A Birthday, A Bayou and New Orleans

After Alabama we headed into Mississippi and then onto Louisiana.  The next day would be Coda's 8th birthday and we didn't want it to be a traveling day.  So we decided to stay two nights at the Fountainebleau State Park, which is located just across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans.

For Coda's birthday we decided to check out the Jean Lafitte National Park - Barataia Preserve.  There was a neat little visitors center where we picked up our Junior Ranger Booklets and our National Park Passport stamp.  Then we headed out on a walk through the swamp and bayou.  One of the activities in the JR Ranger book was kind of a scavenger hunt and the children were so wonderful at finding the little things.  We were mostly keeping our eyes our for alligators.  We did mange to spot one little one...he was so cute (from afar).  

 

Once the children had said their pledge and received their Junior Ranger Badges, we decided  to head into New Orleans.  We weren't sure what we'd find and knew we wanted to be gone before nightfall.  But we thought we'd check it out for a bit.  We parked near the French Quarter and spent a bit of time meandering the streets, window shopping and checking out the awesome buildings.  We ended up eating dinner at Hard Rock Cafe...the quality of the food (for the prices) was disappointing, but we went there to celebrate Coda's 8th birthday and that was great!  I had hoped we could find a restaurant that would be authentic New Orleans food with some vegetarian options, that didn't happen.  I welcome any recommendations for the next time we stop there.   We ended the evening with a stop at Café Du Monde for some beignets (read: fried dough covered in more powdered sugar than you've ever seen). 

 We woke up the next morning to quite the storm.  We had planned on hanging out at the state park and exploring, well that wasn't going to happen.  We packed it up and headed out --- next stop Texas.