Random Photo: Creole House in Natchitoches, Louisiana

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: Tokina AF 19-35mm f/3.5-4.5 | Setting: f/14, 1/200th sec, ISO 640

Not all of our road trips take us to Mexico, the desert, or some odd-ball locale in the kokopelli-loving Southwest. Brooke has family in Louisiana, so we travel there almost once a year.

While I pick on a few of her cousins and aunts for eating weird stuff like squirrel or deep fried anything, and drinking overly sweetened iced tea, I do love seeing them all and trying their wacky food (if it's animal based, you can faithfully believe that your meal was likely run over, killed, and scraped off the ground on the way to MeMaw's house that morning).  And I also love wandering around the streets of Natchitoches.  And driving the two lane highways and byways of The Bayou State.

With a quaint historic district loaded with the French architecture you think is iconic of Louisiana, Natchitoches sits right on the Cane River.  It has good bars, incredible restaurants, and even a nice public library. Can you say "meat pie?" Yum yums. Guess what?  Natchitoches is nicknamed "The Destination of Travelers since 1714," and it's the oldest permanent settlement of the Louisiana Purchase.  The history runs deep here.  As a side fact, remember Jim Croce? He performed his last concert in this town at Northwestern State Universtiy - an hour after the show ended, he was killed in a plane crash.  "Moving ahead so life don't pass me by," he sang.  Great songwriter.

This house pictured is the Roque House - a museum of sorts that's on the river in the historic district.  In 1797 a freed black slave known only as Pascale built it of what we'd call adobe out west.  In Creole country they call it bousillage. The process is the same: clay and grass mixture with upright and angled solid posts throughout.

This Christmas, I'm going to miss Louisiana. Especially Natchitoches. It's a beautiful place, don't you think?