There’s much to see and enjoy throughout the Florida Parishes eight-parish region, especially this time of year. There’s the Slidell Spring Antique Street Fair March 30-31 and the Abita Springs Busker Festival with its live performances on Sunday, April 7. Over in Independence, which has been called “Little Italy,” the Sicilian heritage is celebrated at the Independence Italian Cultural Museum and every March with the Independence Sicilian Heritage Festival. This year’s fête will be March 8-10.
In the center of it all is the annual Louisiana Strawberry Festival, which takes over Ponchatoula Memorial Park April 12-14. Hailed as Louisiana’s largest free harvest festival, the town turns red with a parade, live music, royalty and lots of strawberries, including the strawberry eating contest all weekend.
The annual festival that attracts thousands each year started humbly in 1972. Regardless of its original size, the inaugural event brought in 15,000 visitors, which made organizers realize they were on to something. After all, we all know that Louisiana strawberries are the sweetest around.
Today, the Louisiana Strawberry Festival attracts 300,000 people, making it one of the state’s largest events.
Strawberries aside, Ponchatoula makes for a wonderful spring outing. It’s been nicknamed “America’s Antique City” since the town offers a plethora of antique stores. Downtown’s Antique Trade Days, with more than 200 vendors participating, occurs the first weekend in March and November; this spring will be March 1-3.
But there’s a creative element growing here as well. Two historic churches were turned to face one another and become the innovative Twin Steeples Creative Arts Center. The multidisciplinary arts organization that runs the unique facility of two former churches and a courtyard in between regularly hosts live music, art shows and literary events.
If you want to go wild in the Florida Parishes without climbing into a boat or getting your hands dirty, visit Folsom’s Global Wildlife Center, the largest free-roaming wildlife conservation attraction with more than 3,000 exotic, endangered or threatened wildlife. Visitors may enjoy safari wagon tours or a private experience. In Ponchatoula, take a walk through Kliebert & Sons Gator Tours, an alligator farm that includes everything from hedgehogs and parrots to a dwarf crocodile and rescued alligators.
For a weekend getaway — or even longer — Sun Outdoors New Orleans North Shore has taken the RV park to a higher level. Most visitors — and 80% of their 10,000-plus visitors in 2022 were from the Deep South — roll in with their RVs in a variety of shapes and sizes on the 265 sites on 65 acres. The property also includes two rows of developed cabins complete with lofts, queen beds, pull-out couches, full kitchens and picnic tables and grills on the patio.
Entertainment is what puts Sun Outdoors New Orleans above the rest. Visitors may enjoy a lovely pool area with cabanas and a lazy river, clubhouse bar and fitness center, pickleball courts and a pond with kayak rentals. There’s plenty for children to fill their time, from activities in the children’s center to scavenger hunts and movies in the amphitheater.
For more information on Tangipahoa Parish in the heart of the Florida Parishes, visit tangitourism.com.
A Little Louisiana History
Most people think the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which nearly doubled the size of the United States at the time, included all of what comprises Louisiana today. The top of the Louisiana boot, from the Northshore to Baton Rouge and north from the river to just south of the Mississippi border belonged to Spain and was known as West Florida. After early American and British settlers declared an independent Republic of West Florida in 1810, complete with its own flag and governor, the U.S. annexed the region that’s now eight parishes: East and West Feliciana, East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Helena, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa and Washington parishes. Louisiana became the 18th U.S. state in 1812 and the state boundaries formed much of what we have today.