Not being one who enjoys crowds and a nightlife of flitting from one bar to the next, New Orleans was never high on my list to visit. But an opportunity came up, so I grabbed it, knowing that the "daylife" would be more to my liking. My main event was not to be New Orleans anyway, but rather, the southern-most backroads of Louisiana.

So that's where I started out one rainy May day, leaving Texas behind and hitting Louisiana's Highway 82 in Cameron Parish.

I always start out early in the mornings, just as it's daylight on such ventures, and this day was no exception. Rain, rain go away. And it did. By 11 am, though still a little overcast, the rain subsided, and I never saw another drop the rest of the trip.

Lunch was in Houma before continuing the jaunt which eventually put me on State Highway One to the end of the road in Grand Isle.

From there I made my way into New Orleans' Garden District where I would spend the next two nights.

New Orleans in the day is delightful. It wasn't yet super crowded with tourists, so getting around by trolley for the day was easy. Of course, I headed first to the French Quarter. I roamed from street to street, taking in all the wrought iron balconies and the colorful architecture of that disrict as well as the sweet, colorful houses of Marigny and Bywater Districts.

After visiting Uptown, where Audubon Park and Loyola and Tulane Universities are, I headed back to Bourbon Street for dinner. Yep, the street musicians were blaring, and the night-lifers were closing in. I tipped a couple of kids who were beating plastic buckets with their drum sticks throughout my meal, prompted to do so when after no telling how long they had been drumming, they looked in their tip bucket and brought out only two one dollar bills.

With my fill of red beans and rice, seafood gumbo and shrimp etouffee. I wandered back to my hotel satisfied that I had seen a good portion, seven miles worth, of the Big Easy.

Day Three would find me heading south on Highway 23 to Tidewater Road, the most southern point of Louisiana and where the Mississippi River ends its own journey at the Gulf of Mexico. But not before I had breakfast of coffee and three delicious warm beignets at the New Orleans Coffee & Beignet Company on St. Charles Avenue.

Pictures of the trip are on two pages: one is dedicated to New Orleans, and the other to the backroads. Enjoy and thank you for visiting.