Relaxed over the weekend in Morgan City in Southern Louisiana. Monday, we started north on the Bayou Teche Byway - a north/south route running along the Bayou Teche (Snake River). Thousands of years ago, Bayou Teche was the main channel of the Mississippi River leaving behind rich, fertile soil. This is sugar cane country - miles and miles of sugarcane fields. We stopped for the night at a casino with a very nice RV park.
Tuesday we woke to 77 degrees and high humidity, but after watching the morning news, it looks like most of the rest of the country is worse off than we are - flooding, record high temps, fires out west and violent storms. So, we will try to stop complaining.
Drove north along the byway to Jeanerette to visit their town museum. A local woman gave us a private tour of the many artifacts that documented the town's history. It once was a thriving town fueled by sugarcane and a foundry. Although most of the museum would appeal only to locals, our guide made it interesting with "inside" stories. The major reason we stopped here was to see their sugarcane exhibit that took up a whole room. A good video of how sugar cane is grown, harvested and processed accompanied old-fashioned posters around the room documenting local practices.
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| The museum is in a house that is over 200 years old. |
We learned that sugarcane is grown by laying canes down lengthwise, covered up and then new plants grow from the nodules in the joints. It takes just over a year to mature (growing an inch a day in July). Today, large machines strip the leaves, cut the cane into short pieces that are then spewed
out to a waiting truck or wagon. She said that the machines her
husband used back in the 70's cost about $20,000 and the new ones
that do everything cost about $450,000! The canes are crushed for their sugar in large sugar mills. They reuse the same plants
for three years, then after the last cutting, plow the debris back
into the field and it sits idle for one year.
Jeanerette has a well-known bakery that turns on a red light out front if they have fresh french bread. Happily, the light was on. No glass storefront, just head in via a side door into a huge warehouse looking building with a short counter. I called out and a guy came from the back room where the ovens are and I asked for a loaf of bread. He returned with a huge loaf of french bread, warm from the oven. We stopped for some deli ham and cheese, and enjoyed lunch just as we had when traveling in Europe where fresh bread and croissants were delivered to the campground.
Next up, RICE! Although sugarcane is dominant, rice is also grown here. We stopped at the oldest operating mill in the country - Konriko that gives a short tour and has a large factory store. The mill is old - built in early 1900's and still processes rice starting in August, but they have added newer equipment in an addition out back.
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| Konriko Rice Mill |
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| This diorama of the building shows the different processes - some of the plant is not safe enough for visitors |
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| This machine separates the junk from the rice kernels and an auger below that moves the rice through the mill to the next stage |
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| Sewing machine for the bags that hold the rice |
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| They still use this to move the bags of rice |
Today's final stop - Avery Island, home of Tabasco Sauce! They had a fabulous self-guided tour that walked us through growing the pepper plants, processing the peppers and making the sauce to bottling and shipping worldwide. Avery Island is not really an island, but an elevated piece of ground atop a salt mound surrounded by marshes. In early years, it was a company town where employees lived on the island in company housing and were paid in script. Enjoyed some taste testing and now have samples of their different types of sauce.
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| Small museum -excellent |
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| All peppers are hand picked! |
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| Peppers are mashed with a little salt then stored in white oak barrels for three years |
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| A layer of salt keeps out impurities during storage |
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| Carl, this is the size you need! |
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| Bayou Teche |
Wednesday - the last leg of the Bayou Teche. We stayed the night in St. Martinsville and went into town to visit their Acadian Monument, church and museum. The Acadians were French-speaking, Catholic folks that had settled in Acadie in Nova Scotia in the 1600's. The British rounded them up in the 1700's, put them on ships without concern for keeping families together and sent them south to the American Colonies. Many perished from disease and some drowned on unseaworthy ships that sank. Those that survived, were often turned away at the American ports, with many Acadians eventually finding their way to French-speaking, Catholic Louisiana. They became known as Cajuns.
Longfellow's poem Evangeline, was based on a true story he heard from one of his students that was from St. Martinsville.
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| Beautiful Mural in the Acadian Memorial |
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| Some of the original Acadian Families' Coats of Arms |
We visited a museum in St. Martinsville about the African-Americans in this area. In addition to covering slavery, they had quite a few exhibits about the free people of color that were numerous. It did seem to me that some of the write-ups were a bit "whitewashed," and I will have to do some additional research.
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| Mardi Gras costume |
We also visited the home church of the Acadians - St. Martin
Evangeline sculpture next to the Church is supposedly on the site of the tomb of the woman in the true story underlying Evangeline.
We finished the Bayou Teche byway and stayed the night in Acadiana Park in Lafayette, Louisiana - near Interstate 10.
Along the way we saw miles and miles of sugar cane and a wide variety of homes. Many in the countryside were abandoned - similar to what we have seen in rural America in all of our travels. Poverty and wealth live side by side - big white plantation homes with massive pillars next to derelict trailers and shacks. Most newer homes have French mansard roofs, and we did see some nice looking subdivisions on the outskirts of the larger towns, but not many. Oil support industries and sugarcane are dominant, but unemployment appears to be very high. It seems that more than 50% of the TV advertisements and billboards are for lawyers touting their services for people hurt in car, truck and offshore drilling accidents. One even explained that we should call him if we are ever in an explosion.
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