New Orleans

29 Mar 2025

On our way out of Boerne, TX, we passed by a field of Longhorn Cows pastured next to the road.

While escaping Texas was quite the ordeal, full of twists and turns and traffic, we did find a peaceful respite outside of Houston at a rest area with a wonderful set of tile murals and boardwalks.

But finally we arrived at New Orleans, Louisiana. We of course headed down to Bourbon Street to see if we could catch any Mardi Gras parades, but we only caught the tail end of one unfortunately. In brighter news, we asked a bar for jello shots and got huge syringes!

The next day was the hiking day. We walked down to grab beignets from Cafe Du Monde for breakfast. Then we walked back up to the street-car stop, taking that out to Audobon Park. There we walked a mile down into the Zoo, walked around the Zoo, and walked a mile back up to the street-car. Then we got off at First St, walked a mile back down to Abita Brewing Company, then half a mile back up to Joey K's restaurant for dinner, then another half mile to the street-car and finally a half-mile back down to the hotel. All told, we walked close to 20,000 steps that day.

So, first stop, beignets!

On our way to the zoo we passed quite a few trees full of beads from the Mardi Gras parades.

The park and zoo are both named Audobon after John James Audubon, a French-American naturalist and artist who moved to New Orleans in 1821. Audobon was renowned for his work documenting birds in the US and identifying 25 new species of birds. The zoo has a prominent statue of Audobon with notebook in hand.

Welcome to Audobon Zoo!

The zoo has several more bronze statues of wildlife throughout, with the grandest piece being the elephants and lions in the center of the central fountain.

The Zoo sported a variety of other animals, but the Sea Lions stole the show, as they were doing laps, with the other animals mostly just lazing or grazing.

And of course, the advertised Tortoises were not on exhibit, because Turtles hate Cory.

The Audobon Zoo also features an amazing Bayou exhibit, featuring Alligators, Turtles, Raccoons, Bobcats, Foxes, and Otters. Sara's favorite was by far the River Otter, but Cory was so excited to finally see some Turtles!

And the pièce de résistance, River Otters in all their glory!

We also caught a black-crowned heron visiting the otters!

We had to watch for gators on our way through the swamp.

Past the gators and through the woods, we spied a bobcat that got into the hen-house.

The fox was out and eyeing the hen-house too.

From there it was into the jungle, though Cory was dismayed to find out he was too tall for the Kid's Trail.

What we did find was a jaguar taking a nap on her birthday.

From there we went to investigate the nighttime exhibit, finding bats and prehensile-tailed porcupines who are nocturnal.

As we emerged from the dark caves we heard some whistling going on. We got closer and the sounds got louder. Closer still and they were deafening. The flamingos had a massive flock of black-bellied whistling ducks that had stopped by. The flamingos didn't seem very happy about it either. Even the emu several habitats away seemed non-plussed.

Off to the elephants and big cats!

From the Zoo we continued our walking tour to the street car. We even had to run to catch the car! We took it a few stops, then walked another mile back toward the river to visit Abita Brewing Company in their new New Orleans, LA location.

Finally we walked down to Joey K's for dinner where we had amazing food to round out our night of fun.

Our time in New Orleans was over and we still needed to get back to the East Coast, so we headed to Florida!