Natchez Riverboat Tour

Hi Blog!  On Thursday, we scheduled a trip down the mighty Mississippi aboard the only steam powered paddle wheeler in New Orleans - Steamboat Natchez.  The campground shuttle dropped us off at 10:00.  Since the ship wasn't scheduled to sail until 11:30, we found a nice little restaurant to have  coffee and Beignet.  Soon, it was time to board.  This was our first experience with a real tourist crowd.  We ended up sandwiched in the middle of a senior bus tour from Tennessee.  Hey, we fit right in.

We quickly found seats in the dinning room and chowed down on shrimp creole, jambalaya, fried fish, rice, okra and bread pudding.  (We skipped the okra!)  As the ship pulled from the docks, our tour guide began describing the sights along the banks of the river.  Many of the ships are unloaded right in the river.  The barges pull up alongside and the cargo is off loaded. The largest facility we saw was the Domino Sugar Plant.  The barges of raw sugar pull up to their dock and huge cranes come down and scoop it up and load it onto conveyor belts.  It was definitely one of the best smelling plants we ever passed.

Here is the mighty paddle wheel.  The wake the paddle wheel leaves is very unique.  The waves ripple off behind the ship in a fairly straight line.  We got to roam all over the boat.  The engine room was really cool.  Well, cool as in lots of neat stuff.  Since the engine is a steam boiler, it was actually very hot in the engine room.

Here is Dave getting a closer look at the pistons that drive the big wheel and keeps it rolling down the river.

Here is Kathy checking out the bow of the boat.  We saw all kinds of ships - oil tankers, military cargo vessels, barges, tug boats and pilot boats.  The main river channel is over 200 feet deep.  The large oil tankers look more like floating cities.

After the boat docked, we had the rest of the afternoon to continue seeking out new life and new civilizations.  Here we found the latest in French Quarter decoration.

We also stopped by an outdoor cafe to take in a little afternoon jazz.  Steamboat Willie entertained us before it was time to leave for the theater.

On our Natchez tour, the guide mentioned that the local Imax Theater was playing Hurricane on the Bayou. Shot before and after the unprecedented devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the documentary brings into focus the startling loss of Louisiana's rapidly disappearing coastal wetlands that are New Orleans' first line of defense against deadly storms. Told through the personal stories of four musicians, both legendary and rising, who are drawing attention to this environmental calamity. The story is both a document of Katrina's powerful effects, and a profound musical celebration of the city that has been called the "soul of America." The film really left us with a lasting impression of how hard the people of New Orleans have worked to bring their city back and how much further they still have to go.  It was very powerful.

Tomorrow, we are going to see dead people.  Don't worry. It's just a cemetery tour.