Back Roads & Backpacks

I spent the weekend camping at Fountainbleau State Park, on the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, with a couple of my friends. The white, sandy beaches are reminiscent of the Florida gulf beaches, except that they’re lined with crooked, gnarled trees draped with Spanish moss. The water was warm, even now, in October, and the [...]

My favorite small town is St. Francisville, Louisiana – a unique, historic southern town with more than its share of plantations and antique shops.

I took this photo of Rosedown Plantation, in the town of St. Francisville, on one of my first days living in Louisiana in June 2009. When I saw the gravestones along the driveway, I thought it seemed an unusual place to bury people…until I saw a man carrying a whole stack of them. They were [...]