Taking a break

Poor Louisiana---Sorely neglected.  I guess even the most die-hard traveler needs a break sometimes.  Louisiana is going back in the envelope to be given it's proper exploration at a later date.  In the meantime--our family is taking off the month of May to celebrate Catherine's high school graduation and to prepare for a real bit of traveling in June.  We're flying off to Aruba and will post pictures of our adventures when we get back.   So, join us at the end of June for Aruba and come exploring with us in July--who knows where we'll be going???

Pirate GOLD!

Oh my poor neglected website.  Several things have derailed the virtual travel lately--not least of all the state of Louisiana itself.  It's silly, but since I dislike heat, cajun food, slavery and poverty, I've let other things get in the way of exploring even though there is plenty I DO like.  Louisiana has lots of fascinating things to offer and fantastic natural beauty.  SOOOO  we're back to our travels. 

Starting with PIRATE treasure.  Forget poverty! Louisiana is the place to go for buried doubloons. From the amount of websites dedicated to pirate treasures you'd think all you had to do was walk along scooping up handfuls of gold.  Of course this isn't quite true.  What you REALLY need to do is buy a little land and try and plow your field.  The pirate Lafitte alone is said to have left treasure on Grand Isle, Coca Island, 1,000,000 on Kelso's island and 11,000,000 in gold along the coast and Mississippi bluffs.

Stranded at the Cafe du Monde

I've only been to Louisiana once--specifically New Orleans. This was before hurricane Katrina and before we had a cell phone AND while we were on a "cash only" kick so we had no credit cards.  It was an adventure.  We took Catherine, who was about 6 years old and her cousin Natalie to New Orleans for the day.  Had a wonderful time, saw the Mississippi, ate cajun and then left to head back to my sister-in-law's house, when the car died.  Dead. Completely.  Uh oh. We could have been in real trouble, but it died in front of the world famous Cafe du Monde--home of beignets!!!  Beignets are small rectangular donuts smothered in pounds of powdered sugar.  Great with hot chocolate.   It took us awhile to get back to my sister-in-laws.  New Orleans is a fun city, but they have the world's least helpful police force.  The details are misty now, but eventually Dave wound up taking a taxi to a Sears store to buy a battery that got us most of the way back (naturally the problem wasn't anything as simple as a dead battery).  I would have enjoyed the beignets more if I hadn't been worried about the car and money and the whole situation in general, but beignets are great at any time, even under stressful condidtions--heck, maybe even better.

Saudi Dinner

I should have had a bunch of people over for dinner to make it a proper Saudi Arabian dinner, but oh well. DELICIOUS food--the internet is a wonderful thing. Date balls---walnuts toasted in butter then add dates and spices and a little flour-mold into balls. Yum. The Saudi Bread (all of this is from the internet) is basically a pizza with a little cumin in the crust topped with a hamburger and leek mixture--again very good. then there was tabbuleh--bulger wheat with lemon, garlic salt, and tomatoes. Dessert was supposed to be kind of chocolate cake. I made a crust with gingersnaps and butter and the filling was sweetened condensed milk, cocoa and cornmeal. Tasted all right--the cornmeal was odd, but that's part of the adventure, but it didn't quite set up. So the cake turned out to be a pudding. We put on aol.radio set to "world caravan" and had a good time.

Zamzam

The zamzam well is located in the holy city of Mecca.  When Hagar and the infant Ishmael were in the desert, they were desperatley looking for water.  Ishmael kicked at the sand with his feet and this well sprang up.  It is said that this well has never run dry and there are all kinds of miracles surrounding this well.

The Red Sea

Although Saudi Arabia has no permanent lakes or rivers, it does have the Red Sea.  And boy oh boy, the Red Sea is nothing like my concept of the Red Sea.  My concept comes straight from the old movie The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. Plus, since the movie is biblical, I thought of the red sea being as devoid of life as the Dead Sea.  Wrong Wrong Wrong.

The RED sea sounds gorgeous.  It's HUGE it's an inlet of the ocean and thus contains FISH. A whole lot of fish--1,200 species according to Wikipedia.  Among the fish are 44 different kinds of sharks.  It has big shallow coral reefs and is a wonderful place to snorkel.

Tallest Fountain

The world's tallest fountain is in Saudi Arabia.

This is the King Fahd fountain.  It gets it's water from the Red Sea and shoots it more than 1000 ft. high.  Millions of people get to see it because it is the primary gateway to Mecca.