April 12, 2011. Rest day at St. Francisville, LA.

The Butler Greenwood Plantation was a great place for a rest day. The peaceful grounds were conducive to resting as few places have been. Dianne and I stayed in the 3-story "Dovecote" house, where I had the ground floor bedroom, the kitchen and bath were on the second floor, and Dianne's bedroom was on the third floor. Very cool setup. My bed was HUGE, as you can see below.A peacock called Humphrey has the run of the place. Here he looks very intent on getting to the pond, but sometimes he sneaks up behind guests and squawks loudly just to see what they'll do.We met up on the front porch of the plantation house at 10 AM for a tour. This home has been in the same family since it was built in the 1790s, a rare thing in these parts. Since it has never been sold, many of the original furnishings and artwork are still in the house, even some clothing that belonged to previous generations. The proprietor, Ann Butler is a direct descendant of the family and was a font of information as she showed us her home.Some of our riders got to stay in the old kitchen, a building directly behind the main house. It was used for its original purpose until the mid 1960s when a kitchen was installed in the main house. It still contains a 150 foot deep well, visible through plexiglass in the bathroom. The smell of smoke permeates the building, so I was glad not to be assigned to that house. Many riders rode their bikes into town, but Dianne and I decided to rest on our rest day, so we played Scrabble, cleaned the bikes, and did not do much else until dinnertime. Below you can see Greta, Tex, Nancy and Fiona in the back row; and me, Alice, and Dianne in front while waiting to go to dinner. We met up with much of the group and the leaders gave us a van ride to a restaurant for dinner. The Inn does not provide meals beyond a continental breakfast, and it really was quite a trek to town with all the construction in the way. We had a great dinner, and Greta surprised us all by buying our drinks to celebrate her birthday!

After dinner we played a few games of Scrabble and called it a night, knowing we had a long day ahead of us.