Letterboxing Under the Live Oaks

Last month, we traveled to South Carolina for an extended family vacation. The kids were coming with the grandparents after a week at Camp Fun (staying at their house in St. Louis), so it was just the adults. Our basic voyage consisted of travelling all the way across I-10 to Jacksonville, FL, then hanging a giant left to travel up the eastern coast to near Charleston.

Without side trips, it's a 20 hour drive (which we did in two days on the way back with the kids. On the way there, we took four days, an eternity in road trip time, and took plenty of side trips and detours. The live oak pictured above is in New Iberia, LA at a lovely city park with two letterboxes. To the right? That's the chile fish at the gift shop on Avery Island at the Tabasco tour. The tabasco factory tour is an odd one, no other way to describe it. You have to pay $1 to get on the island, although the tour is free. The entire tour is similar to attending a booster club pep rally for the McIlhenny family, original & current owners. But, I'm a sucker for bottling lines and spicy things, so it was worth the side trip. And New Iberia is an amazingly charming town...I'd recommend it for a weekend getaway.

One of the boxes hidden by the Weatherlys in New Iberia was at this little grotto. I just love the little unexpected things out there, and this shrine next to the public library was one of them.

Other high points of Louisiana included meat pies in Lafayette, dining at the Abita Brew Pub (which we always do when coming through), having breakfast at Louie & The RedHead in Mandeville (a must), the UCM museum in Abita Springs (dogigator & friends as seen on roadside America) and seeing the sugar mill ruins at Fountainbleau State Park. Yes, there's a lot of food mentioned there, but what can I say? It was the live oak, letterboxing, dining & brew pub tour of the South.

Low point of Louisiana? That would be a letterbox where the clues were vague and could easily have referred to one of about 50 live oaks in a grove. We got a stick and poked into a hole in a promising one and what should come out? A swarm of yellowjackets! Yes, for the second time while letterboxing, I was stung by a mess of angry yellowjackets. I just got a few stings, but I dropped my sunglasses as soon as I felt the first prick. My darling husband thought that he could retrieve them (over my protestations)...result? Two stung adults and you guessed it, no sunglasses. And no box.

The last time we were stung, my husband didn't get hit. Now he found out how much it hurts. It's tough when the person you're whining to is also hurting.

Look for another few posts about our trip, specifically why the Stephen C. Foster Folk Art Center in Florida is like a time-warp to the 1950s. And not in a good way.