Northshore Exploring

The Northshore

A side benefit of visiting my daughter in Southeast Louisiana is Southeast Louisiana, plus......
   After I've gotten done what I wanted to do, or she wanted me to do, around the house, it is time to go exploring. Mississippi is to the north and east. The winding lanes of the "toe of the boot" which is Louisiana are readily available. Lake Pontchartrain and its communities lie to the south. Now, I don't like stop lights. I don't like playing in traffic for I am at a disadvantage when confronting a blitzed out mother with kids screaming while she's trying to arrange a tennis lesson on her cellphone while driving her Humbee in three different lanes. But sometimes the prize is worth the battle.
   The Northshore has grown up. Many an expatriot from New Orleans now lives here. The sleepy little harbor towns are now bustling bedroom communities. The beauty is still there. Sometimes it is just a little harder to find.
   If I tried to relate the blow by blow attempts at finding these prizes there would be nothing but text on these pages. This sampling of the Northshore took two days. It was done without preparation, without the full use of the GPS, and without any guidance which I had hoped my memory would lend. My memories were of the Northshore 45 years ago. There have been a few changes.
    So, what I'm going to do is put this together logically. Not illogically, which discribes my wandering. Like a drunken sailor I roamed, gathering pearls and spice as my bounty. Ok, I'll calm down.

I got directions to Madisonville from my daughter. I knew the Tchefuncta (chee-funk-ta) ended up there. As a kid I lived in New Orleans. My parents were worried that city life might leave me "city like". So, they saw the Boy Scouts as my "ways of the wild" tutorial. The only good thing about the Boy Scout troop was that I got to go to the Northshore, once. The rest of the time was like being with the mafia.

Madisonville

To US 190

To Covington, US 190, I-10

To Mandeville, our next stop.

I came into Madisonville on 1077 from US 190, the shadow of I-10. Madisonville is still mainly old. The old buildings are there and occupied by the tourist and boating trade to a great extent. It still feels like a maritine community. With so much water around that is only natural. And, it has a large maritine research facility and museum on 1077, just south of the intersection with La.22. I passed it on the way south to this.

The Tchefuncta and one of the many, many yachts which dock here. Money Honey.

Old house, continuing tourist trade.
Visitors have supplied an income for the Northshore for a long time. It was a cool haven for rich New Orleaneans and some not so rich, like me.

Look at the little lighthouse, remember it. You'll need it later. There will be a quiz.

So I see this sign to my right and wow, immediately to my left is this shot. Pictures don't tell it all. Its primal beauty was shocking.

I don't know what has caused this strange appearance. It could be salt water intrusion into a fresh water environment. I'm going to do some research on this. A large source of fresh water, the Mississippi River, was cut off from the lake by Old Hickery (Andrew Jackson) back in 1812 when he blocked Bayou Manchac, a potential route the British could have taken to attack New Orleans from the north.
And we fired our guns and the British kept a comin', And there were't quite as many as there was a while ago. We fired once more and they began a runnin, down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
(I couldn't help it)