Louisiana
A road trip from Louisiana to Mississippi: Crawfish, beignets and beaches
The server at Suire’s Grocery was apologetic. They had just finished their lunch period and only had sandwiches left. Would that do? But before we could register a response a voice piped up from behind the hatch in the servery, insisting they had one last hot plate to offer. It was boudin and rice in gravy, take it or leave it.
Gratefully, we agreed to take it. We had hoped for their “legendary” Turtle Sauce Piccante, or Catfish Po’boy, or something else from their daily chalkboard of Cajun delicacies, all redolent of 300 years of southern Louisiana’s cultural hot-pot. But boudin and rice sounded intriguing. “What’s in it?” we asked, naively. The person next in line piped up. “Best not to ask,” she insisted. “But it’s good eatin’ all the same.” She wasn’t wrong.
Traditional boudin is a sausage made from pork meat, rice, vegetables and seasonings that vary from kitchen to kitchen and can include liver and heart, hence the whispered advice to stay ignorant of the recipe. We took the plunge and savoured a deeply flavourful plateful. The sausage had the consistency of pate and the thick gravy added a delectably gooey texture that hinted of bourbon, tabasco and something essentially earthy.
Read more: A fiery new food tour across America’s Deep South
Family-run Suire’s, in the rural town of Kaplan, was exactly what we’d hoped to encounter as our year-long RV circumnavigation of the US reached its 11th month. Southern Louisiana held the promise of experiences beyond the usual tourist trail, and we were soon immersed in a world of historical intrigue, ancient waterways, crawfish farms and fabulous food – the legacy of the 18th-century French Catholic expulsion from maritime Canada.
Here, along the Cajun Corridor Byway, we explored St Martinville, founded in 1765 and the setting for Longfellow’s epic poem “Evangeline”. We continued to the shrimping centre of Morgan City and White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area, where we were advised to keep an eye out for alligators. We also discovered Hebert’s Meats and dined on superb etouffee, jambalaya and more boudin.
Heading further east brought us to history-rich Baton Rouge via the 18-mile marvel of Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, an extensive causeway across America’s largest river swamp. From the elevated seats of our 36-foot-long Winnebago, we enjoyed a grandstand view of this million-acre wetland that is effectively the Mississippi’s dramatic overflow basin.
We checked in to the chic Tiger’s Trail RV Resort, an adjunct to the neighbouring L’Auberge Casino and packed with amenities like a swimming pool, lazy river feature, laundry and pickleball courts, plus the friendliest camp hosts we’d yet met. Fully in tune with the campground camaraderie we had come to expect, the Tiger’s Trail folks made us feel part of their family with a friendliness that was genuine and unmistakable.
Baton Rouge introduced us to the massive Louisiana State University campus with its stunning 102,000-seat American football stadium and an urban profile packed with modern art and period architecture, including its neo-Gothic Old State Capitol building, St Joseph Cathedral and Magnolia Mound Plantation House. The city’s oldest neighbourhood, the Civil War-ravaged Spanish Town, offered a collection of period homes, as well as the nearby temptations of Cecilia Creole Bistro, where we sampled fried oysters and alligators.
Resorting to our trusty tow car, we ventured in search of the rural towns and backwaters that reputedly make up 80 per cent of the state. Here, we could drive part of the Great River Road National Scenic Byway, a homage to the mighty Mississippi, studded with landmarks from the plantation era, notably Houmas House with its stately mansion and gardens.
The classic waterway of Bayou Manchac took us back into the 19th century, and the Southern Swamp Byway took us further still, with a timewarp journey into backroads where gators and turtles were often the only living creatures and crawfish farms were commonplace. Back in the 1940s, rice farmers realised their flooded rectangular ponds were the perfect breeding ground for crawfish, which thrived on the rice stalks, and promptly set up a two-for-the-price-of-one industry that supplies 100 million pounds per year of this delectable freshwater crustacean.
This symbiosis of backwater industry and dinner-table staple reached its zenith in New Orleans, where, for once, we were willing to drive our RV into the city to be close to the attractions. The New Orleans RV Resort & Marina proved yet again that a decent place to pull up and plug in is always on hand, and we dropped anchor for a week of Big Easy sights and tastes. Especially tastes.
