Cajun Country - April 2007

We were glad to head out of Houston and into the heart of Cajun Country – home of crawfish, alligators and drive-through daiquiri stands. It was after 8:00 p.m. when we rolled into Betty’s RV Resort in Abbeville and we knew immediately we were in the right place. A group of fellow RVers were gathered in Betty’s Louisiana room sharing a few adult beverages and listening to a couple of local musicians playing Cajun music. Happy hour at 4:00 o’clock was a daily occurrence at Betty’s where we all shared stories about the day’s adventures.


And we always had a story to tell. We enjoyed exploring nearby New Iberia, the home of detective novelist James Lee Burke and the setting for many of his tales. We visited our first antebellum mansion here – Shadows on the Teche – located right on the banks of the Bayou Teche, and drove to Avery Island where they make Tabasco sauce. The Tabasco factory wasn’t very exciting, but we were in for a surprise when we drove through the 200-acre Jungle Gardens created by McIlhenny family. The gardens were certainly lovely and we saw our first alligators here, but the real surprise was the thousands of Snowy Egrets we saw nesting in the preserve here. The McIlhennys built platforms over a pond and now over 20,000 egrets and other water birds come to breed every year. Some of the nests held two or three pale blue eggs while other pairs were busy caring for their fuzzy little hatchlings. The McIlhennys now bring in truckloads of sticks and twigs every year to provide nesting materials for the birds. A really amazing sight. .

We saw more wildlife when we took a swamp tour a few days later. Our guide was a local fellow who took us deep into the swamps that surround Lake Martin. I think I saw most of the herons and egrets in my bird book, plus nutria (like a cross between a beaver and a rat!), snakes, turtles, and a barred owl with three fuzzy chicks. Of course, the big attraction is the alligators and we saw several – from little two footers to big guys about twelve feet long.

There are lots of beautiful antebellum mansions in this part of the country and we’ve seen several. Sometimes our tour was made up of twenty people or more, but other times we’ve been lucky enough to be the only two. One of our favorites was the tour of Oaklawn which is now home to the former governor of Louisiana. They open up the first floor of this glorious old mansion to tours while the family lives on the second floor. We said hello to the guv while he was loading the car for a weekend trip. Here’s a picture of Ez sitting at a desk formerly owned by Napoleon Bonaparte!

Most of you have probably seen pictures like this one of the moss-covered oak trees at Oak Alley, but we thought the gardens at Houmas House were even prettier. (Plus Miss Norma made some dynamite mint juleps in their quaint Turtle Bar.) That's Houmas House at the top of the blog. After leaving Abbeville, we moved on to Convent, Louisiana (near New Orleans) where our RV park was next to the Mississippi River on the grounds of a plantation formerly owned by a Judge Poche. According to the current owner (who took us on a fascinating tour of the house) the judge was probably a Union spy who built his home using artifacts looted from the homes of his neighbors. He never felt welcome in the area and left the house soon after it was built and later became a Supreme Court justice.

Our final stop in Louisiana was in Robert on the north side of Lake Ponchartrain. From here we drove across the Causeway for a day trip into New Orleans. We made many of the traditional tourist stops – coffee and beignets at Café du Monde, a carriage ride around the French Quarter, and watching the ships moving up the Mississippi. Fortunately, we were here for the first day of the French Quarter Festival so there were bands and music groups playing in streets around the quarter. After exploring for a while, we settled in on a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street and listened to jazz and Dixieland from the street below. What a great place to people watch!
We’ve really enjoyed the people and sights of Louisiana, but in a day or so we’ll be headed to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and then down into Florida. Stay tuned. .