Tabasco Factory- Avery Island, LA

Do you love Tabasco Sauce? Do you love historical places? How about beautiful plantation-like oak trees? Well friends, I have a place perfect for you, if you like any of those things! Today we are going to be touring the Tabasco Factory on Avery Island, Louisiana!

For those of you who may not have heard of Tabasco sauce, it is a true Louisiana-brand pepper hot sauce. To be fair, Tabasco makes a lot of other types of sauces and products, but their most famous is the hot sauce. When you go to Avery Island, you can see where the original sauce was created more than 180 years ago! The island is still a working factory to this day, and you can tour all of the neat historical buildings that the sauce is made in!

First stop should be the Tabasco Country Store. They have all the Tabasco products and gifts you could ever want! They even have a tasting center where you can sample quite a few of their different kinds of sauces! I highly suggest trying their Pure Honey and the Garlic Grill Marinating Sauce! After you’ve gotten your fill of samples and picked up your favorite Avery Island Tabasco souvenir penny, you should grab some lunch!

1868 is the delicious restaurant on the property! They have everything from Hot Dogs to good ‘ole BBQ! Don’t worry if you left your Tabasco sauce at home though, they have plenty of different sauces you can add to your food if you’d like!

After you’ve got a belly full of good food, it’s time to walk it off on the Factory tour! You can see some of the really cool original pieces of Tabasco history in the first building. It’s pretty amazing to read about the incredible people that made Tabasco, and all of their different endeavors.

A little further along on the tour, you will see the greenhouses where they grow their famous peppers that are the main ingredient in the hot sauce. You will also get to see the giant barrels where the sauce sits and salts for a long time.

It is said that Avery Island sits on top of a giant deposit of solid rock salt. There are mines under the island that they gather their salt from. The rock salt formation is said to be as deep as Mount Everest is high!! They have a really neat exhibit where you can see an example of the rock salt. Trust me, it’s actual rock salt…. someone in my party might have licked it just to be sure….

In the last building there are giant replica hot sauce bottles that you can stand with and pose for pictures. It’s a pretty cool photo op!

Remember when I said there would be plantation-like oak trees? Well, it’s time for that! Not only does Avery Island house the Tabasco plants, but it’s also home to some amazing gardens!

The factories only take up a small portion of the island, the rest is home to some gorgeous plants and wildlife, called the Jungle Gardens! Take a drive around to all of the amazing scenic locations around Avery Island. When I say take a drive, I mean it, because there is no way you could walk all of the grounds in one day!

While you’re driving around all the rivers and lakes, don’t forget to watch for alligators! If you keep your eyes peeled, you might just see one! I also suggest checking out the beautiful Chinese Garden where a giant Buddha sculpture sits.

After you’ve seen all you can see, don’t forget to stop in one of the gift shops on the way out to claim your free bottles of Tabasco Spicy Green Beans and Tabasco Hot Sauce!

I hope that if you are ever in Louisiana you check out Avery Island and the Tabasco Factories!

❤ Abbie

Wandering Wednesday: The Ringling

Happy Wandering Wednesday everyone! I am so beyond excited to share this post with you today! Last week Jackson and I both had Friday off so we decided to take a day trip! I have to say that since we both started working full-time it has been difficult to get the same day off, so we took advantage of it! We thought about going to St.Augustine, but we have already been there 3 or 4 times. We love it, but it’s not new. After much thinking and Googling we found The Ringling Museum in Sarasota. It was only an hour away from us, which was perfect! On Friday we headed to the museum!

The museum pass includes the Ringling Art Museum, Circus Museum, and a first floor self-guided tour of John and Mable Ringling’s Venetian Gothic mansion, Ca’ D’Zan. We got to the museum around 2:00 and we weren’t able to get in the mansion until 4, so we decided to go through the Circus Museum first! It was so stinking cool! I have this bizarre fascination with the circus and carnivals, so I was beyond excited!

They have actual costumes, banners, equipment and old photographs from different famous circus performers and circuses! They even have certain acts you can try and take photographs doing, like walking the high wire or trying to fit in a tiny car!

After you are done with the main room, you have to go in the Howard Brothers Circus section. Inside is the largest model circus in the entire world. It is so amazing! It’s hard to describe how cool this thing is, so I’m just going to tell you it’s a must-see!

After we finished up at the circus museum, we still had a little time before we had to be at the house for the tour, so we walked over to the art museum to look around for a bit! And let me tell you, it felt like we weren’t in America. I felt like we had been transported to somewhere romantic like Italy. The building is made up of several sections, some had modern art, some had Renaissance art, there was even an Ancient China exhibit going on. There was so much to look at!

The building makes a U-shape, so we did one side before we made it into the central courtyard. And let me tell you, I about died when I saw the courtyard. Perfectly manicured gardens, statuary, and an incredible view of the building were just some of the many reasons this place is stunning.

The classical art sections were definitely my favorite. It’s an incredible feeling to be right up next to massive paintings. Painting is one of the talents that I wish I were good at, so I tend to find them particularly interesting!

After we made it to the courtyard it was time for us to take a tour of the house. We walked under the banyan tree covered paths, and made it to Ca’ D’Zan (“House of John” in Venetian dialect).

The house was built in  Venetian Gothic style because the Ringlings had spent many vacations in Italy and had fallen in love with Italian architecture. The mansion was used as their winter home. While going through the mansion you can just imagine 1920s flappers hobnobbing on the terrace. It’s so Gatsby, and I was loving every second. The tour takes you through some of the incredible rooms and allows you to go onto the terrace which overlooks Sarasota Bay. It’s not hard to see why the Ringling’s picked such an incredible location!

The Ringling was so incredibly wonderful. I definitely suggest getting there sooner than we did, however. Three hours was hardly enough time to see everything and take in the beauty. If you liked this blog post, go check out my super awesome husbands’ vlog about our day trip here. I hope that one day you take the opportunity to take a short drive from Tampa and check out The Ringling!

❤ Abbie