Cajun Country

Happy Hour
We celebrate a "closing"
Betty's mural showing the Cajun lifestyle.

Betty prepares the Cajun microwave.
The turkey in the Cajun microwave

Lining up to eat.

The spread

The Thanksgiving Table

Cajun Jam Session

For the next two weeks we will be staying at Betty's RV Park in Abbeville, Louisiana. Betty has happy hour each afternoon for all the park residents to get together. On Friday when we arrived we received the news about the closing on our house so it was really a very "happy hour" which we celebrated with champagne given to us by Richard and Valerie Frayer. We are getting caught in Betty's web.

We really enjoy this area which has great music, great food and very friendly people. We have gone to three places to listen to zydeco and French Cajun music. Locally, the Museum Cafe and Touchet's take turns holding a jam session every Saturday afternoon. On Wednesday we went to Lafayette to listen and dance to Geno Delafose, the Creole Cowboy, along with another group, Balfa Toujours. We have eaten some great meals at local restaurants and had a big Cajun Thanksgiving with 20 people here at Betty's. The local seafood has been fantastic and we are waiting for the fall craw fish harvest which should be this coming week. For Thanksgiving Betty cooked a turkey and pork roast in her Cajun microwave and everyone brought their favorite dish for all to enjoy. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings. On Saturday, Betty used the leftover bird to make turkey gumbo. Yes, we have put on weight since we arrived but all the food has been wonderful. We both had birthdays last week and when we got up in the morning Betty had put a Happy Birthday sign on the windshield and they had a birthday cake for us on Thursday. The Cajun people are just great and you never feel like a stranger. At the Museum Cafe and Touchet's we had several people we met here in the spring come over and talk to us like we had been here our whole lives. The French Cajuns really are the friendliest people we have met anywhere in our travels.

On a sad note, just south of here there was a lot of damage caused by Hurricane Gustav. We passed a number of places where there had been homes and all that remained was the slab where they once stood. Many houses still have the blue FEMA tarps on their roofs. In Intercoastal City many of the businesses which were closed due to storm damage have still not reopened.