Jungle Gardens

In the 1920s, Ned McIlhenny, son of the creator of Tabasco Pepper Sauce, began turning his Avery Island estate into a 170-acre garden: Jungle Gardens.  

As we drove into the gardens, we were welcomed by a forest of live oak and a sign warning us of alligators. We parked the car and set out in search of alligators.

Live Oaks greet visitors near the entrance to the gardens

Do not become alligator food

An alligator watches us search for alligators

After deciding that I was too big to eat, the small alligator moves along

Having only found a single small alligator, I continue searching for something bigger. A sign in the gift shop where we paid our $8 per person admission fee had invited us to see the 14 foot alligator. I wanted to find this giant lizard before it found us.

Across the road, I noticed a fence around the water. Thinking the fence must be there to protect us from the big gators, I walk to the fence. I'm still hoping to find the fourteener,

A chain link fence separates us from the suspected alligator-infested waters

As I get closer to the fence, I realize that there is a problem. There's a giant alligator sized hole ripped in the fence. I look around. I don't see any alligators on either side of the fence.

Chain link fencing appears to maybe not be alligator proof

I head back to the safety of the car -- leaving Sophia to be alligator bait.

Waiting on traffic to clear so that I can rescue Sophia from the allegedly lurking alligators

I soon find Sophia practicing her alligator-fighting moves with her weapon of choice: a selfie stick. I'm starting to believe that there aren't any more alligators to be found.

Before the alligator eats you, take a selfie

Now safely in the car, and no longer actively searching for alligators, we continue our drive around the gardens. We come upon a few of the over 20,000 egrets that visit Avery Island each year. 

After driving through more of the park, admiring the scenery, we came upon a red arch inviting us to get out of the car and explore on foot. However, the arch was a trap.

An inviting red arch

Or rather, the arch hosted many traps laid by many spiders.

Awaiting the next victim

Ben shoots the carnivorous monsters

Beyond the gate lies a 900 year old Buddha statue.

After wandering about the garden for about 40 minutes, we retreated from the summer heat to the cool air conditioning in the car and set off in search of our next adventure.

Tabasco Pepper Sauce

Monday Morning, day 4 of our road trip, we set out in search of the Tabasco Sauce Factory at Avery Island, Louisiana.  I turned right where I should have turned left. This gave us a chance to tour some Louisiana farmland. :)

After the detour, we came upon a toll both at which we were asked to pay a $1 toll to enter Avery Island. We were given a pass to the island, instructed to pay close attention to the signs and stay out of places marked private, and were directed to the factory tours.

Avery Island Entrance Pass

Sign directing us to the Tabasco factory tours and country store

The Tabasco Visitor's Center

Inside the Visitors Center we were each given a few small sample bottles of Tabasco sauce and shown a short film about the history and production of Tabasco sauce. You can see some of the material in this film in an episode of the Discovery Channel's How It's Made: Tabasco.




At a high level, the procedure for turning peppers into Tabasco pepper sauce is:

1. Hand-pick peppers matching the color painted on a little red stick
2. On the same day as harvesting, grind the peppers and mix them with salt to create a pepper 
3. Put the mash in oak bourbon barrels
4. Seal the barrels and cover the top with salt
5. Put the barrels in a warehouse
6. Wait 3 long years for the peppers to ferment
7. Remove the salt from the top of the barrels
8. Open the barrels
9. Mix the fermented peppers with vinegar
10. Stir for 27 days.
11. Extract the pepper pulp and seeds
12. Test the sauce that remains after removing the pulp and seeds
13. Bottle the sauce

After the film, we were paraded by big windows offering a look into their bottling operation.

The Visitors Center also contained a some exhibits on the advertising of Tabasco and a vat of Tabasco peppers and vinegar in the process of being stirred for nearly four weeks. 

After the free introduction to Tabasco, we were directed to the Tabasco Country Store to peruse and buy all things Tabasco. 

Now, I love Tabasco sauce. I put the stuff on nearly everything. Years ago, my home office was decorated in Tabasco sauce motif. I even own one of almost every Tabasco toy and collectible die-cast race car produced during the one year that they sponsored a NASCAR team -- dozens of them.  Letting me enter a store filled with things Tabasco might be dangerous to my wallet.  I exercised some self-control and stopped myself after buying about $100 of pepper sauces. ;)

Before moving on, we snacked on some boudin (a cajun sausage-like thing made of rice and pork) drowned in Tabasco sauce.  Good stuff.

Upon returning to the car, I realized we'd left the hitchhikers locked in the car on a hot morning. They were a bit wilted, but recovered once I got the AC flowing again.

America's Worst Customer Service?

About 14 hours after we left Abilene, we arrived at the address for our reserved hotel room in Lafayette to find that the hotel wasn't there. There was a hotel at the address I was given by the America's Best Value Inn online reservation system, but it wasn't an America's Best Value Inn. We were hungry. We were tired. After a restless night and driving 600 miles, we were in need of rest. Dealing with a case of a hotel that doesn't exist wasn't on my list of things I wanted to do.

