We were on the streets at 6:30 one morning. I love being out in the quiet. Bird song our only accompaniment down Royal Street.
After coffee at the Royal Blend coffee shop we looped around the hushed Quarter, strolled along the muscular river, turned up Canal Street and hopped a streetcar to Basin Street where we disembarked for St Louis #1, New Orleans' oldest cemetery. It began consuming residents in 1789.
You've seen these cemetery's on TV and movies. All the tombs are above ground because the water table is 5 inches below ground and anything you put under it rots and floats off. At 220 years old the cemetery is a model of derelict beauty. Well kept memorials and vaults watched over by blanche contrapposto angels are only highlighted accents in a wash of crumbling decrepitude.
In the morning you don't get the dark shadows that elicit mind games and conjured phantasms but I gotta tell you entering this ghostly realm was still freaky. I was very hesitant to go too deep. One reason was the supernatural, the other was the Iberville Housing Project next door. We could either be pulled into oblivion by the ghosts of New Orleans or be mugged and killed by some desperate crack head. We slowly entered anyway pulled by the decrepit beauty of the tombs and the same curiosity that killed the cat. Plus I figured that by 6:00 AM the criminal element was tired out from their night's endeavors and went to bed.
Here's some video from our hesitant ramble through the cadaver condos.
Offerings of beads, candles, pages of books, feathers....and what does XXX mean scrawled on the face of certain tombs? People still believe in Marie Laveau's Voodoo Queen power and to conjure Marie's powers you need to mark her tomb with XXX in chalk or brick, rub the ground three times with your foot, knock three times (to wake the dead) and make a wish. Yikes.
These above ground cemetery's are known as the Cities of the Dead. St Louis #1 cemetery spans just one square block, but is the resting place of over 100,000 dead. That's a city sized amount of dead people.
In a city that seems to disregard the concept of linear time and wears all it's histories at once, these cemetery's are cool to visit. From their beehive oven tombs I'm sure these densely packed denizens still hold court over their beloved New Orleans.
The music of the French Quarter Festival was amazing (as you can see from my previous post) but away from the stages the city of New Orleans itself kept us captive. The street life was convivial, the food was succulent, the drinks were dangerously tasty and the people were full of the joy of living. We explored the Quarter then spun in concentric circles like whirling dervishes radiating out to Magazine Street, St Charles Avenue, Uptown, the Garden District, Carrollton and Mid-City. I'll list some cool places we patronized in my next post but for now check out the vibe that emanates from that crescent curve on the shores of the mighty Missisippi in the city we call the Big Easy.
We were walking up Orleans Avenue to Royal Street late one night and were met with this spectral image. Standing watch over the back gardens of St Louis Cathedral, Jesus takes up mightier heights when the sun sets to tend the Babylonian flock of quenched revelers roaming the Quarter and flooding up & down Pirates Alley.
Who hasn't felt the pull of New Orleans? The Jazz, the Cajun music, the food, the crawdads, the Mardi Gras Indians?
There's a mystic quality to this unique city. It's French influenced in an Anglo centric country. It's Catholic and bawdy in an American South full of conservative Christians. Back in the day it was the stomping grounds of the debauched pirate Jean Lafitte and he'd still fit right in today.
With the French Quarter Festival happening I was hoping to see some good Cajun music and Dixieland jazz. I got way more than I hoped for. Music is like breathing here. It everywhere and it's good, really good, and when you breathe it in you feel alive.
You also inhale slices of another time. It's an ancient and modern mix of culture; like being in a Harry Potter movie. It's a gumbo of time periods and cultures but it isn't a melting pot. Nothing is melted or diluted here. It's cultures and time periods reveal themselves to you as the veils of time peel away. French, Creole, Spanish, Caribbean, Haitian, Piracy, Voodoo, Jazz, Zydeco, Outlaws, Literary Giants, Ghosts, Vampires, Swamps, the Mississippi. They all co-mingle in a thick hot swampy jumble. Let's call it a Jambalaya :)
Jazz was invented in New Orleans by Buddy Bolden. The legendary inimitable Louis Armstrong stormed the world from New Orleans. Dr. John, Professor Longhair, the Marsalis brothers, Harry Connick Jr, The Neville Brothers, Fat's Domino and a multitude of great musicians hail from this legendary music town.
Early on I got an appreciation of brass music from my Father the trumpet player. As I watched the wailing expressions blown by New Orleans street musicians my mind took me back to my own brass band days and my Father's fire dept bands. I'm hoping he was on my shoulder experiencing this spectacle with me. God knows he would have loved New Orleans.
But enough words, check this out. It's a bit long for an Internet video but you gotta see the breadth of music the French Quarter Festival provides...for free. Dig it!
I'd never seen Mardi Gras Indians before so on Saturday night we went to see the funky 101 Runners at Waterfront Park. They were great. What a spectacle and they came down in the crowd where we all participated in their mad bacchanalia. Check it out. In the middle of the video they do a cover of the Grateful Dead's Fire On The Mountain. The crowd went wild.
