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Published: March 18th 2013
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Lake Charles, LA--Sunday, February 10th
Left the park in time to drive to Lake Charles Civic Center by noon and stand in line for an all-you-can-eat traditional Louisiana cuisine for $7. The local community college cooking school prepared about 7 or 8 dishes they plopped on your large plate to taste. I have never seen a styrofoam plate with so many tiny compartments for food.
At the end of the serving line, they were serving bowls of gumbo and both bread pudding and a King's cake for dessert. The King's cake is sort of like a large football sized and shaped cinnamon roll frosted in Mardi Gras colors of gold, green and purple with a tiny baby doll baked inside. They are served at parties and Mardi Gras balls with the person who finds the baby in the cake being required to host and pay for the following year's ball or party.
After a pleasant lunch with conversations with other Lake Charles residents (both in-line and at our table of 8), we went downstairs one floor and walked around and watched the Children's Day Activities. Everything was free--games, arts and crafts, food (sheet
cake, popcorn, hot dogs), drinks, etc. By the entry door to these activities in the Civic Center lobby was a painted alligator that we think was part of a fund raising program here, like the fiberglass painted moose we saw in Talkeetna, Alaska and the UNICEF Care bears in Helsinki. We spotted a couple more at other businesses around town.
We then drove to a parking lot directly across the street from our "place" and hung out waiting for the Children's parade that started at 3:30 to begin. The same floats that the adult Krewes use are paraded with the children of the Krewe members inside. Each parade was started with 10-12 police, sheriffs, or marshals in cars or on ATV's or motorcycles in full, full siren mode. By this time, the rain was falling really hard and we dug out some of our plastic ponchos to wear and cover our chairs and also shared a couple with some neighboring spectators.
The parade floats are not like the floats in the Rose parade or Macy's Thanksgiving parade, but are framed decorated boxes built on top of flatbed truck trailers and pulled by an 18-wheeler truck cab. This makes
them quite high up and as they go down the parade route Krewe members can easily throw beads, candy, and small toys to the people below. Each float held 20-30 people of one Krewe and had seating along both long side "walls" and racks down the middle to hold strings and strings of beads. Most folks on the floats were not dressed in costumes, but just wore shirts of Mardi Gras colors. Many floats had a "porta-potty" riding at the very back of the trailer.
Hung around town in Rosie until close to the time for the
Lighted Boat Parade at 7:00
and then moved and parked next to Lake Charles. We were disappointed that only 5 boats participated especially, since Louisiana has such a large boating population with all her lakes, rivers, bays, bayous, and the gulf. The “parade” was led and followed by police boats.
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