Read more: Move over New Orleans, Lake Charles is our new favourite destination for Mardi Gras
Lafayette and Baton Rouge had whetted our appetites for the rich, rustic cuisine of the bayous, and we expected this foodie-centric city to raise the bar considerably. We weren’t disappointed. While we delighted in the unique French-Spanish-British culture that underpins New Orleans life, we happily soaked up the likes of shrimp etouffee, fried okra, gumbo and andouille sausage, all of which came with the Cajun “holy trinity” of chopped onions, celery and green bell peppers for stews, soups and sauces of lip-smacking pleasure.
We arrived just in time for the Wednesday concert series in Lafayette Square, a free weekly festival of live music and food kiosks that immediately got us up to speed on how to enjoy the city, especially when we came across the urban oasis of City Park, the second largest park in the US after New York’s Central Park. Its mixture of botanical gardens, amusement parks, museums, sculpture gardens and dog parks was balm for the soul and a feast for the senses, especially when we happened upon the beignets.
Aah, the beignets! These little portions of fried dough delight are a local speciality dating back to French immigrants from the 1700s, and Café du Monde has been serving them since 1862. Now in locations throughout the city, they are as iconic as Mardi Gras and twice as delicious. City Park’s café lacked the crowds of the downtown venues, hence we sat and ingested with enormous relish.
Read more: How to do the perfect New York city break
While New Orleans beguiled with its cuisine, music and culture – including the renowned National WWII Museum, which brought us to tears with its section on the Holocaust, and Chalmette Battlefield, where the 1815 Battle of New Orleans effectively ended colonial claims on America – the rural areas south of the city caught us off guard. The painfully impoverished towns of the Mississippi River Delta were a reminder of a tragic past and uncertain future, with its historic high poverty levels now exacerbated by a succession of hurricanes that have left deep scars, along with the climate change forecast for more.
The state of Mississippi presented us with dazzling Gulf Coast real estate. As we pulled into Buccaneer State Park, another superbly equipped campground right on this captivating coast, we were aware of the beach just a few yards from our site, while the coast road disappeared to the east in a whispered promise of new discoveries.
Sure enough, we were right on Beach Boulevard Scenic Byway, a pristine 13-mile stretch of wooded seaside nirvana studded with two utterly charming towns in Waveland and Bay St Louis. While New Orleans grabbed all the tragic headlines of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Waveland was actually ground zero for the monster storm, with only one building left standing on the high street thanks to a 30ft surge that pushed miles inland and left 57 dead (out of a population of 8,361). Amazingly, the rebuilding effort has created a new-town appearance with old-school sensibilities, and the Byway provided outstanding sight-seeing as well as blissful beaches and the eclectic Mockingbird Café, a survivor of Katrina and now a community focus for breakfast, lunch and heavenly coffees.
The coastal idyll continued as we took Highway 90 through Pass Christian, Long Beach and Gulfport to Biloxi Bay RV Resort, and another exercise in high-quality camping. With its own lazy river feature, swimming pool and bayfront bar, we were totally cosseted for another week, while also enjoying local highlights that included the eclectic arts community of Ocean Springs – packed with restaurants, art galleries and its own beachfront – and Biloxi itself, with more dining delights, as well as 26 miles of white sands that wouldn’t be out of place in the Caribbean.
In many ways, we had uncovered the essential Zen of RVing with a totally chilled state of road-going mind, but there was more in store as we considered the final month of our grand adventure through Alabama and back home to Orlando.
How to do it
RV Factfile:
‘111 Places in Orlando That You Must Not Miss’ by Simon Veness and Susan Veness is out now for £13.99.
Read more: US cities for solo female travellers you might not have considered
Louisiana
Federal appeals court upholds Texas’ Ten Commandments law. What does it mean for Louisiana?
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a Texas law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments, just weeks after the same court allowed a similar Louisiana law to take effect.
A majority of judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ law, which is nearly identical to Louisiana’s, is constitutional and does not violate students’ religious freedom. In February, the court lifted an injunction on Louisiana’s law, which cleared schools to put up the posters, but the judges said it was too early to rule on that law’s constitutionality.
Tuesday’s ruling could bode well for Louisiana’s law if it eventually returns to the 5th Circuit, considered the country’s most conservative federal court of appeals.
In their majority opinion, the judges rejected the argument that posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms would pressure students to honor the biblical mandates or adopt particular beliefs.
“To plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree,” the majority wrote about the Texas law, known as S.B. 10. A minority of the court’s active judges dissented.
Even though Tuesday’s ruling only addressed the Texas case, defenders of Louisiana’s legislation celebrated it as a victory. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the 5th Circuit’s argument in upholding Texas’ law was identical to the one Louisiana made in defense of its law.
