ohio haunted prison
Saturday, April 24th, 2010
Last year for the Delta queen!
Delta Queen celebrates her 80th birthday. I hope that when I celebrate my 80th I am so surrounded by music, loyal friends and fun.
This traditional paddlewheel steamboat has cruises up and down the Mississippi and its tributaries for decades, to repossess the days when hundreds of steamboats plied these waters. In fact, dozens of steamboats bound, one after the other, along the harbor in the port cities.
Delta Queen a part of history, an American treasure, make steamboat days live again for those who still have the opportunity to cruise her. In fact, the Delta Queen has appointed a National Historic Landmark and a member of the National Trust Historic Hotels of America. And she has been elected to the National Maritime Hall of Fame as a vessel that made an outstanding contribution to the maritime industry, in fact the only ship still in service who are in the Hall of Fame. She used to cruise along the California coast, then in gray gray was a troop ship during World War II, then guided by tugboats came through the Panama Canal to her present cruise on the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
Our cruise was a week round trip from New Orleans so we arrived early enough to wander into town, went to the French Quarter, bought a nice print of a jazz pianist in the French market, took the trolley ($ 5 for unlimited rides for days anywhere on any route), searched an Internet center, and then because it was cold and windy, on his way back to the boat for the first of many hot chocolate on hand along with chocolate chip cookies.
Goes around the Delta Queen is like a walk through history â € | Victorian decor, Tiffany style lamps, some stained glass windows, tin ceilings, mahogany trim everywhere, and rocking chairs and a swing forward on deck 2. Large prints of old riverboat scenes found on many walls. The dining room which also serves as the show lounge has old Siamese iron bark flooring, now honey-colored and smooth after cleansing to the dirt when the level was used for cargo.
Since the boat has an all-wood superstructure (the hull is steel clad) There is no smoking in cabins or in the interior public spaces.
It has an old Steam Calliope and ship € ™ s bell that sounded out landings for the steamboat that Mark Twain rode downriver 1883rd The Calliope in the stern built in Cincinnati in 1897, played on deviations from the river towns, usually in banda € ™ s pianist, but sometimes the passengers, and one night of the Captain. Typical of the relaxed family atmosphere on board, the captain also played piano at the party given for repeat cruisers.
Engine room, open to passengers has the original old steam engine that drives the big red paddle wheel. Parts sometimes pirated by the engine of her sister ship Delta King, which now serves as a restaurant in California.
There are also known to be a ghost on board – ghost Captain Mary B. Greene, the Greene family who owned the steamer decades after the boat was a troop ferry in California. She had both a Masters € ™ s and a pilot € ™ s license. Knocking sounds sometimes still heard in the cabin where she died of a heart attack and it is said that she still goes in the tires.
Delta Queen has accommodation for 174 passengers. Cabins are air-conditioned and has a private bathroom with shower. Higher category staterooms also have a bath. Some homes only open outside on a deck, others open up the interior.
They lived in cabins of many famous people including President Carter, Truman and Hoover, Lady Bird Johnson, Princess Margaret, Vanderbilt, Errol Flynn, Helen Hayes, to name a few.
Loyalty to Delta Queen is one of the highest in the cruise industry. Most passengers on our Cruise was on the Delta Queen cruises in the past, some book another route each year â € | Lower Mississippi, Upper Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee â € | With the goal to experience them all. A man on our cruise, from Virginia Beach, had cruised on paddlewheelers 81 times. They often said all cruisers they liked the fact that the boat was small and it was vacant. A veteran cruiser, not on our cruise, have cruised with the company more than 100 times.
The commander, Captain Gerry Gabriel Chen, began his career as a night watchman on board in 1968 and has been master since 1976.
Delta Queen has many theme cruises – Civil War history, Antebellum plantations and gardens, Mardi Gras, golf, quilts, fall foliage. Each of them is like a step back in time.
Our cruise was on the Cajun heritage. There were lectures on Cajun history and the history of the river and the river towns we visited. Much of the U.S. population Cajun is in the small towns from the mouth of the Mississippi River west to Texas and north almost to about 300 miles.
Acadian (Cajun) culture in Louisiana in almost 300 years. Acadian formerly lived in eastern Canada, then when the English took control there after the war with France, they made a deal to remain neutral in all future conflicts, should they be left to live in peace. But a new governor in 1755 ordered them to swear allegiance to the crown of England. When they refused and reaffirmed their desire to remain neutral, the governor confiscated their land and forced them to leave. Some returned to Europe, some moved to other parts of Canada, certain areas of the colonies that later the United States. In the coming decades, thousands of Acadian from all these areas began to migrate to southwestern Louisiana. Acadian name got shortened to Cajun. Their bonds were close and their culture survives today.
We will visit several of the cities that are still have traditions.
Whether itâ € ™ s Cajun, zydeco, swamp pop, or, Cajun likes to dance. A Cajun band played several afternoons and evenings on the boat, plus Walter Kross and Riverboat Five played jazz and dance music to continue our taste of New Orleans. Unfortunately, there were no dance hosts on board for dance and no teaching of Cajun dances. Shows each night also included some great ragtime, and the lounge pianist singing funny old vaudeville songs.
