Road Trip 7:.....The Bayou's and Byeways of the South

The plan for our seventh visit to the United States is to return to New Orleans and then explore the hinterland of Louisiana. Immersing ourselves in such exotics concepts as Cajun, Creole and Zydeco. We then plan to move further west into Texas. I say plan because one never knows what is round the next bend, be it good or bad!

Saturday, November 6, 2010

You Nice people of Eunice.

Thursday, the weather has returned to sunny skies, although the temperature has dropped to the sixties and thirties at night. It now feels like the crisp autumn days back home that tell us winter is around the corner. In this case high pressure build over The Rockies and forces a cold North wind to sweep down from Canada and the Great Lakes across the Mississippi plains, right down to the Gulf of Mexico (where we are).

As it was a nice sunny day we decided to return to Eunice to see the things missed on Saturday. As we drove down we took a couple of pictures of the extensive rice fields we drove through. Many of them were still flooded for the rice in them, others were dry and bare, but with the little levees between the fields.

In Eunice we visited the Jean Lafitte Acadian Plains Cultural Center, which is a National Park. It is one of six locations which make up the park, some of them are just buildings, like this one, others are land areas which reflect the geography. There is a big bayou park near Westwego, where we camped, outside of New Orleans. There is also a park at the site of the battle between the English and Americans, which is the story of the song made so famous by Lonnie Donnegan, (UK) and Mac Wiseman (USA), The Battle of New Orleans. This battle was fought as part of the little known war between the Americans and the British in 1812-1815, where the English 10,000 troops came second to General Andy (later to be President) Jacksons 1500 assortment army, mostly militia men. It also included the famous Pirate Jean Laffite, who is a big name round Louisiana, hence the name of the National Park.

No comments:

Post a Comment