Good times

Yesterday Adam and I drove up the river a bit to Whitney Plantation.  It is the only plantation here that is presented from the slaves' point of view and that was what we were interested in.

I really love exploring new places with Adam.  There is a lot to see in this beautiful diverse world.  We drove for awhile in this boggy cypress tree area.  It wasn't exactly water, but it didn't look like you could walk there either.

We went over a beautiful bridge over the Mississippi.  It appears my ghost hands are holding it up.

Two things are striking to me about the Mississippi River.  It is super muddy and also very busy.

I didn't take any pictures at the Whitney Plantation.  It felt slightly disrespectful, plus I was so engrossed, it didn't really occur to me to take pictures.  We did a self guided tour with a headset recording giving us information.  It was a pretty objective look at what life was like for the slaves.  It didn't feel like it was trying to make us feel guilty or manipulate our emotions, but it was sobering.  I appreciated that it didn't celebrate or glamorize the antebellum south, just gave a glimpse of what it was like.

The family historian in me loved one part in particular.   107,000 entries had been gathered from historical records to create a Louisiana slave database.  There was a memorial with the names listed.  They were the names given to them by their masters and were mostly French.  Seeing all those names was impactful.  They represented lives I can't really comprehend.  As is often the case at times like that, I consider my fortunate life and realize I better do good in the world since I have been given so much.

At the recommendation of the woman at the Whitney Plantation museum, we went to a tiny seafood restaurant on the edge of the river.  What is strange about being on the edge of the river is that there is a huge grass covered levee and you can't see the river.

It was a cultural experience eating there.  Rabbit, frog legs, and alligator were all on the menu.  I had shrimp and Adam had half a shrimp po boy and gumbo.  We split a piece of the best pecan pie of my life.

After eating, Adam said, "I think there's a road on top of the levee."  He found a dirt road leading up to it and I told him he couldn't go up there. 

He did anyway.

25% of our marriage is me telling Adam, "You can't do that!" and him doing it anyway.

We went back to our hotel and Adam talked with some coworkers in the lobby and I went and took a 15 minute nap which is usually all I need to recharge.  We went to the venue of the party for alumni and graduates, which was right outside the Superdome.  It was a festive atmosphere.

I pretended to help get the Sage Coach (the WGU bus, cleverly named by Adam because Sage is the owl mascot of WGU) ready for the event.  At one point Cameron told me I was "part of the crew now" and I couldn't tell if it was a compliment, an insult, or a threat.

There were food trucks all around the venue and one of them was Cafe Du Monde, which multiple people told us was the best place for beignets.

They weren't wrong.

Also, the amount of powdered sugar that got all over us was an adventure as well.

There was a company hired to set up a curtain that would drop for the big reveal of the new wrap on the Sage Coach.  The mechanism wasn't cooperating so Adam and his team were up on the Sage Coach to manually drop the curtain at the big moment and they tasked me with videoing it.

My photography skills are wobbly, but I did my best.

Here's the before and after:

Some of the people featured on the bus were there, which I loved.  I also loved that during the university president's speech beforehand, he talked about the impact the graduates were making in their own families and gave a statistic about the likelihood of their children getting college educations because they had.  Standing in the middle of the crowd like I was, I could see the graduates with their children and proud families beaming and it made me a little teary (I know, never happens).  I felt proud of the work that WGU does to make education accessible to so many (even though I have nothing to do with it beside videoing the unveiling of the Sage Coach).