We were scheduled to go to Morgan City first, but you have to be flexible on river cruises, and the night due to fog a couple of barges got stuck on a sand bar and we could not get past them. So we went instead to the Port of Iberia. There were tours beach past the sugar cane fields and old plantations to St. Martinville and Avery Island where rock salt is mined and Tabasco sauce is made and thousands of snowy egrets come to nest. In St. Martinville Cultural Heritage Center has a mural which depicts the 1765 arrival of Acadian Louisiana, a genealogy center and exhibits on the free people of color in Louisiana, which before the civil war was active in business world, owned plantations, and sometimes also had a large number of slaves of their own. You can also visit the Acadian Village with authentic Acadian structures also in the home of Senator and Hadacol inventor Dudley LeBlanc.
The next day we cruise to Morgan City. There were more cane fields and rice paddies (which later flooded to raise crayfish), and bayous, and large cypress trees that were crucial for building houses and railways in the development of the area. We visited the beautiful Oaklawn mansion, built in 1837 and now home earlier planting Louisiana Governor Mike Foster and has a large collection of John James Audubon engravings and prints. Audubon spent many years in this field. And we visited the Wedell-Williams Aviation Museum, with Wedell € ™ s famous plane that broke the world speed record 1933rd
Next stop was the port of Krotz Springs, and our guide on the bus played guitar, sang songs and told stories about his memories as a boy sitting in the Bayou with his father, build a fire, cooking their food in a big black pot. Another guide talked about his family land and how they grew and shipped potatoes, a major crop in this area. We visited the Academy of the Sacred Heart and heard their stories from Civil War days when soldiers camped outside. And we visited Chrétien Point Plantation was built in 1831, is often used as a set of films, including Gone with the Wind.
At the next stop, St. Francisville, many Antebellum houses. A tour was in Rose Down House, built in 1835, and The Myrtle, a West Indies style home, supposedly haunted. The second tour was of Greenwood Plantation, a grand old home lovingly restored by owner Richard Barnes, who personally showed us the room it took him 16 years to restore. Many movies filmed here. The same went for a tour Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, a maximum security prison where inmates farm their own crops on 18 000 hectares, hold an annual â € œWildest Rodeo in South €, and participates in many educational and work programs, including an inmate band. There are 5000 prisoners here, all with a 50 years' imprisonment or more. The longest escape time – three hours. They sell T-shirts bearing the words "Angola – A Gated Community".
Our departure from the river towns visited accompanied by high Calliope music. Every day one riverlorian talking about the river and steamboat days. One day we could fly a kite from the top deck.
In between it was just relaxing on the river and saw the beach passes. It was too cold for alligators so we were not able to take a swamp boat tour of to see alligators or birds in the Bayou.
The last day was spent in Baton Rouge. We docked next to the Mississippi Queen and the passengers could go back and forth. Shore Tours included such things as a tour of the destroyer USS Kidd Memorial and Museum, visits to historic homes and plantations, and to the old capital building to hear stories on Louisiana governor Huey Long, assassinated a day on his way to his office. I chose the Cajun Heritage Tour to a Fais-Do-Do dance party on the Bayou in Cajun French Community settlement. We test Cajun alligator appetizers of, crayfish, Boudin, and Jambalaya, and have learned some Cajun dances (finally), then given the opportunity to spend the next half hour dancing with the dance instructors. This was a trip that I did not want to leave.
That night on the way back to New Orleans, there were bonfires and fireworks along the river in our honor. The century-old tradition began as Santa Claus (Papa Noel) was able to find Cajun children at Christmas despite the return of the Bayou. On Christmas Eve, there will be more than 100 such fires along the River.
We had gone through many locks and under many bridges, steamed up on the Mississippi River, the Atchafalaya River, channel, and the Intracoastal Waterway, for a total of 518 miles.
If you go: Make sure temporary deals as two-for-one pricing, 50% off other passengers, or free air, and past passengers (called Frequent floaters) often get a discount or a cabin upgrade.
*****
About the Author
Shirley Linde, of St. Petersburg, Florida, is a best-selling author and editor of SmallShipCruises.com. Her latest book From Sea to Shining Sea: A Guide to Cruises in the USA will be in bookstores in October.
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$12.95 Built on the site of a Civil War camp ravaged by disease, the Ohio State Reformatory first opened in 1896 to reform young offenders but eventually grew to house the most dangerous criminals. By the time the Mansfield institution closed, the prison was hosting one thousand more prisoners than it was designed to hold in "brutalizing and inhumane conditions." Within the dark corridors made famous as ... |
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$12.95 Built on the site of a Civil War camp ravaged by disease, the Ohio State Reformatory first opened in 1896 to reform young offenders but eventually grew to house the most dangerous criminals. By the time the Mansfield institution closed, the prison was hosting one thousand more prisoners than it was designed to hold in "brutalizing and inhumane conditions." Within the dark corridors made famous as ... |
