Louisianans are worse freeway mergers than Texans. I finally decided that it’s because they are too polite to accelerate and get in front of you. Instead, they come racing into the little short acceleration lanes that seem to be the style in both Texas and Louisiana, get right to the end and then say, oh, excuse me, I didn’t mean to be rude, I’ll just come to a near stop and let you go on by. It’s really hard to adjust your speed to allow these people to merge in front of you because they just don’t seem to want to. It’s not just because we have a motor home either, as I’ve seen the same behavior when it’s a car or pickup truck.


Speaking of pickup trucks, they still seem to be the vehicle of choice in this part of the world. Sales may be down other places, but not in Texas and Louisiana. Bright shiny big trucks, preferably with dual rear tires, usually with expensive wheels, leather interiors and whatever luxury package the manufacturer offers. Al wonders what is the point of having a pickup truck when no one offers an 8-foot bed any more so you can’t even bring home a sheet of plywood.


East of Lake Charles, the land on both sides of I-10 turns agricultural and it took me a while to realize that those fields of funny looking grass were really growing rice. And those large side-by-side ponds turned out to be crawfish farms. South of Lafayette, the grass looked taller and coarser and the lady at the RV park identified it as sugar cane. We came into New Iberia on a Sunday and most non-chain restaurants were closed. Wandering around town, I spotted a tiny place that advertised po’boys and gumbo among other things. A shrimp po’boy was what Al had his mouth set for and the gumbo was a nice lagniappe, as the folks here in Cajun country say, an extra. Tasty too, along with sweet iced tea.


One of the places Al and I have had on our “want to see” list for years is Avery Island, home of Tabasco sauce. Sunday afternoon was way too warm to visit the adjacent Jungle Gardens so Monday morning we were at the gate when it opened at nine. The lagniappe this time was the fact that we had the place to ourselves. It’s a five mile drive through scenery that is what you think of when you think of Louisiana—bayous, oak trees dripping with moss, a couple of deer grazing in a field, alligator eyes just breaking the surface. This image of the start of the drive sets the tone.




There are gardens of camellias and azaleas set in among the native plants and it must be especially lovely in the spring. It’s part of the old McIlhenny estate, the Tabasco sauce people, and on one section of water, a refuge for egrets was established during the early 20th century when the birds were seriously endangered because of hunting for their plumes, which decorated women’s hats. This area is called Bird City and bamboo platforms have been erected in the water to provide extra nesting space for the birds. As you can see in the photo, the egrets don’t mind having close neighbors.




This is only one of several platforms which are constructed out of bamboo that grows in the gardens and are renewed annually. Some of the birds are young, about ¾ the size of the adults, but not yet ready to fly. Apparently the alligators like to hang around in the water below to deal with the babies that don’t quite make a successful first solo flight.




There were a few other people on the Tabasco plant tour, which consists of a couple of videos then viewing the bottling area through large windows. Something like 700,000 bottles of Tabasco sauce are bottled every day--of course, some of them are pretty small. We had no idea there were so many flavors of Tabasco sauce and so many other products that have included the Tabasco flavor, such as Spam, Vlasic Pickles, A-1 Sauce and others. The current management is really working on expanding Tabasco’s profile in the food world. We sampled several of the sauces, some salsas, and even jalapeno ice cream, which was rather interesting. The other flavor of ice cream featured their new hot and spicy flavor and I just did not care for it—maybe it was the heavy garlic.


We had lunch at the Tabasco Country Store, eating outside in a nicely shaded picnic area. Al had a nicely spicy crawfish etouffe and I had something called crawfish corn moque choux, which is crawfish meat with corn kernels on rice, with a more subtle flavoring.


We spent the afternoon driving around the New Iberia area, trying to find more of the bayou type scenery, which was pretty well hidden behind tall trees and sugar cane fields. Southwestern Louisiana might have good food, but it’s basically working country, either agriculture or oil rig support, as illustrated by the names of the businesses you pass on the main highway or the huge structures in the Port of New Iberia. Both the RV park here in New Iberia and the one in Sulphur are large and cater primarily to working people who come and stay for an extended period of time. At both parks, the occupancy rate was seriously down from this time last year, a symptom of the poor economy which these folks blame on our current president. You can imagine how they feel about any off-shore drilling moratorium.


Since we are heading north tomorrow, Al wanted one more regional meal, which ended up being an appetizer of crab fingers followed by a shrimp po'boy and an oyster po'boy, each of which we shared. What are crab fingers you might ask? Pricey, for one thing, but I couldn't resist. They are the non-claw legs of small crabs which have had the shell taken off the meaty portion, but the meat left attached to the second joint which is used as a handle. Then you lightly bread the meat and fry the fingers. I should have taken a photo. Quite tasty and a lot less work than digging out that meat yourself. You just pick one up by the attached shell and eat the meat. Yum.


So far, my feeling about Louisiana is that it’s a lot like a crawfish: a lot of work to tease out that little bit of sweet reward.