Crawfish Festival in Beau Bridge, LA

Our entire reason for hanging around cajun country so long was to attend the Crawfish Festival.

There were two stages with music going on all day and night.

 

A resident artist drew a different picture each day.

He was onstage drawing while bands were playing.

We also saw our friend, Lemonade Roy. We first met Roy at the Jack Daniels International BBQ Festival in 2009.

When you purchase a cup of lemonade and return with the cup, you get refills for a discount. He honors those discounts forever, as long as you have the cup. A friend bought her cup several years ago (he doesn't even sell that cup anymore) but he still honors the discount for a refill. Roy just started bottling him lemonade and it is being marketed in southern California. Look for it, all you friends in southern California. It's good lemonade.

And there is always the food. I was having a spinach and crawfish boat, a spinach and crawfish cream soup dish in a loaf of french bread. mmmmmmm

There were two crawfish eating contests, one for the celebreties, meaning all the festival queens and some local politicians and local media people.

And there were dance lessons. Here are Tom and I learning some new moves.

And also dance contests as well. They had both cajun and zydeco dance contests.

This couple is in their 90s and is said to be the instigators for the crawfish festival. They got the festival started some 25 years ago and now are an honored icon at the festival. We also saw them out there dancing several times too.

Pete and Kathy here are a couple Max met last year. They are also friends of Chuck and Sherry, our dance instructors at Bandera. They invited us to sit under their canopy with them. They were the dance contest judges, but I was told they have won the contest the last few years.

And then there were the bands. Over 23 bands played over the 3 day period. Both zydeco and cajun were represented. Several bands specialized in taking current country or older rock and rock and adding a cajun or zydeco rhythm.

Both cajun and zydeco use the accordion.

But zydeco also uses the washboard.

But by far, Geno Delonfonse was our favorite performer.

There was an ettoufee cook off on Sunday. Here are a couple of pots just getting started. After the judging you could sample all the different entries.

Sunday morning also had a parade. There were several marching bands.

And a couple of really interesting floats.

That is one large crawfish.

It was all over by 4pm on Sunday. Lots of fun, food and music. Hopefully I'll make it back next year.