Places I've Been... By State

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site is a couple miles South of Hodgenville in Kentucky a dozen miles off I-65. It's the original site of the Sinking Spring farm where Abe was born. A marble building at the top of the hill supposedly contains the cabin in which the 16th President was born and lived for the first couple of years.

I went to New Orleans in 2002 to make sure I saw the city before the inevitable catastrophe occurred.

I did all sorts of tourist things, a steam-paddleboat tour, a swamp tour, rode the trolleys, visited the site of a pre-civil war fort, toured the grounds of the Battle of New Orleans...

The Jean Lafitte National Historic Park covers several sites around New Orleans, but I was only at the Chalmette National Battlefield and Cemetery

Didja ever hear the song, "Battle of New Orleans"? The final battle between the Brits and the Americans was fought here, with catastrophic results for England.

Fort Pike was one of many defensive structures built in response to the War of 1812 by the government to protect the coastline of the United States. They were completely obsolete by the middle of the Civil War, with the invention of the rifled canon.

I was at the Fort in 2002. In 2005, the Fort took the brunt of Hurricane Katrina. I'm not sure how badly it was damaged, but it's only open by appointment now.

I took one of the Honey Island Swamp Tours in 2002, a few years before Katrina and Ida worked the place over, and it's close enough to the Gulf to have seen the storm surge.

I'm sure the swamp tours still exist, just perhaps a little different.