I opened up the reservation confirmation email from which I'd gotten the address for the hotel and confirmed that we were at the right address. I then searched the reservation email for a phone number. There was none. There was a label for a phone number, but none was listed. I then went to the website from which I reserved the room and found a customer service number. I called. The rep informed me that they could not help me because they have no hotel at that address. I told her that's why I was calling. I reserved room from their website and was sent to a location at which they have no hotel. She again repeated that she could not help me because it was not their hotel. She then went on to tell me that she couldn't cancel my reservation and that my credit card would be charged in spite of them having no hotel. She said their reservation services at the number I called have nothing to do with the website. I asked why their number was then listed on the website for customer service if they didn't provide support for reservations made on the website. She told me I had to call a different number during regular business hours. She didn't seem to care that it was late and I needed a place to sleep.

And that's when I flipped.  

If you are in the hospitality business, you need to be available to solve problems you create 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Hotel services and their problems aren't limited to banker business hours. Don't tell someone with a reservation who arrives to find no hotel that it isn't your problem. Don't tell the customer that their credit card will be charged as a "no show" when the frickin hotel for which you confirmed a reservation doesn't exist.

When I raised my voice, the woman on the other end of the line said she would no longer talk to me. I asked to speak with her manager. I then repeated the same conversation with the reservation manager. Each time she said "sorry, we can't help you", I got more frustrated.  A second person was no refusing to help me resolve the problem and find a place to sleep for the night.

During these conversations, we had all seemed to be working under the assumption that the hotel at which I made the reservation was no longer affiliated with America's Best Value Inn. As we talked, I looked at the confirmation email and noticed a number of peculiar things. Fields in the reservation info form that should contain information weren't populated or contained tokens that should have been replaced with the data they represented.

There is no inn at the address provided

After realizing that the reservation manager likely hadn't actually looked up my reservation, I asked her to check again.  When she finally looked it up, she discovered that her system showed a different address than was sent to me. And, sure enough, they had a hotel and I had a reservation at that hotel. Their system sent me to the wrong address.

This wasn't just a case of the hotel at the address no longer being associated with the chain. This was a case of the hotel's reservation system sending out emails with the wrong address. 

After they failed me two nights in a row, I decided to avoid America's Best Value Inn in the future.  Not only is their quality too variable, but now I have reason to distrust their reservation system, and I never again want to have to deal with their reservation customer service.

When your technology fails your customers, take ownership of the problem and help get it fixed. Get your customers what they need.  Please.

Google maps street view shows an America's Best Value Inn at the provided address

PS: My theory is now that the hotel at the address to which I was sent was once an America's Best Value Inn (as evidenced in the Google image above) and had the same name in the reservation system as their current hotel in the area, and some data lookup was getting the data from the old hotel rather than the current hotel bearing that name. 

Cannon's Fish & Pecans

A match made in Louisiana.

Walking in Natchitoches

We walked from downtown Natchitoches to the Fort Saint Jean Baptiste in heavy humid heat only to find the gates closed. (According to their published schedule, they should have been open.)

At least we got to see some cool old houses on our walk.

The gates are closed. :(

Mama's Oyster House

Get me off the freeway

After a long morning on the freeway, we're passing the option to take Interstate 49 south to New Orleans. Instead we're seeking Louisiana Highway 1 so that we can see something more than freeways and grass and trees.

Deflated

The hitchhikers look a bit deflated

We found traveling on a Sunday, the day after the 4th of July, to not be all that exciting. The only establishments we found to be open were chain restaurants and stores that we could visit at home. After skipping out of our hotel before sunrise and failing to find not-a-chain breakfast options, we finally gave into our hunger and grabbed a quick breakfast at a Corner Bakery Cafe in Arlington. The day was quickly turning into a day of driving to get through Texas as quickly as we could.

Driving through Texas often provokes me to wish I had a Holtzman drive to fold Texas out of the way and instantly move from New Mexico to Louisiana.   I was hoping that one of our hitchhikers might be a Navigator and be able to help us bypass Texas. Neither of them would admit to having the hardware or intuition to get us to the east side of Texas any faster than our Ford was carrying us. As I questioned our guests and as our time in Texas wore on, they seemed to slowly deflate. Perhaps I should have gotten them some coffee when we stopped.

Given that we could not bend space, we chose to bend the rules of this trip for just this day: we got on Interstate 20 and zoomed through Texas as quickly as we could. Perhaps, some time in the future, we'll return to Texas for the purpose of exploring Texas itself. This time, Texas was mostly in the way.

Approaching the Louisiana border

America's Best Value Inn: Abilene

Cheap, but too pricey for what you get.

Do not stay here. 

Dirty. 

Bugs.

Broken toilet.

Dirty.

Bugs.

Most uncomfortable bed ever.

Couldn't sleep.

Left before sunrise.

Oh, and several doors down, was a room that burnt a couple months before our visit.

Don't stay here. I wish I hadn't.

I would have been happier sleeping in the car.