“Our law clearly was always constitutional,” she posted on X, “and I am grateful that the Fifth Circuit has now definitively agreed with us.”
Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in 2024, which requires all public K-12 schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. A group of parents quickly challenged the law in court, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the state from enforcing the law.
In February, the 5th Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, saying it had been premature to block the law before it took effect. The judges said they could not rule on the law’s constitutionality before seeing how it played out in schools.
But in the case of Texas’ law, which that state’s Republican-led Legislature passed in 2025, the court did rule on the merits.
Rejecting arguments made by attorneys for the Texas families who challenged the law, the 5th Circuit majority said that requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments does not amount to the government endorsing a particular religion, which the U.S. Constitution forbids. The law also does not impose religious beliefs on students, the judges wrote.
“As noted, S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’),” the majority opinion says. “No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”
The Texas families were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The same groups, including Louisiana’s ACLU chapter, represented the Louisiana families.
In a statement Tuesday, the organizations said they are “extremely disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling, adding that they expect to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” the groups said. “This decision tramples those rights.”
Nearly all major industries in Louisiana added jobs over the past year, signaling momentum for a stronger future, according to a recent report from Leaders for a Better Louisiana.
The organizat…
Already an INSIDER? Sign in.
SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — Police say a man shot and killed eight children, including seven of his own, following a domestic dispute in Shreveport.
The incident took place early Sunday morning, April 19, on West 79th Street in the Cedar Grove neighborhood. According to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office, the victims included three boys and five girls, aged between three and 11-years-old. Seven of the children were siblings, while one was a cousin. Two adult females were also injured, including one who was shot at a home located in the 500 block of Harrison Street.
One of the adults was inside the home on West 79th Street when the children were killed. She managed to escape through a window with two of the children and reached the roof. The woman jumped down with one of the children. Unfortunately, the other child did not manage to escape. Police later found his body on the roof with a gunshot wound. The surviving child was taken to the hospital with a broken leg.
The children were identified by their mothers as Jayla (age 3), Shayla (age 5), Kayla (age 6), Layla (age 7), Markaydon (age 10), Sariahh (age 11), Khedarrion (age 6), and Braylon (age 5).
Authorities say the suspect and father of the victims, Shamar Elkins, was the only person who fired shots that led to the juveniles’ deaths.
Authorities noted that Elkins stole a vehicle near West 79th Street after he shot the victims. He was pursued by patrol officers into Bossier Parish, where they discharged their weapons and fatally shot him on Brompton Lane. Louisiana State Police will take over the investigation involving the officers.
Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux expressed his thoughts on the matter, saying, “We have a hurting community. We have hurting families. We have hurting police officers, coroner’s personnel, fire department, sheriff people, and this affects the entire community. We all mourn with these families. I ask, it’s a Sunday morning. I ask all of you who are, who are listening, who might be able to. Pray at your services this morning for not just this family, for all the victims, for the victims who are at the hospital, and for the Cedar Grove community and for the community at large.”
Attorney General Liz Murrill also commented on the tragic shooting, stating, “Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating this tragic situation. We do not yet know all the details, but I am deeply saddened by the senseless loss of life. I’m praying for the victims and their family members in the wake of this devastating violence.”
According to the Director of Strategy and Communications, Mary Nash-Wood, two of the children attended Summer Grove, and at least four attended Linwood Charter School.
The police have not determined a motive. More updates will be provided as the information becomes available.
You can now stream KTAL 6 and KMSS 33 News live, plus original content 24/7 on your smart TV with KTAL Now, our brand-new app! No antenna, cable, or satellite needed—watch for free, anytime. Just download it on your Roku, Apple TV, or Fire TV and start streaming.
-
New York43 minutes agoTrump’s Immigration Crackdown Pervades Long Island Suburbs
-
Detroit, MI1 hour agoChris Simms projects Detroit Lions first-round NFL draft pick
-
San Francisco, CA1 hour agoSan Francisco sets $3.4B price tag for public takeover of PG&E
-
Dallas, TX2 hours agoGame Day Guide: Stars at Wild | Dallas Stars
-
Miami, FL2 hours agoMay a steadying presence as Cards hold off Marlins in Miami
-
Boston, MA2 hours agoTyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe flex in Boston: Takeaways from Celtics-76ers Game 2
-
Denver, CO2 hours agoMotorcyclist seriously injured in Denver hit-and-run crash – AOL
-
Seattle, WA2 hours agoBrock: 2 drafts fits at edge rusher for Seattle Seahawks