Last but not least are Washboard Chaz and Doc Houlind. I loved these two moments in time.
We saw the Washboard Chaz Blue's Trio at The Spotted Cat. The Spotted Cat is a club in the Faubourg Marigny district which is just a short walk east of the French Quarter. Frenchmen Street is a great street full of music clubs where the locals go. Check it out next time you're in N'awlins. I don't have a lot of tape of Chaz because if you watch you'll see him wave me off to stop filming. The group was tight. Chaz kept a mean rhythm with his washboard. Along the bottom of it he has a wood block, two tin cans and a bell for additional percussion. Teamed with a driving bluesy Dobro player and a screaming, chugging and churning harmonica jockey they rocked it hard. I went online when I got back and bought a CD. Get one!
We saw Doc Houlind's Revival Jazz Band at Preservation Hall. The band was excellent but Preservation Hall is a star in it's own right.
From the Hall's website; Preservation Hall is located in the French Quarter, just three blocks from the Mississippi River. The Hall has served many functions over the years. Originally built as a private residence in 1750, the hall has evolved into a tavern, inn, photo studio and an art gallery. The inside of the hall contains portraits of the musicians who first filled it with the beautiful sounds of New Orleans Jazz.
Preservation Hall opened its doors in 1961. The hall was created as a sanctuary, to protect and honor New Orleans Jazz which had lost much of its popularity to modern jazz and rock n roll. Allan and Sandra Jaffe, the hall’s founders, wanted a place where New Orleans musicians could play New Orleans Jazz, a style, they believed, should not disappear.
Today, over 40 years later, the hall is still going strong. On any given night, the hall is filled to capacity with people eager to hear New Orleans jazz played by veteran musicians in their 70’s and 80’s and younger musicians learning and embracing music that is both sweet and very beautiful.
Listen to Doc Houlind and you'll hear that kicking Rag Time Dixieland sound is still alive! Doc's band is from Denmark but you'd think they grew up right here in New Orleans. It's a testament to the global appeal of this music.
One thing I really got a kick out of was a lot of bands didn't have a bass player, instead they had a Sousaphone. They use Sousaphones as basses down here!
I'm sucked in. New Orleans has captivated me. I've fallen under it's spell. My friend John told me I have the "disease". If I do, I don't want to be cured...I just want to go back.
Next posts - We explore, eat, drink and visit the grave of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.
It's 87 degrees. Even though it's only late April it feels like summertime, especially when I hear the far off fat sound of a Harley exhaust float in with the breeze through an open window.
Day 4. This is our last day in Yellowstone. We pack and have breakfast at the diner in the Canyon Village General Store where we swap picture taking responsibilities with a nice French family.
Molly's jazzed about taking a hike before we drive down to Jackson Wyoming. It's going to be a long day. Dylan and I are not so into it but the "boss" has spoken so we're dressed to hike.
We head down the road to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and don't we come across a Grizzly Cub!
Having come up a steep incline he crosses the road in front of us and keeps moseying uphill. Amazing. That's the second grizzly we've seen in 4 days. Third if you count the spec we saw through a rangers binoculars. It's thrilling all over again.
I'm already not too excited to hike this morning and now we've just encountered a bear roaming around where we're supposed to be hiking! I counter that maybe we should skip the hike this morning. We don't have bear bells, we don't have bear spray, we're simply not prepared to be hiking in bear country. Mind you this is the same group (my family) who all agreed we would not swim with sharks in the Bahamas and what happened when the opportunity arose to swim where there are sharks? They immediately strapped on the snorkel gear. I stood there for a minute contemplating a scene where I watch my wife and kids get munched while I watch the trickles of blood helplessly from shore ... didn't feel good, so I pulled on my snorkel gear too. You know where this is going. We got to the South Rim trail head and hiked. :)
It was a beautiful day and the river, as it's been all along, was gorgeous! The power of the water was scary. It moved at a NASCAR pace past rocks and over falls big and small. White water highlighted the liquid sapphire. If someone fell into the raging river I don't imagine they'd last long. They be tossed around and beat up like a rag doll.
The South Rim trail was well worn. The river was on our left and woods on our right. Every 100 feet or so we were drawn back down to the river's edge to take in another transcendent scene.
Here we are hiking the trail.
When you get to the end of the trail you are at Artist Point. When the first Europeans set sights on Yellowstone and told tales of it's wonders they were not well received. The tale tellers were thought to be exaggerating. The next wave of explorers brought artists to document the discoveries and the paintings still looked unreal, ... exaggerated. Here's Thomas Moran's painting of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
And here's a photograph of the real place. You can see the artists took no creative liberty. It really looks like this!
Knocked out by the bounty of Yellowstone again we reluctantly say goodbye.
