From the peninsula I headed northwest, passing a few more ghastly factories/refineries that seem to have taken over the coastal area.
These things are huge - like small cities with their own little ecosystem. I suppose I can't rely fuss since I'm totally dependent on fossil fuel right now, but they are not adding to the landscape in any way.
I spent a couple days in LaFayette trying to decide if I should go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras or find some other place to watch parades. While waiting I went to Vermilionville, a living history museum with some original Acadian buildings and more "modern" structures. I had a blast walking around, talking to the folks in period costume and dodging the rain along with the rest of the visitors. Nearby is Jean Lafitte National Historic Park that has a great exhibit but not much to see outside.
For reasons unclear to me now, I didn't manage to take any pictures of these places. I remember thinking that not much was photogenic, but now I'm missing the visual references. Note to self I guess.
I left the city and stopped at Breaux Bridge for the final decision to wake up to these guys.
The Canadian couple in this car parked next to me at WM were headed south and couldn't imagine anyone not going to THE city for the celebration but they out-youthed me at least 20 years.
Oddly enough, every single local person I talked to said NOLA was the worst place to go unless you plan to engage in a lot of drunken revelry. Totally not my thing. I went to Baton Rouge.
It's a nice drive and you pass through the Atchafalya swamp which is very green, and really fun to say.
I scouted through websites and found a parade that was within walking distance of a WM with safe parking. I headed out early, not knowing how crowded a neighborhood parade would be and ran into these ladies.
They were smart enough to park at a house with a big 'For Sale' sign, scoring a nice place to lounge, but probably not the best exit strategy since the road the were on was closed while everyone left the parade route.
I suppose the big-city parades are fancier and have more elaborate floats, but I loved the local groups and silly floats of this parade. I ended up with lots of beads and draped many of them over the kids standing next to me.
Bo was completely unimpressed. (He was re-furring my clean sheets)
No comments:
Post a Comment