St Francisville

Thursday, March 15

This morning we woke with trees outside our window. We had tied up for the morning alongside the levee just a short bus ride from St Francisville. Again as the river is so high, it’s not where they would normally dock but on the opposite side of the river. The mooring ropes were thrown round the trees to hold us in place as we spend the morning exploring this gorgeous little historical town.

Our first stop was an extra included because we have missed other stops. That is “The Myrtles Plantation”. We debated wether we would tour another Plantation home but we were very pleased that we did as it was quite different to Nottoway, more a home than a mansion. The Myrtles Plantation is a classic southern home and is said to be one of America’s most Haunted homes. As we toured the home we were regaled with ghost stories and tales of ghosts still visiting the site regularly. Believe it or not!!!!

After the tour we were offered coffee and dessert (at 10am) bread pudding, which was very very nice. Thankfully just a couple of mouthfuls. Once we were back on the bus we continued into the historic part of St Francisville. We hopped off the bus at the Grace Episcopal Church, which was built in 1863, this is one of the states oldest churches that still stands today. It’s sits in a gorgeous setting with large oak trees and beautiful Azaleas along the fence line and is a most peaceful and serene place for the old cemetery next door.

We wandered along the old streets admiring the old homes, courthouse and various other buildings until we reached “Grandmothers Buttons”. A very interesting store with a variety of vintage buttons, threads and jewellery, clothing, books and many other lovely gifts.

Further on we wandered through an Antique Store, the Small Methodist church, past the Market hall and the town hall before catching the bus back to the Boat for our noon departure. It was a beautiful day wandering the streets and absorbing some history.

After a delicious lunch we moved to the bow of the American Duchess to watch our departure. The gangway was winched in and the ropes loosened as we backed out into main channel and began to head upstream again. We enjoyed some time on our deck before Philip closed his eyes for 10 minutes, which turned into and hour and a half. Cruising life is so tough.

We went to a lecture about the river which was quite interesting. The river carries an average of 436,000 tons of sediment every day.

(P- the flow of the Mississippi is normally an average of 15,360,000 litres per second, it is currently double that at 30,720,000 litres per second – in lay terms one hell of a lot of water.

Yesterday for only the 12th time since 1927 the Army Engineer Corps opened a large flood gate at the Bonnet Carré spillway which diverts flood water via another watercourse to the Gulf of Mexico.

What Judith omitted to say was she assisted the proprietor of the “Grandmothers Button Store’s” retirement fund and depleted some of ours whilst she was “browsing” the beautiful store!!!)