Lakefront Airport, Cajun bayous, Avery Island salt dome
A west-southwest run from New Orleans across south Louisiana's Cajun country. KNEW Lakefront Airport is on Lake Pontchartrain's south shore — opened February 9, 1934 as Shushan Airport (huey Long's political-patronage construction project), it was the major New Orleans field until KMSY opened in 1946. The original 1934 Art Deco terminal building, by architect Leon Weiss, is preserved. West 100nm to KARA Acadiana Regional in New Iberia, eight nautical miles from Avery Island — a 163-ft salt dome rising from the surrounding bayou, where the McIlhenny family has made Tabasco Sauce continuously since 1868 from peppers grown on the island, three-year oak-aged. The adjacent Jungle Gardens hold 170 acres of azaleas and Bird City, the heron rookery McIlhenny started in 1895 to save the snowy egret from plume hunters. West 100nm to KLCH Lake Charles Regional: gateway to the Creole Nature Trail (180-mile loop through the marshlands of southwestern Louisiana, the "Outback of America," with alligator-viewing platforms), and to Louisiana's Cajun food belt — boudin, étouffée, gumbo, andouille.