Saturday, May 24, 2014

April Louisiana Road Trip.....Day Five & Six

Day 5 started way early.
We were at this motel for 5 nights, which meant, we sadly came to find out, 5 mornings of a really bad breakfast at this facility.
Bad like they had a huge pan of powdered scrambled eggs with some too well done(think burnt!)sausage bits in it.  The few mornings we went to the motel breakfast, at which we hardly ever saw another soul, they would bring out this pan of nasty eggs.  I truly believe it was the same pan each morning, since nobody ever took any eggs. 

Needless to say most mornings(besides the first and the last)we found different breakfast accommodations.

We took the Daughter to Sue's Country Kitchen for breakfast and later that morning we met realtor #1 to go see houses.

We saw a lot of houses and they were quite a mixed bag!

The view out the front of the 1st house.......this one was a possiblilty but nobody was in love with it.
But the price was right.

 
And this one was the backup property if the one our Daughter wanted fell through.

We saw one house, well I saw it from the car and we never went inside.  It was basically an old shack, something like this.....

It was a bit wider but in just about this condition.  It was located 1 block off a major highway and looked out onto the back of a new metal pole building church.  Behind the shack was some type of repair business.  No one answered the door for the realtor but then a woman came over to the car asking why we were here.  Evidently the listing agent never told the property owners someone was coming to see the house and this woman was the sister of the woman who owned the shack.  Let's just say this woman was not the friendliest person I've ever dealt with and leave it at that.

While this woman was talking at us, a real old woman came out onto the porch of the shack dressed in not much more than a smile.  It looked like the woman who "owned" the shack wasn't all there and her sister was "taking care of her".

While the realtor and I spoke with the owner's sister at the car, Hubs and the Daughter had walked around the backside of the shack checking things out.
When they came back to the car we quickly got out of there.
The shack was sitting in a swamp basically(thank goodness it was up on blocks!)and they had a sump pump running outside the house, trying to dry things up.
This place was beyond a hot mess!  And you wouldn't believe what they were asking for this!!! lolz

Moving on.....

A pretty nice kitchen, except it needed all new appliances since the previous owners took them all when they got foreclosed on.



This one was the last house we saw that day.  This is the shot of the BEST feature of this property--the large metal carport and nice poured driveway.  The house, needless to say, was a cobbled together construction mess.

 
Another foreclosure with trash being thrown out in the front yard.


Except the backyard was 10 times worse! lol


If you look closely at that homemade "pond", there is a partial mannequin floating in it.....


Heck these people took the large bathtub with them.
I suppose they thought it would make a great base for their next homemade pond out back.....lolz


Daughter left us to go to work and we looked at a couple more properties, one of which was the most promising.
We called it quits for the day at dinner time and Hubs and I went to eat at a place the Daughter recommended which wasn't too far from the motel......



Shane's Seafood & Barbecue it's the Cajun thing to do.

Unfortunately Hubs didn't want to share a Crawfish Boil with me and I wasn't up to eating an entire disposable aluminum roasting pan full of mudbugs by myself so I settled for something else.......



And here is what my plate looked like when I was done.....


We HIGHLY recommend Shane's if you are ever in this area.  Good food and good prices.
Not big on atmosphere but who needs that when you are elbow deep in gator and crawfish. lol


Back to the hotel and we turned in early with full tummies.

Day 6 was more of the same--looking at more properties this time with Realtor #2.
She showed us nothing I'd want to live in, let alone have my kid live in.
Oh well.

After Daughter left us we got a call from Realtor #1 telling us about a new foreclosure, not even in the system yet.
So we made plans to go see that one with Daughter and her BF on Saturday morning, as well as the top contender Hubs and I had seen on Thursday.

This meant we were free the rest of the day so we ran some errands.

We ended up going to World Market.

Let me just say I had never been in one of these stores before and I LOVED the place!

We went in there because Daughter said they carried lots of microbrews and wines.
Hubs found a few regional/local beers to bring home.

 Ah, the taste of decaying Edwardian landed gentry.....


Strange name for a wine.  I hope it doesn't smell like wet dog!

I also found that they carry a wide selection of gourmet sodas and a wide variety of them came home with me, especially the root beer varieties......


There were many Mardi Gras type items here.....


As well as kitchy kitchenware and kitchenWEAR.......


Here are a couple more things that came home with me......

 These were intriguing mints.  While they didn't taste like anything but sugar they smelled of lavender and were heavenly.  I should keep a roll of these in my purse just for the fragrance.


Since we didn't get down to NOLA I brought this home and as soon as I remember to go buy some powdered sugar we'll be having beignets.

I "heart" World Markets selection of spices.  I got multiple large bags of this assortment of peppercorns for $3.99 each.  Beats paying through the nose for those little jars at the grocery store!

We finished off our day at Podnuh's.
(The U in "Podnuh's" and the N in "Where the Smoke Never Clears" is missing in the sign behind Hubs). 
If you can't tell from the slogan, it's a barbecue place down in Shreveport.
Lots of Roy Rogers memorabilia on the walls.

We give it a B+ for 'cue.....

And that closes out Day 5 & 6.

Day 7 coming up soon.


Sluggy

5 comments:

  1. A shack on a swamp, sounds inviting.

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  2. At least you are eating well! When I was house hunting back in 2002, I saw several foreclosures and wouldn't even consider them - hot mess is too nice a word. One had every doorframe broken, including the one to the attic! I'm enjoying your tour, even if the houses aren't much to look at.

    Peace <3
    Jay

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've had dachshund wine! Not bad for a table wine.

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  4. I DO carry those Violet candies in my purse! I adore them. Violet used to be a more popular flavor. I make a "mint" sort of candy during the holidays. I usually make peppermint, coconut and always make Violet it is my girls' favorite. I sometimes make cinnamon too. Let me tell you it is not easy to find violet flavoring these days. Back in the 1980 I bought some at a department store. I actually think it was JC Penney in housewares with the cake decorating items. We have a World Market quite near by. Years ago the only one I knew of was in San Francisco and I never visited SF without going there.

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  5. Buy the place with the cross on the door and the mannequin in the pond!!! Looks like a fixer upper!!! :) wow. I'm going to have to drive down there sometime and go on the same tour. Sounds more fun than a ghost tour.!

    ReplyDelete

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