Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler

When visiting New Orleans we always camp at Bayou Segnette SP on the west bank of the Mississippi River. A twenty minute drive gets us to Algiers Point and a short ferry trip across the Mississippi to the French Quarter.

This was our second visit to the French Quarter Festival. The festival runs for four days and is free. Stages are set up throughout the Quarter and features a variety of local and regional talent. Good food and friendly people make for a fun time.

In addition to the formal stages there are plenty of street performers to entertain you as you wander the streets.

Wandering New Orleans is always a treat with lots of interesting architecture.

Whenever we visit New Orleans we make a point to visit the 1,300 acre City Park. The park is about 50% larger than Central Park in NYC and is home to the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), a sculpture garden, a botanical garden and lots of open space.

New Orleans has lots of interesting neighborhoods to explore, the Bywater, Marigny, Treme, Irish Channel and the Garden District to name a few. With limited time we decided to wander the Garden District.

You never know what you’ll see as you wander NOLA.

After the festival we moved our base of operations to the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and Fairview River SP.

To get to the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain you have to travel the 24 mile causeway from New Orleans.

Situated along the north shore of the lake are a number of small towns that we wanted to check out. Abita Springs, home to Abita brewing was one of them.

Connecting many of the north shore towns is the 31 mile Tammany Trace asphalt bike path. We road a section in Covington and Mandeville.

We’ve reached the point in our trip where it’s time to start heading north. The trip home won’t be rushed, we still have some new locales to explore.