‘Tis the season, and Louisiana streets and buildings are once again donning those tinsel-time colors of red and green. For New Orleans and especially the French Quarter, however, red is the dominant hue by a wide margin, thanks to a…
The Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame was established by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association in 1958, but it was a Hall without a hall until Natchitoches and Northwestern State University stepped up to the plate in 1971 with an offer…
Port Hudson among most important Civil War Sites
Road trip! From the farthest corner of Louisiana, it’s only four hours to a destination that attracts nature-lovers from the farthest corners of America. The Creole Nature Trail – among the first of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s 150…
Natchitoches Parish nature preserve has her name.
Pottery on Tour
Christmas Around the State
Crisscrossing Central Louisiana
A Steamboat named New Orleans and an American Queen
Grab the kids, and head to Baton Rouge to celebrate the bicentennial.
Exploring the Louisiana of 1812
A Guide to Military Sites
Football season may be over, but the campus is still a great place to visit
New Orleans to the Gulf
Exploring Concordia, Catahoula, La Salle and Winn parishes
Exploring Louisiana’s lighthouses
A step back in time
The Old State Capitol has a long and storied past, making it a great place to explore in the present.
That the entire eastern half of the Lake Pontchartrain Northshore is now spanned by a grand 31-mile bike trail is no longer news. The surprise is that it has had such an impact. Simply by threading them together, the Tammany…
along the lower mississippi
Our year of riverfront explorations ends next issue with a Yuletide visit to New Orleans, but this time we’re sightseeing the Ouachita River, starting in Monroe.Don Juan Filhiol (FEE-yol), who had fought under Louisiana’s Spanish Gov. Galvez against the British…
From the waterfronts of Shreveport and Bossier City, which we visited last issue, it’s 125 miles southeast along Red River to another pair of river cities, Alexandria and Pineville, where you will behold the fruits of the labors of two…
Attention, kids: It’s vacation time, and the riverfronts of Shreveport and Bossier City are a great place to take your folks –– lots of supervised activities for them, plus plenty of attractions you’ll enjoy seeing together. Always considered a fun…
In the January/ February issue, Baton Rouge became the starting point of a yearlong Traveler pilgrimage to interesting urban riverfronts all around the state. This time, we’re visiting the Calcasieu River, Bayou Teche and the Atchafalaya River to explore cities…
Exploring Baton Rouge
A Louisiana Christmas.
The Wright brothers freed man from the shackles of gravity in 1903. By World War I (with the cavalry still on horseback) our airmen were flying surveillance missions and dropping hand-held explosives, while barnstormers back home promoted Red Cross and…
This downtown New Orleans hotel has a long and colorful past – and future.
Family-friendly destinations
Short trips that make “scents”
In the heart of New Orleans’ cluster of architectural gems and captivating museums called the French Quarter is a sub-cluster of architectural gems and captivating museums called the Historic New Orleans Collection. Many Louisianians have heard tales of the treasures…
Because the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon did not damage the endless corridor where hang the oil portraits of America’s previous commandants of the Marine Corps, Louisiana visitors can still find there the likenesses of Gen. John…
So you’ve learned by browsing back issues that this Louisiana travel column has been around awhile –– ever since we got our first “attractions” to publicize, like Driskill Mountain and the Kisatchie Wold –– but it turns out it’s not…
Road trip! C’mon, it’s that time of year! Take the kids for a day trip to Water Town USA in Shreveport or the big Blue Bayou Water Park in Baton Rouge or even just swimming at a sandy-sided creek. Or…
Like the Left Bank of Paris, there’s another side of New Orleans you’ve maybe never suspected, despite the implication of those twin bridges and the Canal Street Ferry. They must go somewhere! Well, in the grand scheme of things, they’re…
The year just ended was the 200th since the birth of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, America’s first great poet and revered in Louisiana as author of Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie. So 2007 in the bard’s home state of Maine was…
This year, along with the usual azaleas and Spring Fiesta home tours, spring promises St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans an even greater gift. Streetcars. First, some terminology: It’s crawfish, not crayfish; parishes, not counties; neutral grounds, not medians; and…
Historian, author and attorney Payne Williams of the Natchitoches Historic Foundation is already recruiting spirits to make gravesite appearances during the town’s popular Sacred Places Tour in mid-March. South Louisiana towns are preparing for the All Saints Day whitewashings and…
The story of Stewart and Juli Juneau is part hometown-boy-makes-good tale, part Jungle Jim adventure and part inspirational account of one family’s urge to share the fruits of their labors with underprivileged and inner city children. The saga begins and…
Our family calls it “La-La Day” – Louisiana Purchase/Louisiana Statehood Day, April 30 – and this year’s was a good one. My Louisiana belle was off on a sister-sister getaway but our (ahem) doc and juris-doc sons Paul and Matthew…
This old Municipal Association coffee mug with its fine-print list of towns, Abbeville to Zwolle – a constant companion through half of Louisiana Life’s 25 years – is as good as a journal for recording memories of past adventures.There are the Big…
Postcard, circa 1911, showing the then recently built pavillions1906It was a relatively new century – a new age – and fairs were the bee’s knees. The Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition had been held in St. Louis just two years earlier,…
The Atchafalaya, Louisiana’s best-loved swamp Like most outdoors adventures in Louisiana, wetlands explorations are best done when temperatures are perfect and barometer readings are tolerable. That means spring or fall. The tiebreaker for the Great Atchafalaya Swamp is that fall’s…
The day is shaping up to be unseasonably perfect for early September – 7 o’clock and the breeze through this great stone courtyard in Monroe is cool enough to chill the coffee. Louisiana has a newly designated “Ancient Mounds Trail”…