But...we're very excited to be traveling to The Grand Tetons to luxuriate in swanky Jackson Wyoming. See you there
The cabins were fine. They were basic but clean. The shower was so small however I could barely move my arms to wash myself. :) We didn't plan this move up to Canyon Village in advance though so we were just happy to have gotten a room. The landscape was different than down by Old Faithful and the geyser fields. It was nice to have a cabin in a bit of woods. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere even though the big Canyon Lodge and a "village" of restaurants, stores and a Yellowstone Museum were a short walk away.
From here we made our exploration of Lamar Valley. Lamar Valley, like Hayden Valley is a spectacular place to view wildlife. Located in the Northeast section of the park you can see elk, bison, osprey, bald eagles, antelope, moose, black bears, grizzlies and wolves.
It's also prime viewing for two prominent packs ... of humans. First is the herd of telescoped binocular humans who gather to watch for wolves in the early morning and evenings. Second are the scattered but ubiquitous fly fisherman. We didn't fish here but it made me want to come back and try. My mind's eye is burned with the vision of fly fisherman in their waders, thigh high in brilliant blue water performing their upper body ballet. Laid out behind them is a scene of such grandeur it's epic. A snaking river with a purple wash of rocks at the rivers edge framed by the yellows and greens of grasses and wildflowers. Buffalo graze in the middle ground and beyond them climbing walls of lodgepole pine and rocky granite peaks highlighted by the alpen glow of the westering sun.
I spied an envious scene at one point where a guy with an RV had parked in a turn-out viewing area. He was sitting in a lawn chair, legs extended and crossed in front of him, his body almost in a reclined position with a cap precariously balanced on his head to shade the sun. He had a coffee in one hand and down beside the lawn chair he had his thermos. There he sat, back to us, watching the Buffalo and the colors of the late day change. I wanted to join him. One day I will and sit quietly for hours, nursing my cup-o-joe, as the buffalo graze and the watchful eye of the young granite peaks watch back.
Lamar Valley is quite different than Hayden Valley. It's much hillier and the mountains feel closer, the valley is not as wide. We drove from west to east and the closer we got to the east entrance of the park the narrower the valley got and higher the peaks. It's very dramatic. I'm told coming into the park from the Northeast Entrance is an eye-popping experience as you drive through the Beartooth Highway. I think I'll try that next visit.
The valley is wide and grassy in it's western reaches. We drove west to east out of the Tower-Roosevelt area.
The eastern end of the valley gets very dramatic. This picture doesn't capture the scale.
We watched for wildlife but didn't see too much this day. We pulled over once where a ranger had a telescope trained on a spec of a grizzly bear having his lunch over a dead elk carcase. We also stopped to see the dry white bones of another elk that had been picked clean by the denizens of the Lamar Valley. The most prevalent animal we saw here was once again the Buffalo.
Lamar Valley has it's own herd of Buffalo. In 1907 28 bison were moved from Fort Yellowstone to the Lamar Valley to enhance the park's natural herd. These were plains bison, a distinct subspecies which differed from the park's native mountain bison. Who knew there were different species? Anyway the park herd is now a hybrid of the two subspecies and between Hayden Valley and Lamar Valley numbers about 4,000.
Here's some video we took in Lamar Valley.
When we got to the end of the valley we didn't exit the park. We turned around and drove back. We'd already driven about 50 miles that day, so we had another 50 to get back to our cabin. 30 miles back we stopped at the Roosevelt Lodge for dinner. As we entered the ranch a most western scene greeted us as a posse of horses and riders slowly came towards us trailing a plume of summer dust. Roosevelt Lodge was a very cool place. It's named after Teddy Roosevelt who came to this location to explore Yellowstone in 1904.
On the property there's a rustic log lodge with a big dining room, a country store and scattered cabins. This is very remote. It's a great place to stay for a back country experience. They offer horseback trail riding, stagecoach rides, chuckwagon outings and it's a perfect launching point for fly fishing. We sat on the front porch waiting for a table as the sun set savoring this pristine location. The view was across a wide valley and the far mountains went from green to orange to red to purple to black. I'm definitely staying here a couple days next visit. Our meal was great, the bar keep made us some amazing margarita's with and interesting twist on the salted rim...cayenne pepper. It added a nice kick.
Roosevelt Dining Room Photo from Picasa web album of Diana Magor
We made our way back to Canyon Village in the dark. Molly made me drive. The road gets a little hairy over the Dunraven Pass, and to add a little coda to the day, we saw a coyote. I'm 90% sure it wasn't a wolf.. .even though I'd like to say it was. :)
To read about our three days in Yellowstone from the beginning start here. Day One - Yellowstone.
Bob is a travel writer and designer/ producer of interactive entertainment. He's traveled through Europe, North America and Australia. Bob loves immersing himself in local cultures and writes about the food, drinks, architecture, music, history, people and experiences along the way.
