Weird day trips from New Orleans
The strangest New Orleans finds are often a short drive out. These 11 day trips — Abita Mystery House (UCM Museum), Chauvin Sculpture Garden, Dr. Wagner's Honey Island Swamp Tours and more — are each hand-vetted and sourced: ghost towns, hot-spring soaks, roadside oddities, and odd small-town museums worth the gas. A weird day trip is its own kind of date.
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Abita Mystery House (UCM Museum)
Artist John Preble built this folk-art warren around a vintage gas station and filled it with more than 50,00…
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Chauvin Sculpture Garden
An outsider-art environment on the bayou where former bricklayer Kenny Hill, working alone from 1990 until he…
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Dr. Wagner's Honey Island Swamp Tours
Founded in 1982 by Tulane wetland ecologist Dr. Paul Wagner (now retired), these reservation-only boat tours…
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Insta-Gator Ranch and Hatchery
This working alligator ranch on the north shore is part of Louisiana's wild-gator conservation program, raisi…
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Jungle Gardens (Avery Island Buddha)
Ned McIlhenny, son of the Tabasco founder, spent decades turning this salt-dome island into a 170-acre semi-w…
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Global Wildlife Center
Tucked into the rolling north-shore countryside, this 900-acre free-roaming preserve holds more than 2,000 ex…
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Whitney Plantation
Whitney is the only museum in Louisiana that focuses exclusively on the lives of the enslaved rather than the…
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Old Town Slidell Soda Shop
An old-fashioned soda shop in Slidell's historic Olde Towne district with a genuine arcade tucked inside, mix…
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LIGO Science Education Center (Livingston)
One of two twin LIGO detectors in the U.S. (its sibling sits in Washington State) that proved Einstein right…
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Canoe & Trail Adventures Moonlight Paddle
Louisiana Master Naturalist guides lead small moonlight paddles through the bayous and swamps near Fontainebl…
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Highland Road Park Observatory (Baton Rouge)
Run by BREC with the Baton Rouge Astronomical Society, this observatory opens to the public on Friday and Sat…