We had an opportunity to get up very early this morning, both awakening at 0600. Fortunately, we don’t have pesky scheduling constraints anymore so we went back to bed until 9:00 AM. I really like this retirement stuff.
After our morning ablutions and some special coffee, we sat down for some research about whether Minden, LA, (where we are currently staying) actually does have a historic district or not. Our efforts to locate one yesterday was a failure although we can try to blame it on crummy information from Google maps. Peggy got on the internet and, contrary to Google, she established that Minden does have a nice brick-paved main drag and a flurry of really impressive old residential structures. We took off to see whether Google or Peggy was correct and it turns out Peggy wins!
There are indeed many extraordinary residential structures here and a large percentage of them are in good repair. Extensive gorgeous wood millwork and plain old gingerbread make for some unique, elegant and quite massive homes. Most of them are located along Broadway although a few can be spotted along the adjacent streets. They have signs in front of some of them indicating construction in the early 1900s. As residential architecture buffs, we were delighted with what we found. We don’t see many houses like these in California.
While dining last night, our waitress mentioned a city nearby and she pronounced it Nack-a-tesh. After charming her with puzzled looks, she told us she was referring to a city here in Louisiana which is spelled Natchitoches. Just over in Texas, they have a city called Nacogdoches which they pronounce nack-a-Doches. I am at a loss to explain the diverse accents of people living within 100 miles of each other. This country is terrific.
We got a few house pix and a photo of the downtown street which can be seen by clicking here