America's Byways - Road Trip 2019, Part 1

Exhibit of Pepper Plants Grown on the Island

Although I won’t have officially been on the road for 48 hours until two o’clock this afternoon, I’m about to start the third day of my annual road trip. I do my trip planning on the fly, so it’s time to pull out the road atlas and decide where I’ll be heading after my visit to the Vicksburg, Mississippi, National Military Park for the first time in a number of years. Vicksburg is full of Civil War history, and It’s a beautiful city, but since I’ve been here several times this will be a relatively short visit.

Factory Floor

Yesterday (Wednesday, July 24) I finally made it to Avery Island, just outside New Iberia, Louisiana, to tour the factory that produces one of my favorite foods in the world: McIlhenny tabasco sauce. The island was home to a cotton plantation until the end of the Civil War but it was converted into a tabasco pepper farm shortly after the war when the family that owned the property was desperate for a way to survive the war’s aftermath. And they have been producing the most famous tabasco sauce in the world there ever since.  

Wooden Casks Used to Age the Pepper Mash

The self-guided factory tour can be completed in about an hour, and it includes a small museum and a fantastic “Tabasco Country Store” that includes a tasting bar and the opportunity to purchase some of the company’s sauces that are sold only in the store or over the internet. I am a fan of hot sauces, so I purchased a bottle of the hottest sauce manufactured by the company. It’s called Scorpion Sauce (it’s made from the Scorpion pepper which I believe is the hottest pepper in the world), and if you ever taste it, you will know why. This is a relatively small facility, but it produces about 700,000 bottles of the sauce a day and ships it all over the world.

Books Along the Teche Bookstore

New Iberia is the setting for James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux books, books I’ve been reading since the 1980s, so it’s fun to wander around the town picking out a few of the landmarks Burke uses in his crime novels. The town is also home to a bookstore (that, of course, specializes in signed editions of Burke’s books) staffed by two of the friendliest bookstore people I’ve ever met. They serve as goodwill ambassadors for the whole town, and they have had visits from people from all over the world – including some who speak no English – who are drawn there entirely because they love the Dave Robicheaux books so much. If you are a Dave Robicheaux fan, you really do need to visit New Iberia. And the Cajun food in this area; don’t even get me started on that, because I can talk about that all day long.

Now, back to that road atlas to see what’s up the road.

(You can click on the photos for expanded views.)