Cajun all the Time

When we were in Nashville at the bluegrass dive, Station Inn, the Belgian man, Ed ,we met said that we should go to Mamou, LA to a bar called Fred's which, on Saturday morning had great cajun music.  Since we are acting like feathers in the wind on this trip, we did, indeed leave New Orleans for Mamou, or close to it, staying in Lafayette, LA at an absolutely terrible parrish park with nasty bathrooms, millions of cicadas and owls. However, we were so busy that we spent little time there.

First of all, I declared that it was criminal to eat camp food at all in LA, so we have not cooked one meal in all the time we are in Louisianna, and Lafayette was no exception.

Right afer we got our campsite, we went to Avery Island to visit the Tabasco factory.  Well, David was sure we were going to the wrong place, because he could not figure out how we were going to get to the island since there were not bridge signs and no ferry signs.  Ha!  Our little "island" was really a salt dome...a salt island in the middle of land full of sugar cane fields.  The tour was quite interesting, since they use old Jack Daniels barrels to store the pepper mash for three years before bottling it as Tabasco sauce.  I had pepper ice cream and it was quite tasty.

We then went to beautiful St. Martinsville, home of Evangeline and all things Wordsworth and then to Randol's for dinner and our first taste of cajun music and dancing.  I had 3 POUNDs of spicey, boiled crawfish for dinner.  Did I say they were spicey?  David had crawfish etouffee. We thought the band and folks who were on the dance floor were great.  That is, until we got to Fred's on Friday.

What a hoot!  I thought I could get a cup of coffee and some breakfast while listening to Cajun music and watching the dancing.  Bloody Mary was more like it.  Fred's is the little bar where there is no cover and no pressure to buy anything...great music and the best dancers (especially the men) that I have seen.  I got asked to dance three times...and took two poor souls up on their offer.  Each one thanked DAVID quite nicely after our dance for giving them the pleasure.  We signed a guest book and had our names announced as out of town visitors.  Had our first taste of boudin (pronounced boo-dan) which is a sausage made with pork, rice onions and lots of seaoning. The music went from 9 to 1:30 but we had to leave around noon to race to our boat waiting to take us on a swampt tour.

We were the only ones on the boat and had a wonderful guide who took us through the cyprus and tupelo trees through the marsh and bayous.  Saw three alligators, lots of frogs, turtles, roseate spoonbills and other birds including great and little blue heron and lots of kinds of egrets.  Some of the swamp that we boated through really looked like land and some of the plant mats were strong enough to hold alligators, even though they were just floating vegitation.

Then, we had heard on the radio of the Church Point Buggy Festival, so, of course we had to go, despite making promises to one of the couples we had met the night before that we would go to their friend's resaurant for dinner, and passing up the chance to visit Evangeline race track.  Before we went to the buggy festival, however, I really, really wanted to see the Belmont Stakes and we could not find a bar anywhere, even going so far as to stop in a gas station to ask around.  I ended up running into a little, divey lunch place and spied a TV in the corner.  Since we were the only folks there I asked if I could watch the horse race.  The waitress looked around and said, "Horse race?  There's no race in here"  "TV", I shouted and turned it on.  What a disappointment that race was.  Oh well.  The wife of the guide on our swamp boat, plus several other people we met personally knew Big Brown's jockey since he was from Lafayette parrish.

On to the Buggy Festival.  Very light on buggies (6 to be exact tucked into the corner of a gym) but very heavy on accordians.  Cajun and zydeco music and at 8 pm an ACCORDIAN EXTRAVAGANZA!  9 accordians all playing together and then each taking a lick.  What a wall of sound.  What a great day.  the guy in this first photo was the accordian player in the cajun band that we first heard.  As we were sitting down in the bleachers he looked over and gave me a big smile.  Be still my heart.

We keep thinking it can't get any better, and then it does!