Baker's heartbeat

The Bakers prepare to walk on 'the most haunted beach in America' This is a popular bar, restaurant and entertainment venue on Grand Isle. The sandy beach on the Gulf of Mexico was hiding, kind of, behind a grassy hill that acts as a flood wall. We found the beach after a long drive south from the hotel in Houma, Louisiana, to Grand Isle. The vacation community at one southern tip of the state is reached after some doing, including a toll road, long bridges, and an unusual amount of traffic. The sunny Sunday for this side trip warmed up to 75 degrees Farenheit or so, and by the time we reached the beach there was some activity to be found. An energetic young woman employee was picking up beach trash and putting it on her three-wheeler, and pleasant folks took our entrance fee and patiently answered questions at Grand Isle State Park. Grand Isle is a barrier island for Louisiana, and its history as a vacation spot dates back hundreds of years. In the 19th century,

Cocodrie, Louisiana, homes are on little bits of land; almost everyone has a boat. The hotel clerk in Texarkana, Arkansas, had some information to share: "I used to work construction in Houma, Louisiana," he said after learning of our ultimate destination. "There's a lot of alligators down there, and the bayous are on both sides of the street. Sometimes we'd see alligators along the roadway." Houma was our destination for about a week; the first thing we learned was how to pronounce this town, "HOME-ah," not "Hoo-mah," as my Yankee head thought. HOME-ah. HOME-ah. The correct pronunciation was repeated all the way through central Louisiana to this southern town, which stretched over several square miles. Houma is the jumping-off point to areas south, which include Cocodrie, or Grand Isle, Louisiana. It has a vast commercial district, much like 53rd Street in Daveport. Grand Isle includes a state park and apparently the only publ

  Huge live oak trees at Oak Alley are planted in between the big house and Mississippi River. Since the 1970s, after I saw the movie and read "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell, I have wanted to see a southern plantation. This was relatively easy to do during a recent tour of rural Louisiana. Plantations of all sorts are found almost everywhere; many are preserved as relics, and shown off as part of tours. At least one is both a working and historic cotton plantation. We initially visited the Kent Plantation, which included the oldest existing building in the central part of state and was located in Alexandria, La. Our tour cost $9 each, and we were part of a group of five -- the other three were Middle Eastern visitors from Lebanon. Our guides were with the local historical society and the plantation was located about a block off a busy four-lane expressway and commercial district in Alexandria. The Kent Plantation is on several acres of ground, and incl