One of my nephews lives in Alexandria and kept praising the city so we stopped as a good rest point on the way to New Orleans. For a smaller city it is nice to visit and the Alexandria Zoo is excellent.
This is just a few pictures of the skyline and the Jackson Street bridge. For a small city Alexandria has a very nice trail system along the Red River and we were just trying to relax and unwind from six weeks of seeing dad almost every day. He would prefer we stayed close and we wanted to explore.
Some 20 miles southwest of Alexandria on the edge of the Kisatchie National Forest near Long Leaf, Louisiana is the Southern Forest Heritage Museum which is another monument to progress. Started in the late 1800s it remained a mixed blessing to the area into the 1950s. While a major employer for the area it was a difficult and dangerous place to work. January is not hot and humid and the facilities are quiet but it's not hard to visualize work in the Good Ol' Days. Another Hobson's choice: work at the best paying job in the area and risk being hurt or killed or try to survive some other way. The OSHA safety law solved this problem by mandating upgrades much to expensive to continue operation. Now the people don't get hurt but don't have a job either. When someone asks Where have all the jobs gome?
the answer is they were mandated out of existence. When costs go up but prices can't the jobs go where people ain't quite so picky.
I think this device was a rail car puller. Apparently the mill owner absolutely refused to make the scrap dealers rich so there were lots of parts to cobble together for any purpose you could imagine.
And here is the bane of the South, a fire ant nest. Later I will show the ants.