And with the setting sun...

 on Sibley Lake...

we bid our favorite little Louisiana town a fond farewell, for now...

Downtown Doggies Brown

 Bill, the doggies, and I revisit the historic section - sans drunk driver.

 I'd say this shop window captures the feel of spring, and of Easter, well!

 Zou obliges Mommy with a photo of her sitting on a bench.  Hayes says "Wha?  Whaddya mean sit?!  Whaddya mean bench?!!  Ooo, who's that over there??"

 Zou heading down the stairs to the river-lake.

 Bill introduces Hayes to docks.

 Hayes also learns about...water!  This dock is a floating/unstable dock...and Hayes goes right in!  But Daddy successfully hauls him back out (good thing - I was afraid Bill was going to fall in too for a moment there!!).

 A good shake, and "Eh, I meant to do that...!"

 All better, Hayes in the Badin-Roque garden.

 Pretty daffy dills!

 And here we get to that lovely faux mountain stream, rocks and all...

 So we know Zou's a Colorado rock-climbing mountain girl, right?  So why wouldn't I have to hold her back from running and jumping in the little cascades?!!  She didn't break anything, fortunately.

 She wanted to run up the falls, but Mommy made her do the stairs instead.

 More flores bonitas, and you can see a little rain pitter-pattering the ground.

 Hayes gives the bust of Unknown Guy hell for hiding behind all the flowers and startling him!  Bad statue!!!  Woof!  Woof!!!!

The flower setter-uppers at work!

And lastly, the Oakland Plantation

 One more cotton plantation, started in the early 1800s by the Prud'homme family.

 Creative license - this needed a horizontal flip, unless you wanted to read it backwards...  ;)

These trees.  What would an antebellum home be without the giant southern oaks?!!

(I was first here on that cloudy day, with Bill and the dogs, but I came back on my own, on a sunny day, to take a house interior tour)

All of the buildings had these cute little chalkboard signs.  The pigeonnier house (below) housed...the pigeons, of course!  The pigeons provided food - both the birds and their eggs.

 For making cane sugar syrup.

 Just some ferns on a low-hanging oak branch.

 The front yard of the main house.  Sort of in between bloom times, apparently.

Although there were a few camelia blossoms hanging in there...

The one place you're not allowed to go - into the bottle garden.  The reason?  Because the bottles are so old and valuable, they would likely be stolen...

 See how the owners had used the bottles to line the garden patches?

 These windows are really cool, or should I say cooling?  These double-hung windows could be opened to better let the air (and people) in, and the house was most likely oriented in a direction to take best advantage of the prevailing breeze.

 And now for a look inside the house...

 Notice the shoo-fly fan on the ceiling.  Some lucky person (slave) got to pull a rope and make the board swing, cooling the air, while the others ate.

 Check out the artwork on the kids' notebooks.  Esp. the airplanes one...

 Here's a picture of what that particular kid grew up to become...

 And in case you are style-challenged, like me, you can use this handy gadget!  (although this one looks to be for men - I don't think ties were too fashionable for the ladies back then)

And what is this?

 The "stranger's room" was a sort of separated room in the main house that served as an olden days motel room.  Since they didn't have such things as motels back then...  So the traveller got to stay in the room for free, meals included, basically in exchange for information of the outside world.  Since they didn't have such things as the internet back then...

And, while I was out front taking photos, these bicyclists came up and parked.  Upon talking to them, I learned they are cycling cross-country, and I mean CROSS-COUNTRY!!!!!!!!!!!  Thru-cyclers! They are excluding Hawaii, but not Alaska!!!  They started in Key West, FL, and plan to wind it up in Deadhorse, AK!!!  If you want to follow their progress, check out their website:  http://keystofreeze.com/  Go guys!!!  A part of me is wistful...  How cool!!