Cajun Country, Cowboys & Coastlines

Thirteen nights in a loop from Houston in a motorhome, across four states, with a night in a hotel before pickup.

Houston is the start, then Lafayette in the Cajun country of Louisiana, where the food and the music are both the product of a French-speaking population that has been there since the eighteenth century. New Orleans follows, the birthplace of jazz, with Bourbon Street and a paddle steamer on the Mississippi optional.

Pensacola comes next for two nights, on the Florida panhandle, where the sand is white quartz washed down from the Appalachians and the historic village is one of the oldest European settlements in the country. Baton Rouge and Natchez follow, the second the oldest town on the Mississippi, with the antebellum houses still standing. Rusk carries the route west to Austin, which calls itself the live music capital of the world and has the venues to justify it, then San Antonio by way of the Fredericksburg wineries, with the River Walk and the Alamo, now a world heritage site.

Thirteen days of motorhome hire with a two-thousand-mile pack, an early pickup and late drop-off special, and a night in a four-star Houston hotel are included; campsites and international flights are not. Fourteen days for four states is a fair pace with one two-night stop. Spring and autumn are the seasons, since the Gulf coast in summer is hot and humid and the hurricane season runs from June to November. New Orleans in February is a different trip again, with Mardi Gras in the middle of it.