Friday, April 10 – My first thought
this morning was that it was my best friend’s birthday today. We usually celebrate our birthdays together,
so missing you today, Sheila Thomas!!
We had a fairly long trip planned for today, so we got around pretty early. It doesn’t take long to get the RV ready,
fortunately, so we were soon off and on our way. I briefly had that thought that I used to
have every time we left a place we’d enjoyed, that I would miss it (this time
Santa Rosa RV Resort in Navarre) and I’d always wish we could just move on to
someplace else. This time, we were
pinching ourselves to realize we WERE moving on to someplace else, yay!!! So blessed.
We drove out of Florida, into Alabama, then into Mississippi and then
into Louisiana. Sounds like a lot of
miles but really only about 275 miles.
That’s about the most we will do.
We like to stop by 3:00 or so… We had originally intended to go to New
Orleans for a few days, though we’ve been there several times before, but there
is a Festival in the French Quarter going on all weekend, and every RV Park we
called was full. So our backup plan was
to drive on to Baton Rouge and then just pop back to New Orleans for a day
trip.
We stopped for lunch at Cracker
Barrel, our normal stop when traveling in the RV as they’re the only place you
can count on for having enough space to park the RV. Bad weather had been predicted all around us,
and as we walked into Cracker Barrel we had a few drops hit us, we hurried in,
and before we were even seated, it was pouring rain. After we ate, the rain cleared up and it was
completely dry as we walked back to the RV.
Later on the road, it rained again a good bit, and Earl never enjoys
having to unhook and set up in pouring rain, but what can you do? We got into the KOA at Baton Rouge, the skies cleared
and we were completely dry! I told Earl
he was just lucky he was traveling with me, as I’m God’s favorite girl. :-)
Saturday. Today is Orlan Thomas’s birthday (again,
we’re missing celebrating with our best friends) – it’s also my nephew, Mark
Rainwater’s birthday, so I took time before leaving to get on FB and wish them
a Happy Day! We read late last night,
so thought we might sleep later, but actually woke up at our normal time, and
soon got around and took off to go to New Orleans for the day. 100% rain predicted on our weather app. It was gray and overcast but hey, we took our
umbrella and set off. We had a
beautiful day!!! Went to the Museum of
Art first, at City Park, left the car there, and got a streetcar to go
downtown. I remember enjoying that from
times we were here before. We went to
the River Walk and strolled around, listening to music, and window
shopping. Of course, it was a MUST that
we go to Café du Monde for beignets! You
can’t go to New Orleans and not have beignets!
Oh my goodness, they are sooooo deeeelicious! I laughed at Earl for wearing a black shirt –
he had powdered sugar all in his beard and all over his black shirt. Too funny.
We rode the streetcars down St. Charles and through the Garden
District. Love the homes on this street. Here are a few photos….scroll past quickly if you're not interested.
 |
| The famous Bourbon St - French Quarter, New Orleans. |
We spent only a few minutes on
Bourbon St. It’s such a destination
point for New Orleans, but it is definitely not for the faint of heart. It’s debauchery at its worst. I felt such a sense of sadness that the
throngs of people there think that is FUN??
We walked less than 2 blocks down Bourbon Street before leaving, having
seen more than enough.
We got the
streetcar back to City Park and this time it was NOT a fun ride. Apparently half the people in the city decided to leave at the same time we did and there was standing room only, as you can see! CROWDED! And a balancing act trying to hold on to an overhead strap while people are lurching all around you. No longer a favorite way of transportation.
We decided we wanted to get some local flavor for
dinner. We had talked to some people on
the streetcar who recommended a place called The SwampBox Café. Hmmm interesting name. They thought it was one that had been
featured on Diners and Dives (is that the name of the show on The Food
Network?) so we went in and talked to the server, asking for
recommendations. He said we must try
jambalaya and gumbo if we wanted to get a taste of Cajun food, so we bravely
ordered. I asked him about a couple of
other things like crawfish pies and boudin.
He sweetly smiled at me and said that boudin was delicious but if he
told me about it, I would likely think it was nasty. Whaaaat??
We decided to stick with the first order. Haha The dinner was delicious, but HOT, whew
that sausage had some heat in it! My
mouth was burning but we kept at it.
Portions were so huge, I could only eat about 1/3 of mine, but Earl
pretty much polished his off. We
certainly had no room for dessert, so soon headed back to the RV and relaxed
for the rest of the evening. Both of us
have great books, so we’re always happy campers as long as we can read!
