Delta Music and Poverty Point

Today was a sad day- my traveling buddies and I are going our separate ways – there are places to go, people to see. It is the end of some epic Happy Hours and hangin' with great friends. See y'all down the road buddies mine.

I tried to console myself with a quick run up to Ferriday, Louisiana – home of the Delta Music Museum. It is located in the original Ferriday post office. When I entered, I asked the guy what constitutes the Delta – it is everything from Memphis down to the Gulf. I thought to myself  'oh, this is going to be good – there are so many absolutely fabulous musicians – I cannot wait'.  I come to find out that there are only sixteen 'inductees' in this museum. Ok, ok – I guess I will lower my expectations a bit. Each of the sixteen had a wall plaque with a little bio and some pictures. There were a few who I knew and loved – Percy Sledge, Aaron Neville, Irma Thomas. There were some I knew and after listening to them a little, found I wanted to know more about – Conway Twitty, Fats Domino and some that I knew their big hits, but didn't know their names.

Conway Twitty's fans were called Twitty Birds

The big three in the museum are the cousins – Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggert, all born in Ferriday. They were all born within a year of each other and they all learned to play piano together. They had a short performance film of all of the performers (probably the best part of this museum) and believe it or not, there were so many similarities between these three guys with their piano playing.  I was particularly surprised with Swaggart's playing - the guy could get down.

Wasn't Jerry Lee Lewis blond?  Just wondering.

Overall, it was interesting, but I probably wouldn't travel a far distance to see this museum.

I moved up to a tiny little out of the way spot in northeastern Louisiana, near the town of Epps. Any of you who have been reading this blog for a while know that I might possibly be a tiny bit obsessed with National Park sites. I do admit that I want to visit all 400 plus sites. Up in this little forgotten corner of the world is Poverty Point, which is not only a NPS site, it is also a World Heritage Site. There are only 23 World Heritage Sites in the United States. I think I now have another quest that will have to be done. Yessirreebob – hit all 23 of those sites.

Anyway, Poverty Point was built between 1650 and 700 BC which is amazing in itself. It is a series of earthworks and mounds. It was also a huge city during it's heyday. The biggest mound looks like a flying bird when seen from the air. They think when it was built, it was 100 feet tall. They built this mound by filling baskets with dirt and manually hauling it. Based on the size of the baskets,they estimate that it took 15 million basket loads of dirt to build this mound. I wasn't all that excited about the big mounds, but when you think of 15 million basketfuls - Yup, pretty amazing.

Doesn't look like much, just a hill.....15 million basketfuls!!

I climbed to the top of the Bird Mound - see my little car way down there?

We are staying at the Poverty Point Reservoir State Park. The campground is filled with fisherpeople and by the time I get up in the morning, the campground is completely deserted. Those fish get up early and those people trying to catch them have to be out there in the predawn hours. I was hoping to finally get some hiking done because Miko and I have been doing pretty much urban touristy things. Spring in Louisiana is pretty soggy – nothing but rain, it seems. Unless you want to go wading, hiking doesn't seem to be much of an option.

I guess the trail ends here ....seriously, we are on the trail.