West of the Mississippi

After a bit of a kerfluffle, we settled into our new location at Bayou Segnette State Park on the west side of the river.  This is a lovely park that is recovering from the devastation of Katrina.   It is nice to be surrounded by grass and trees rather than concrete.

We had a wonderful tour of Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World, a business that produces floats for Mardi Gras.  An introductory movie gave us background on the business.  We also had a chance to try on some of the costumes.

 We sampled King Kake, a special cake that has a little plastic baby hidden in one piece.  Whoever gets the doll gets to be the new king (or to lead the next motor home rally).

We toured one of their eighteen warehouses.  Twenty floats for Bacchus, one krewe (a local club that raises lots of money for floats) are stored here.  In addition there are 20,000 props. 

In the prop shop, slabs of Styrofoam are carved into heads and bodies for the floats.  Fiberglass is also used to shape some bodies.  The advantage of Styrofoam is that it can be easily fixed if something is wrong and can be reshaped for a different character for another year. 

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GO NINERS!!!!!

Flowers are made from wire.

Bacchus has had floats with King and Queen Kong every year since the 1970s.

We also learned the inside info on floats.  There are forty to seventy riders on each float and two bathrooms for their needs.  Each float weighs twenty-one tons, with a steel frame mounted on solid rubber tires.  They cost $50,000 and up.  Floats can be redesigned with a new theme for as little as $10,000.

These floats are as lovely up close as they are to see moving along Canal Street during Mardi Gras.  We found this float to be a great background for our “official” group photo.

Art and Carol are determined that we sample as much New Orleans fare as possible.  Tonight we enjoyed lasagna and spaghetti from Mo’s.  Our entertainment was a pair of armadillos parading across the lawn. (Too quick to get a photo)