May 3, 2014 Opelousas, Eunice LA

May 3

The park was quiet last night and we slept till almost 8 this morning!  We walked a bit and the only other person in the park was a man practicing his golf drive while listening to a preacher on the radio.  Nice, sunny day.

After coffee and cereal, we headed west to Eunice to the Savoy Music Center where every Saturday morning there is a jam session for Cajun musicians. There were about 12-15 musicians and about as many  onlookers.  There were accordians, fiddles, guitars, and a harmonica and triangle!  Mostly older men and two women.  Many of the songs are in French and the music is lively and exuberant. The Music Center is a modest building which houses a shop selling accordions and other instruments as well as cd’s, Cajun cookbooks and a few other items. Most of the floorspace is taken up by folding chairs and this jam session has been going on every Saturday for over 40 years; set up & run by Mark Savoy, a well-known Cajun accordion player (who was in New Orleans today for the Jazz Festival).

 Boudin links that they eat like donuts.  Greg said too spicy for me...

 Accordions for sale

 Boudin links (a spicy sausage) and coffee were available for “a  tip”, so Greg had some.  We ran into a man from Australia who we had seen back in Opelousa – he said he saw our Roadtrek so figured something must be going on and stopped!  Suprisingly he said there is quite a lot of Cajun music in Australia.

From here we headed toward Breaux Bridge, the Crawfish Capital of the World, for their annual Crawfish Festival.  Lots of slow moving traffic but we eventually parked and hiked in to the festival.  There were two stages that featured performances all day long. French is popular and accents strong.  A postal lady we asked directions from had a accent I could have listened to all day - soft and almost musical.

 After walking around the carnival and rides section, and another area that had crafts, t-shirts, etc.,  Greg went back to the Trek and got our chairs and we sat near the Crawfish stage and enjoyed sampling some food – a wonderful shrimp po’boy and a bread bowl filled with a crawfish and spinach concoction – both were delicious!   There were hundreds of people and many were dancing – fun to watch!

There were people wearing fabrics with crawfish design,  hats that looked like crawfish heads, and tons of T-shirts with cute Louisiana sayings and pictures…

“Don’t eat the dead ones” was one,  “Peace, Love & Cajun”,  “Off with their heads”, and the usual festival and other LSU, Cajun, etc. shirts. The crawfish races took place during a break in the music and were fun to watch.

We listened to  The Huval Family Band, Jambalaya, Keith Frank & Solieau Zydeco, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.    By 4:30 or so it was getting pretty hot in the sun (mid-80s)  got a wonderful snow cone – aaahhhh….they grind their ice very very fine and it is amazing how good ice, sugar and flavoring can taste!

Scratch and sniff of the day:  Spicy Boiled Crawfish

We hiked back to the Trek and inched our way out of town to I-10 and east.   We stopped at the Atchafalaya Welcome Center,  drove a small back road to a tiny town named Rosa de Butte   which is adjacent to the Atchafalaya Swamp.  This is quite an important and interesting wetlands, which we have toured in the past by airboat.  It filters so much water!

Back to the Welcome Center which has security and allows overnighters.  Finally cooling down with a nice breeze by 7:30 or so.   Neither of us are hungry, so we’ll skip dinner tonight.  Reading and writing and will call it a night.