Cajun Country

We went to Louisiana to learn more about the Cajun culture and ended up staying over six weeks exploring. Here's the first of a few posts showing some of the sights.

Part of the Atchafalya Basin swamp lands.

Part of the Atchafalya Basin swamp lands. This is the largest swamp area in North America.

The area is covered with lands like this.

This is where we signed up to take a swamp tour. Unfortunately, the weather turned bad and they cancelled.

One of the local houses on the bayou.

They used these machines to tramp down the swampy land before construction.

We drove 60 miles north to visit this place only to find out they are closed on Mondays !

These are crawfish (crawdads, mudbugs, etc) chimneys. They push the dirt up to get some air. Look at how many there are in this one field!

I put my cap next to one to show how large they are. These are found all over the cajun country. They're harvested in the rice fields. First they harvest the rice, then put out traps for the crawfish. Everyone LOVES them down here.

This is what's left after eating the body....you're supposed to such out the heads but we never did.

Oak Valley Plantation. I'm standing on a levee that is holding back the Mississippi River upriver from New Orleans. How would you like to live here !?

These are called King Cakes...a BIG tradition around Mardi Gras time. Of course we had to buy one. This one is considered a small one....$18.

DELICIOUS !

We went to the best place to buy ours...here are many many more awaiting their owners to come buy for purchase.

This is where they make Tabasco Sauce. Avery Island in southern Louisiana.

Assembly line for the hot sauce.

We watched the line in action for about 30 minutes....very cool.

Next to the Tabasco place is Jungle Island...still part of Avery Island. A large "garden" dedicated to imported plants by the owner of Tabasco.

This gator is about 4-5 feet. We ended up seeing eight of them.

Kim is, of course, about 25 feet away.

They love to sun themselves when it's warm.

You can see how close we got to them.

We'll post more of Cajun Country on our next blog.

Kim and Steve