Photo by Brad Bowie
At 6:45 in the morning, eleven months before we planned to stay at Fontainebleau State Park, I logged onto ReserveAmerica.com, the website that handles reservations for state parks. At 7 am, the block of cabins opened. By 7:01, I had reserved ours. By 7:05,all twelve cabins at Fontainebleau were reserved for that weekend.
State park cabins are very economical—most average $120 to $200 a night and can comfortably accommodate around eight adults—but they can be as sought after as prime Manhattan real estate. While my husband and I have always considered ourselves city dwellers, loath to pitch a tent in the backwoods, from time to time the call of the wild inspires us to flee Baton Rouge. With a few like-minded friends, we began the tradition of an annual springtime trip to a cabin at a Louisiana state park. After a flawless weekend last year at Lake Fausse Pointe State Park, we set our sights on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain and opted for a cabin at Fontainebleau.
Almost a year after we made our reservation, my husband Tim and I packed the car. We got all the way to Hammond before we were hungry and stopped at Blackened Brew, a newish gastropub located in downtown Hammond. Anthony Donze, one of the owners, was presiding behind the bar, which features twenty beers on tap as well as about eighty to ninety bottled choices. Donze has meticulously paired every menu item at his restaurant with a type of beer that he keeps in his current stock. We started with two different types of wings: Buffalo and Jamaican jerk. Having lived in New York, I am very hesitant to order wings. They might be the one food most of South Louisiana consistently fails to make well. But these were, hands down, the best wings I have had since leaving the Big Apple. They were cooked extra crispy and had just the right amount of sauce. One day I will drive to Hammond just to eat these wings again. We finished with a Blackened Brew Burger—a perfectly hand-formed patty adorned with the house's slightly spicy special sauce, blue cheese, applewood smoked bacon, caramelized onions, and creole tomatoes served on a fresh brioche bun.
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With the car loaded with food and beer from Rouses in Mandeville, we set out on our five-mile trek to the park. One of many great things about Fontainebleau is its proximity to the civilization of the Northshore. The park ranger checked in and told us to drive past the old sugar mill and make a turn at the big dead tree; he also warned us about proper trash disposal. If we failed to use the blue dumpsters, the raccoons and the pigs would become our fast friends.
We unloaded the car, sat on our porch, and waited for guests to arrive while we watched the sunset behind the Causeway Bridge. The night was quiet except for the waves clashing against the pillars of the cabin. The lake was dark with the exception of a steady stream of headlights crawling twenty-four miles across the bridge towards the Northshore. One guest commented that the porch and its view alone were worth $120 a night.
The next day the sun briefly greeted us, with time for a short hike on one of the two nature trails at Fontainebleau before the impending weather apocalypse. Then the wind kicked up to about forty miles per hour, and the skies darkened. We sat in awe on the porch and watched the whitecaps on the waves while we rooted for a small sailboat on the horizon to make it home safely. A couple from Lafayette thought it would be cool if we saw a waterspout on the lake, but a guest from New Orleans told us that the waterspouts that form on the lake like attention and tend to stay by the traffic cams on the Causeway. The storm and its wrath might seem like a hindrance to the vacation, but it was the single greatest nature event of our trip.
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The weather eventually cleared but turned cool. We retired inside for a bit and caught a movie. (All cabins are equipped with basic satellite dish service and wifi.)
My husband began cooking the Cajun pork belly porchetta he had assembled the night before. He found the recipe on AcadianaTable.com, blogger George Graham’s fantastic resource for dishes and Cajun/Creole culture. The entire cabin began smelling like rich, herby pork. It was time for drinking games to begin. After a series of big fish stories, and eating four pounds of pork belly, everyone retired for the night. One guest raved about how comfortable the mattress on her bunk bed was.
The sun was with us again by morning. We quickly cleaned the cabin and took out the trash. I lamented not seeing any of the “Trash Pandas,” aka raccoons, which the park ranger had warned us about. We had time to explore the ruins of an old sugar mill built by Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville, founder of the town of Mandeville in 1834 (and the Marigny neighborhood in New Orleans). Later we strolled the park’s small beach and took a walk on the large pier that extends about four hundred feet into the lake.
All things end, and it came time to head home. The weather prevented us from fishing off the pier connected to our cabin and searching for blue crabs, but no one complained. As we drove out of the park, I set my alarm to ring in a month, to remind myself to book a cabin for the spring of 2018.
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Fontainebleau State Park
62883 Highway 1089, Mandeville, Louisiana 70443The former site of a sugar cane plantation is now a 2,800-acre park in St. Tammany Parish. Canoers, campers, and beach bums, rejoice.
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