Cajun Country explorations

We made a brief stop in Opelousas on our way to the Lafayette area. Opelousas is the self-proclaimed Zydeco Capital of the World and the Spice Capital of Louisiana. Who are we to question those claims? We drove through the historic downtown, then stopped at Le Vieux village, a collection of authentic and historic buildings from the area. The old train station housed the Louisiana Orphan Train Museum, which we toured, guided by a nun who's father had been on one of the orphan trains to Louisiana. Although we knew about the orphan trains, we didn't realize those children, who were not all orphans, were distributed to almost all the states between 1854 and 1929.

We skirted into and out of Lafayette (should have avoided it entirely, but once again, I got us lost!), and found our RV park on the outskirts of Breaux Bridge. This town was initially established in 1829 along the Bayou Teche. Its name originates from the Breaux family who built the original bridge(s) across the Bayou. The Louisiana legislature officially designated Breaux Bridge as the "Crawfish Capital of the World." It is said that crawfish étouffée was originally created in this little town.

After exploring Breaux Bridge, we drove south to St. Martinville, which was settled in 1765 and incorporated in 1817. It is noted as 'the birthplace of Acadiana" and was made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1897 poem "Evangeline". Neither of us ever remember having read nor heard of it. Regardless, we stopped at the Longfellow-Evangline State Historic Site which had a lovely interpretive center that explained the history of the Acadians, their expulsion from Nova Scotia (by the Brits) in 1755 and their subsequent arrival in what was French Louisiana in the late 1700's. The park also contained the Olivier Plantation Home, built in 1815, which was nicely restored and furnished with period pieces.

The town of St. Martinville has a lovely town square in which the church of St. Martins de Tours dominates. There are several historic old buildings that line the streets surrounding the square. It also hosts a lovely old oak tree called the Longfellow Evangeline tree along the BayouTeche. We decided to have lunch here and enjoyed crawfish étouffée with grilled catfish and shrimp gumbo - all of which was delicious.

On Sunday, we drove south through Lafayette to Avery Island in order to visit the Tabasco Factory. We spent about 3 hours there, touring their museum, the factory and the "Jungle", a lovely garden area created by the McIlhenry family many years ago. As it was Sunday, the factory wasn't working, but we learned much about their process of making their famous hot sauce. On our Jungle tour, we got to see alligators, lots of snowy egrets, bamboo, beautiful, huge cypress trees with their lovely Spanish moss and lots of camelias in bloom and some azaleas in bloom. We missed (??) seeing any bears or cougars, which was just fine since the dogs were allowed to walk with us. We kept them on a short leash and far away from the lagoons with alligators. We enjoyed lunch at Tabasco's cafe - and sampled several sauces new to us, before buying a couple of bottles of sauce and heading back to Breaux Bridge via the back roads again. We drove through New Iberia that had quite a lovely historic downtown area and an antebellum mansion (closed on Sunday), providing a scenic exit to the area. A nice day along the bayou - again.

We ended our bayou visit with a stay outside Baton Rouge. The weather turned bad and it was pouring rain when we drove through the capital city. Aside from quick stops at Louisiana's only Trader Joe's store and a Costco stop, we decided to skip a visit to Baton Rouge. We went directly to a KOA campground in Denham Springs, about 8 miles east of Baton Rouge - just in time to hear about potential tornado weather predicted for the next day, February 23rd.

On that Tuesday, we listened to the heavy rain and NPR when the weather service listed Denham Springs as being part of a tornado warning. We packed up all our electronics, a can of dog food and a single bottle of water ('duh' in hindsight), leashed up the dogs and headed towards the KOA office. Along with two other couples, we waited out the storm, grateful when the storm passed without an actual tornado touching down in our immediate area. Later in the day, however, we learned that a tornado did touch down in a trailer/RV park and killed at least two people. The evening news confirmed that 9 tornadoes touched down around several areas that day.

Once again, we were grateful to have been spared. It was interesting that we determined our electronic devices and the dogs were the most important things we wanted to save. We didn't bother with bringing any clothes, thinking if there was a disaster, the Salvation Army or Red Cross would help us out. (Isn't that why we send them periodic donations?) It was a helpless feeling, knowing that Tiny Tin, our 'home', could have easily been destroyed - and I'm convinced that the KOA office would not have offered sufficient shelter for anyone had a twister touched down there. We were shocked, too, that this area didn't have any sirens to alert folks about tornado warnings, but perhaps that's old technology these days? We did learn, however, that our cell phone issued an alert and advised evacuation. As Luddites, we didn't know it would do that!

We're now in New Orleans, getting ready to see the 'Big Easy', post Katrina.

Opelusas' Hall of Fame