Avery Island - Some like it hot!

The combination of rain and another dense fog advisory kept us in port at North Pier Marina another day.  We decided to take advantage of the opportunity and visit Avery Island, home of the McIlhenny Tabasco Company.  The dock master at the marina was kind enough to drive us there and back at our convenience.

The factory has been there since 1868, shortly after the Civil War.  Their peppers are grown on a 50 acre parcel there on Avery Island.  The peppers are harvested, crushed, and aged in oak barrels for 3 years before then being blended with vinegar and turned into a variety of different flavors and shipped literally all over the world. The production run we saw this afternoon was going to Saudi Arabia. 





Have you ever had Tabasco flavored ice cream? These tiny cups are ice cream samples.  On the left is Jalapeno and on the right is Raspberry Chipotle.  My favorite was the Raspberry Chipotle.  Who would think that would be good in ice cream?

The dock master, T-boy, was kind enough to drive us to dinner as well.  T-boy is 78 years old and has lived in the area all of his life. He was filled with wonderful stories about the area's history, its people (most all of which he knew), and its customs. He was also there on Sunday (his day off) to greet us at the dock when we arrived and caught our lines as we maneuvered around the marina in a stiff 15 knot breeze. He wanted to be sure we got in safely. He is a real treasure!

Tonight we went to a local seafood restaurant named Shucks!  Brent ordered the seafood platter which he enjoyed and I stuck with shrimp.  We will all sleep well tonight.











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fort Myers Beach and Downtown Fort Myers

Image
Fort Myers Beach proved to be yet another popular destination as you can see from the pics.  You would think that the temperature was in the high 80s with all the people on the beach but on this day it was barely over 70 but that didn't seem to hinder the population.  Downtown Fort Myers, which is walkable from the marina, always seems to have something going on. On Friday they had a Music Walk and as we went from one performance to another we weren't sure if the performers just picked their own spot to set up or if it was organized.  They offered a wide variety that ranged from a 10 year old country singer to 65-75 year olds band with horns.  There was something for everyone!   
Read more

Get out of our way Bea Sounier!!

Image
Today we left South Shore Harbor Marina in New Orleans after being there 3 days and never set eyes on anything in New Orleans, except Walmart!  Oh well, I don't think we missed much that we would be interested in.  We woke up to winds out of the North at about 15 knots and we had to enter Lake Pontchartrain to get back on the ICW and the waves again just tossed us around like a cork.  We tried to reduce our windage by opening up all our eisenglass windows and then we were freezing.  It was not the  way I wanted to start my Monday morning but we survived and things calmed down once we entered the ICW. Ken told us we should not see much more barge traffic now that we were east of the Mississippi River but we think every tug decided to wait for us to get going and they then all got in line in the narrow channel ahead of us.  It made for an extremely SLOW day since there were about 6-8 of them in a line and it was virtually impossible to pass any of them....
Read more

Making our lists and checking them twice

Image
As Brent and I pondered retirement, we wanted to be active and do something together.  We considered moving to a smaller house in a smaller city but that didn't spur any ideas of how we would fill our time. (For those of you who know me well, you know that I need to be busy most of the time.) We had always enjoyed being on the water and had owned boats for almost 20 years. So we decided that maybe living on a boat would be different yet, enjoyable.  We spent more than a year looking for the perfect live aboard boat with the idea of spending 6-12 months in one marina and then cruising on to another location. As we searched, we revisited an idea Brent had many years back.  He wanted to do the Great Loop.  In a weak moment, I agreed and then the type of boat we needed for The Loop changed drastically.  We needed something that was economical, had a long range, wasn't too large and wasn't too tall. (Lots of bridges to pass under).  In April 2017 we finally ...
Read more