The Cajun experience

There are a lot of historic sites and museums celebrating southern Louisiana life, past and present.  We picked out a couple of places to see before we leave this part of the country and decided to stay an extra day or two as many of them are closed on Sundays. The first place was Vermillion Village with restored (sort of) houses, a one room school and a small restaurant. Similar to Richmondtown but easier to get around. Bonus: we met a couple in the parking lot on the way in that said we were going to love the band that was playing that day.  Band? My ears perked up.  Turns out the meeting house in the village  hosts a local band every Sunday and it was just about to start playing. The dance floor was packed and the zydeco beat was irresistibile.  We hung around for a while,  then went next door for a buffet of authentic dishes including andouille sausage and excellent gumbo before browsing through the buildings.  The couple we had met in the parking lot are spending a week in Lafayette and had done a ton of research on points of interest and eating spots, much of which they shared with us.

The next day we started off looking for some of the missing items on our culinary tour.  Started the day with beignets at TCoons and ended it with broiled oysters and crawfish etouffee at Randol’s.    In between we visited another historic site, the LARC Acadian Village.  More restored houses, including that of the first doctor to practice in the parish, another school and winding bayou.  On the blackboard of the school had been written “I will not speak French” 100 times, a reminder of the efforts of the state of Louisiana to obliterate the Acadian culture at the turn of the last century.  We ran into our friends from the day before, Glenn and Colleen, who invited us to come to their air b’n’b for wine but (afraid of getting lost in the dark again!) we regretfully declined and continued to Randol’s for dinner. There was a Cajun band playing – much tamer than the zydeco we heard the day before – so  right after dinner we found our way back to KOA and called it a night.

On Tuesday we found our last remaining cultural target, the Jean Lafitte/ Acadian Cultural Center in Beaver Park. The center is one of the NPS historic sites and was interesting and beautifully kept.  The ranger ran a video for us depicting the forced exodus of the French settlers from Acadian Canada by the British and the winding path that took them to southern Louisiana. We always thought they had followed the Mississippi river down to New Orleans but most of the displaced persons were packed onto ships and sent out into the Atlantic Ocean with no final destination. Survivors wound up in Charleston, Savannah and the West Indies.  Some made their way to France and eventually sailed across the Atlantic again to Louisiana, then governed by the Spanish, where they were finally welcomed.

Picked up a CD of zydeco and a copy of Longfellow’s epic poem  Evangeline while we there and headed to Palmetto Island SP for the night.