests and for those taken ill.  The bed's mattress was filled with Spanish moss, and while it made a fine bed, you had to use a rolling pin to smooth out the indentations from a night of rest.  A slave would spend two hours on each bed rolling it back into shape.  A guest was never allowed to take a nap on these beds.  The ladies of the house had "fainting couches" to lie on during the day.  Their corsets were so tight, that if loosened, they would often faint.  Hence, the need for such couches.

Reconstructed slave quarters

The slaves made the plantation possible.  They lived in shacks with fireplaces, but no outhouses. They raised chickens to supplement the meager food they received.  On these rations, they planted and harvested sugar cane, extracted the cane syrup, planted gardens, and handled all household chores.  One slave, Antoine, even developed a thin skinned pecan, now known as the Centennial pecan.  His master took all the credit of course.

Recognize this plantation now? 

Note moss and fern covered oaks surrounding the mansion. 

  

Mardi Gras Museum, New Orleans

This Orpheus Krewe float will be used at Mardi Gras 2016, in just a few weeks.

I received some ribbing for suggesting we visit Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World museum.  Everyone assumed it was a tourist trap, with an oversized gift shop.  The gift shop is large, but the museum is no tourist trap.  It the real deal.  The museum is one of eighteen warehouses owned by the Kern family exclusively for Mardi Gras parades.  The props are made right in the museum warehouse and all the floats for one Krewe (nonprofit group that funds a parade) are stored there as well.  

Kern Studios builds props and then rents them to Krewes for use on Mardi Gras floats.
 Their warehouses hold approximately 20,000 props.

I've never been to Mardi Gras and I always thought it was a single day of debauchery with a whole lot of booze, beads, and some good jazz.  Mardi Gras is actually a two week celebration in New Orleans that leads up to the day before Ash Wednesday, or "Fat Tuesday" (Mardi Gras is the French term for Fat Tuesday) with almost constant, interactive parades.  For 2016, Mardi Gras falls on February 9th, with parades beginning in January.  

That's styrofoam folks! Once carved, it will be covered in paper mache and painted.

After sampling some "King Cake" (cinnamon cake with a plastic baby Jesus hidden inside), and seeing a movie about Mardi Gras (the carnival is first mentioned in New Orleans in 1781!), we went out to the warehouse to see just how it's all done.  I was surprised to learn that inside the newer props is a whole lot of styrofoam.  I had no idea you could create such intricate sculptures out of styrofoam. And these aren't small props.  The artist above is standing on a ladder.  After the carving is done, the styrofoam is covered in paper mache, given a base coat, and then painted.  The prop is then rented by a Krewe for their floats.  These two-story floats cost $60,000 to $80,000 to build, and then another $6,000 to $8,000 to freshly decorate each year.  All costs are borne by the Krewe, who's members pay $1,000 and up each year to belong to these benevolent societies.  Krewe members ride on the floats wearing masks and throwing out plastic beads and toys to the crowds.  Little known fact: there are two toilets on each float.  Why?  Krewe members can spend all day on a float.  I also suspect they drink a lot of beer.  

Betsy and Steven play with some props. 

Benjamin has dibs on this float. 

National World War II Museum, New Orleans

Main entrance to the extensive National WWII Museum in New Orleans 

The famous "Higgins boat" that saved the war was designed and built in New Orleans.

Tucked up next to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the Civil War Museum, is the official national museum of World War II.  Why was New Orleans selected for this honor?  Because Andrew Jackson Higgins, of Higgins Boats, designed the amphibious vessels that became essential for water landings throughout the war.  Dwight Eisenhower went so far as to say the Higgins Boat saved the war.  New Orleans churned out thousands of these boats.

The museum sprawls over several buildings over several blocks in the Warehouse District and was fully packed when we arrived two days after Christmas.  So much detail is each exhibit, that to read all the placards would take a full day.  Needless to say, I had to skip some.  The artifacts were equally compelling and included General Eisenhower's handwritten letter stating that if D-Day failed, he accepted all blame.  

Old Algiers: New Orleans' Best Kept Secret

Hayden, Samuel and Benjamin at the ferry dock of Old Algiers

The ferry to Old Algiers.  Five minutes to load, five minutes to cross, five minutes to unload. 

The line at Cafe du Monde was around the block, so we took a break and took the $2 ferry ride across the muddy Mississippi to 'burbs of New Orleans: Old Algiers.  This residential community was founded in 1719, though the homes here are not quite that old.  On December 26th, they were still festively decorated for Christmas.  The homes consist of restored Creole townhouses and shotgun style homes (the latter so named because if you opened the front and back doors, you could shoot a bullet straight through because all the doors are aligned).  

The residents of Old Algiers are not afraid of a little color. 

Pelican Avenue in Old Algiers