Oh, and I wanted to tell you, out of
that 100% prediction of rain, we never saw a drop!! It was a little overcast, which actually was
a blessing as it kept a nice cool breeze on us, but NO RAIN!!! I know most people will say that’s all
coincidence, but there is definitely reason to believe I’m God’s favorite kid! J
Sunday - What a delightful
day! It was a bit rainy this morning, so
we decided to just watch our own home
church via live streaming, and it was great to see familiar faces! Pastor Dayne had an awesome message after
having just gotten back from Armenia. I
fixed a light lunch here in the RV and worked on some paperwork and boring
stuff for awhile, then we relaxed and read for a couple of hours, had a nice
phone chat with Lisa, and late afternoon we went to a movie. We saw “Do You Believe?” After reading very poor reviews, we still
chose to go see it, as we simply want to support them and send a message by our
support that there is a market for clean wholesome movies! The movie was AWESOME!!! If you haven’t seen it yet, I urge you to go
see it while it’s still in the theaters!
It was superbly done and was impacting, inspiring and challenging! I’d turn right around and watch it
again! So good!
There just happened to be a great
looking Mexican restaurant right next door to the theater! How convenient! So we just walked over there and shared a
fajita. We discovered our server was a
student at LSU, so he and Earl were chatting about football and when he
realized Earl was a Gator, he literally recoiled like he’d seen a snake! It was funny.
I told Earl I was glad he didn’t know prior to serving our food – he might
have decided to spit in it or something.
Not really.
Monday, April 13th. We read late last night, so slept till
about 8:30 this morning, which is pretty late for us. I have slept like a baby ever since we left,
but for some strange reason last night, I woke up at 2:30 and finally read and
played on my iPad till about 5:00 and then went back to sleep. It was pouring rain when we got up, so we put
our plans for the day on hold until the weather cleared. We ended up leaving here about 11:00 and
drove to Ville Platte in the Evangeline Parish.
How could we be near a city with that name and not go? Evangeline is the original spelling of my
name, but when I was 18, I legally changed the spelling to Evangelyn, as I had
gotten so weary of the misproncunciation of it.
People would as often as not, say EvangeLEEN or EvangeLINE, rather than
just Evangelyn, so I took care of that.
I’ve met 3-4 other women named Evangeline over the years, but it’s
fairly rare, so when I saw a Parish named Evangeline, I was intrigued.
We learned it was first settled by people from
France and Canada around 1781, but the name Evangeline Parish became official
in 1910. The Parish was named Evangeline
in honor of the Acadian people who lived further south, and their history was
commemorated in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s narrative poem of its heroine, Evangeline. People who live in Ville Platte will tell you that
NOWHERE in Louisiana is the Cajun food more authentic. They claim to have the best gumbo, the best
boudin and other Cajun delicacies. We
went all over town and took photos of the various businesses named
Evangeline. Quite a novelty for me, as
it’s rare to see my name in print.
We then stopped by a tourist center
to make sure we weren’t missing anything while we were there as we were about
an hour and a half from Baton Rouge. We
told her of our first experience eating jambalaya and gumbo and she said we
MUST have some boudin!!! I was not real
sure about it, after reading some really gross details, BUT….she explained to
me that in southern LA they eat boudin blanc as opposed to the boudin red (the
one with all the blood in the description I read – yuck). She told us of a place nearby called Duo’s
Cajun Corner, known for their boudin, cracklins and beef jerky, and boiled
crawfish when it’s in season. So we
found this place, and oh my goodness, we started laughing like crazy – talk about
a hole in the wall!!! I have never in my
life eaten in a place like that. I was
glad Earl was “carrying”! haha
So we went in and told them we wanted to
just taste the boudin, and that we’d never tried it before, etc. They were SO nice and friendly and the girl
said, “Oh sure, we’ll just give you a link to try” and we agreed. I am picturing a normal sausage link – like maybe
4-5 inches. Well she pulled out this
huge 18-20 inch “link” and proceeded to cut it with these big shears into 3-4”
pieces. We were told it is a concoction
of pork, rice, onions and spices. Sounds
ok to me. She said it was put into a sausage casing (we later found out the
casing is actually the pig intestine lining!!) hmmmm While
she was getting that ready, the owner/cook (chef?) said people generally eat it
with cracklins and we told him again that was new to us, so we tried eating
that (is cracklin singular for cracklins? Or is even one still a
cracklins?) Anyway, it was quite tasty,
but really greasy!!! I would imagine
that’s a real artery clogger! While Earl
was paying the girl, Jean (pronounced szhawn) told us he also makes hogshead
cheese and we must try it. So he cuts us off about an inch square for
each of us and hands it to us on a little Styrofoam plate. NASTY!!!!!! Cold and
gelatinous and spicy hot! Yuck!! I was SO very thankful he had turned around
giving me time to spit it out on the plate!!!
I know that was rude, but y’all!!!
It was gross!!! Well, there was
no place to sit down in this eating establishment, so we carried it out to the
car and proceeded to eat the boudin. I
have to say it was actually quite good!
Nothing at all distasteful about it. So accompanied by a couple of
cracklins we drank lots of water with our lunch. I thought, being so fond of Mexican food, I
was accustomed to spicy, but the spicy here is HOT!!
Tomorrow we head over toward Texas –
I’ll keep y’all posted on our adventures.
Thanks for traveling along with us.
We are having a blast!
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