Moving on to Louisiana

Max and I were eager to get to Louisiana, where we knew we would find good cajun music and cajun food.  Since we would be there almost 2 weeks before the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge, we decided to stay at a small, privately owned RV park in Meaux, Tall Pines RV Park. 

In a field behind where I was parked there was a small crawfish pond.  I guess this guy wanted to see the world and found himself on my patio.

We had a terrible storm and there was just a little bit of water where I was parked.

It even knocked down the electric pole out front and everyone was without power for 2 days.  (Except for Max and I myself since we had generators)

Fancy got to run free on their farm and she loved chasing the squirrels, and the squirrels loved teasing her.  This was in April 2015, and sadly, I lost Fancy to kidney failure in June.  This is how I will always remember her because she loved to chase her critters.  She truly had a terrier heart.

Every Wednesday is the Mercredi Show in Carencro, LA.  This night featured Leroy Thomas and the Zydeco Roadrunners

The next night found us at Randol's in Lafayette.

And the night after that was in Opelousas at the Casino dancing to Richard LeBouef.

And we were with good friends to enjoy the show.

And Saturday was Cajun Woodstock in Church Pointe, LA.  In addition to music, they have an auction to raise money for St. Jude Hospital. 

Jamie Bergeron and the Kicking Cajuns started the day.

The guy with the long beard was one of the competitors in the cookoff, but he also plays the triangle and joined Jamie on stage for a few songs.

They also had a Cajun Gravy Cook-off.  Their were eighteen entries and I wanted to try them all, but after only 8 samples, I was stuffed.  They gave full bowls, not samples.

Sunday early afternoon found us at Vermillionville listening to this zydeco band.  Sorry, but I don't remember their name.

It was either eat or dance, or sometimes both.  Sunday late afternoon was a gathering of friends for a crawfish bisque party.

Leftover crawfish from a previous crawfish boil was used to make this pot of crawfish bisque.  The secret?  Real butter and real cream.

Herman and Lynn Duhon, owners of the RV park where we were staying, own this parrot.  Here, the parrot and Fancy were getting to know each other.

The next Wednesday found us back in Carencro for another Mercredi Show.  Tonight it was Ryan Foret and the Foret Tradition.

 

We wanted to have our own crawfish boil before we headed to Breaux Bridge, so on decided to have our boil on Thursday before leaving on Friday.  The guys bought 40 pounds of crawfish.  Here they are cleaning them in preparation for the boil.

Onions, potatoes and corn to go with the crawfish.  I think it's ready.

Patty arrived just in time to help herself to a plate.  Boy did we chow down.  And with seven of us, we still had two pounds of peeled crawfish leftover.  That's enough for me to freeze and fix my own crawfish bisque at a later date.

On Thursday evening was music in the park in Abbeville.  Here we are waiting for the music to start.

What?!  Here in cajun country and this is a oldies band.  We stayed for a while and did some dancing, but they called themselves a garage band and they really were.  They really should go back to just playing in their garage.  We had a running contest of who could guess the song and artist who originally recorded the song.  Sometimes it took us halfway through the song to even figure out what song it was.

This was a great two weeks, but as you can see, it was very busy.  And our time in Louisiana isn't over.  Tomorrow we move over to Hardy Parc in Breaux Bridge for the Crawfish Festival.  Three days of cajun/zydeco music and lots of cajun cooking and always Roy's Lemonade.