Tabasco Sauce | Avery Island, Louisiana

Thursday - 14 November 2002: Lake Charles, Louisiana - Hello from the swamps of Louisiana. We are not quite "in" the city of Lake Charles, but are camped just East, in what I am sure was once (possibly last week) someone's sugar cane field. There is sugar cane on either side and across the street and a muddy parking lot carved out in the center as a campground. No worries, we just needed a place to pull-over for the night. The "office" is a gas station. They sell pizza in the gas station, and there is a steady line of pizza-hungry customers appearing from out of the swamps in their pickup trucks.

We had a quiet and slow day, but an interesting day, and we had perfect weather. We began by fetching our boy from the kennel. Snickers was looking (and smelling) good after his bath, and was happy to see us. The vet assured us Snickers was a good boy. We hitched-up and left the Big Easy. New Orleans was fun - I enjoyed all the shops and restaurants and walking in the French Quarter. I will never forget the flavor of the beignets at Cafe du Monde, and we will just have to try Swamp Soup - alligator, turtle and frog - another day. Big news today in the Big Easy is the delivery of a brand-new cruise ship, the Carnival Conquest. Seems the Conquest is a bit too tall to sail into her home port - New Orleans! A power line crosses the river, and if the river is at-all high, the power must be shut off to the lines, just in case the ship comes close - something about arcing. It is the power supply for an oil refinery and the refinery isn't happy, as the Conquest will be going in and out of port every week. But, years ago when the oil refinery ran the lines across the river, they made a pact with the government to raise the lines if ever needed - fully thinking there will never be a need. Oops! The Conquest is a 5,000 passenger ship, a Mega-Ship. With all those tourists and tourist dollars coming into New Orleans, I am going to bet the oil refinery will be shutting off power twice a week - or permanently raising the lines.

We left town on I-10, cut over to 90 and followed it through Bayou country. Or, should I say we drove over the Bayou. Much of Highway 90 is built up on pilings, something like a really long bridge, It does give a better view of the murky mess. Okay, okay, so I KNOW it is really a diverse, self-sufficient eco-system - holding many of nature's mysteries - but it is a swamp! It is full of snakes, alligators, mosquitoes and other vile things that slither about.  It isn't even pretty.

Not to worry, even in the swamp and bayou, we can find diversion. Did you know that there is only one place in the world where Tabasco Sauce is brewed and bottled? Yep, and it's on Avery Island, Louisiana. First, you must cross over the 10-foot-long bridge to Avery Island and pay a 50 cent toll. (Actually, I am not sure if the toll is 50 cents and he only charged us for one vehicle, or the toll is 25 cents and we were charged for two.) Avery Island is made of salt. Millions of pounds of salt (98.9% pure) is mined every year. Just after the Civil War, Edmund McIlhenny began growing Capsicum Peppers from seeds he acquired in the Caribbean. He began growing the peppers and developing a recipe for his pepper sauce. The recipe is patented, of course, but here is the basic concept: The peppers are picked when they are perfectly ripe, mashed, mixed with a bit of salt and put into oak barrels to ferment and age for 3 years. (Unlike the Buffalo Trace Distillery, Tabasco barrels are used over and over for 30 years, then the barrels are made into wood chips for smoking meats.) Finally, the aged mash is mixed with vinegar, stirred for a month, strained and bottled. Tabasco is the most recognized brand of pepper sauce in the world - it is shipped to over 100 countries and the labels are printed in 16 different languages. About a quarter mile from the plant, you can smell Tabasco sauce! Our tour consisted of an introductory talk by our guide, and a short film on the history of the island, McIlhenny family and the company. Each guest is given a small bottle of sauce - another lagniappe! Then we toured through the factory to watch the bottles being filled, labeled and packed. Today, they were packing Tabasco Sauce for Mexico. (Isn't that kinda like sending coal to Newcastle?) Then, of course - GIFT SHOP! You would not believe the stuff you can do with Tabasco Sauce and the stuff people will buy. Not that we left empty-handed ourselves! Beside the original sauce, the McIlhenny's also offer a green (mild) sauce, garlic, habanera (really, really hot) and a new Chipolte sauce. You can buy Tabasco Brand Bloody Mary mix too. The buildings in the plant are very, very beautiful - solid brick - and simple in design. When new buildings are added, they are built in the original style, so it is nearly impossible to tell new from old. There is also a bird sanctuary on the island, operated by the family. It was a fun diversion, but it was getting late, so we hit the road after eating a very late lunch in the motor home.

We continued along highway 90 to Highway 14, as it was designated a Louisiana Scenic Byway. What Louisiana thinks is scenic and what we think is scenic are two different things altogether. As we passed through Abbeville (it was a pretty town), we started noticing trees down all over, roofs ripped off homes, etc., and realized this is the result of the storm we sat through for hours in the Casino campground in Mississippi Sunday night! Highway 14 was a bumpy mess, so we went back up to I-10 and as it grew dark, pulled-off to this strange campground for the night. I made chicken tacos, with Purdue Ground Chicken - the "Official Ground Chicken of NASCAR". And, though I love Tabasco, I used Cholula on my tacos.

RV Park: Jean Lafitte RV Park, Lake Charles, Louisiana