Weekend Outing to Baton Rouge, July 12, 2014

We went up to Baton Rouge on Friday evening and stayed the night so we could attended the 9am session at the temple the next morning.  They have 3 Saturday sessions & many of the people were going to all three.  This is a lovely little temple!

Then we just started driving through the Louisiana countryside.  We came upon
Nottoway, an antebellum Plantation near Baton Rouge.  They were about to have a wedding & it was HOT out there. Would not have wanted to be part of that gathering. 

Soon the trip became a photo excursion, so we had to stop at this small southern cemetery.
The vaults are above ground because the water level is so high, that part I knew.  The rest was news to me.  This is a family vault or 'oven crypt.'  A light-weight type of coffin is slid inside, and the combination of heat and humidity acts like a slow form of cremation.  In a year or so the occupant's bones are pushed to the back, coffin pieces are removed, and another coffin can be inserted.  Often there is room for two bodies in a family's vault.  

If someone else in your family dies before the most recent body in the 'oven' is finished -  the body can be placed in this vault and put in your family vault later.  Yikes!!!  Cultural shock!

 We drove by this old home in Donaldsonville.

As Gordon was taking a photo of this oak canopy, a man drove up on a four wheeler and suggested that if we wanted to see an oak allee - we should see Oak Alley.  So off we went!