Advertisement
Published: December 15th 2013
Edit Blog Post
Louisiana: Lafayette to New Iberia
Coming from Houston, Texas on Interstate Route 10, we travelled the affectionately named Creole Nature Trail. Again, we were advised by the visitor centre attendant that it was a much more scenic and pleasant road than the interstate. We turned off 10 at Sulphur and headed south on 27 toward the Gulf and Holly Beach. We passed along the edge of the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge which is comprised of 125,000 acres of protected marshland, 61 miles of levees and is the largest coastal marsh refuge on the Gulf of Mexico. The Creole Nature Trail winds through more than 180 miles of bayous, marshland and shores along the Gulf. It passes through miles of fertile prairies and lush marshes. The brochure boasted that there was a good chance that we would see some alligators, but it wasn’t until later in Florida that we saw enough alligators in the wild to last a lifetime! There are a number of recreation areas on the route where people stop to fish, shrimp or crab. We continued to the beach and headed east, following the 26 miles of accessible Gulf beaches.
Instead of continuing on 27 and circling
northward back to 10, we continued east on 82 through Cameron Parish. Here we began to see offshore oil rigs and massive freighters and oil tankers just over the horizon. At Cameron we crossed over the waterway between Calcasieu Lake and the Gulf of Mexico on a small ferry; the crossing took about 5 minutes and was without cost.
We learned that nearly one-third of all the seafood consumed in the United States comes from Louisiana. It is the number one provider of shrimp, oysters, crabs, crayfish and alligator in the US. Louisiana harvest nearly 100 million pounds of shrimp annually.
Further along we skirted the edge of another wildlife refuge, the Rockefeller Refuge, that was originally 86,000 acres of wilderness but has shrunk to less than 76,000 acres in recent years through erosion both natural and man-caused. There is fear that if this erosion continues at its current rate, by the year 2050 more than 30 miles will have disappeared to potentially catastrophic ecologic and economic consequences.
Our first overnight stop in this part of Louisiana was in Lafayette. Lafayette is the heart of Cajun country where the descendants of French Canadian immigrants still preserve their
language and unique culture and considers itself the ‘unofficial Capital of French Louisiana’. We parked opposite a fine church building, the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, and walked around the downtown, which for a small city of over 120,000 people was very very quiet. We spent some time in the local library using their wifi (thank you Margaret for this tip – everywhere we visited the local libraries we were warmly welcomed and assisted. The local library in America is one of its cultural treasures!)
We found ourselves on a long waiting list at the Blue Dog for dinner. The place was abuzz with diners. Throughout the large dining rooms were prints and originals of the paintings of George Rodrigue, an internationally known artist born and raised in nearby New Iberia. If you aren’t familiar with his name, he is the guy who paints a Blue Dog, an original Cajun Werewolf dog that has become a pop icon. These ‘Blue Dog’ paintings catapulted him to fame in the 1990s. The restaurant houses a massive permanent collection of his work and also sells all kinds of ‘Blue Dog’ gifts and paraphernalia. The paintings were fun to look at while
the food at the restaurant consisted of unbelievably large platters of fried food that you can’t imagine any restaurant would be proud to serve – but they do, and they are, and people wait for up to an hour before being seated and served, as did we!
The next morning we drove into Iberia Parish and New Iberia town. This is the area made famous in literary circles by the literary crime novels of James Lee Burke featuring Dave Robicheaux. Burke spent his youth playing and fishing in the local bayous and lakes and his novels are rooted in the area, its unique settings and the alluring landscape of southern Louisiana. He is one of my favourite crime writers. His characters, good or bad, central or peripheral, are always well-defined and distinct. The storylines are always intriguing. There is usually some local history or folktales or legends or voodoo that accompany the storyline. The language of the novels is rich and rewarding; both the dialogue and description are pleasurable to simply read. New Iberia town has a lovely little bookstore on its Main Street that is a shrine to James Lee Burke and the local greasy spoon diner has
a handwritten sign in its window ‘Where Dave Eats’! We had a quick walk around the place and decided that Dave had a stronger stomach than we did and we went in search of our breakfast elsewhere.
And we found the local donut maker. A funny little guy of Irish descent, as soon as he heard our accents he was our best friend in New Iberia. He told us all about the business of donut making and took our photo for his own facebook page. We had a couple of his wonderful donuts and cup of coffee and chatted a bit. He warned us that a busload of kids were arriving shortly for a tour and demonstration of donut making, and sure enough as we were finishing up they all trooped in, about 60 kids of 8 or 9 years old. They were very well behaved and not boisterous at all. We tried to talk to a few of them, and took a photo, and then continued on our walkabout of New Iberia back to Rudy V.
We drove on 182 through Iberia Parish and along the Bayou Teche through the Cajun Coast listening to an audio book
of a recent James Lee Burke novel called The Glass Rainbow. It was read by Will Patton and he had varying and distinctive vocal inflections for each of the major characters and it was a joy to hear the vivid language and description while driving through the actual area. We passed through the towns of Franklin and St Martinville, Jeanerette and Charenton before joining up with Route 90 at Morgan City and heading into New Orleans.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.284s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0622s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb