2016 Louisiana Trip – Day 8 -11 – Breaux Bridge, Abbeville, And Hanging Around

Henderson, LA temps – 74/45, 46/37, 51/32, 58/32; home temps – 40/29, 38/26,28/23, 41/16.

Not much happening on Thuirsday as we were ready for a break from going out for a big meal (I had a bowl of Grapenuts with blueberries for breakfast) then the girls headed off to Breaux Bridge to finish the shopping they had begun yesterday and I hung around the RV in case the anticipated thunder storms required some coach attention.  

Beaux Bridge is a small city of 8000+ and named after Acadian pioneer Firmin Breaux.  It is billed as the Crawfish Capital Of The World as St. Martin Parish, Breaux Bridge's home, produces the most crawfish in the state and has the most crawfish acreage in the eight-parish area known as Acadiana.  Here are a couple of shots of downtown.

The downside to the warmer temps we’ve had was that the low pressure system headed for the east coast to make snow brought us some pretty serious thunder storms and then it was so windy during the night that I brought in the big slide as it was on the windward side of the coach and I feared it might get damaged.

Friday wasn't a very nice day and we just went shopping for items to take home - previous post.

On Saturday we decided to head down to Abbeville to do four things – eat at one of the restaurants specializing in oysters, go to the jam session at the Museum Café, hit a few downtown shops, and tour the rice mill over in New Iberia.  Talk about a busted plan.

When we got to Abbeville, the one restaurant I thought didn’t open until 5pm, Shucks, was open with a big line, and the ones I wanted to go to were all closed until 5pm.  So we looked around the web and found Mary Lane’s Café with good reviews and when we got there is was actually open.

This was another of our kind of places – small, hole in the wall, where the owner took our order & helped cook the meal – maybe 10 tables.  We shared an order of eggplant fries, then, I had a half shrimp poboy and Bev and Pat each had a burger since they love them and the owner said hers were the specialty.

While we didn’t get the oysters we came for, everything was delicious and very reasonably priced – once again not tourist food and where the locals eat – the folks eating next to us were discussing their impending cruise with the strangers next to them – I call this being exposed to the local culture.

We then went through town and found that pretty much everything was closed so no shopping then it was on to the Museum Café which did have music but it was just a smoky bar so we didn’t stay.  All was not yet lost and after checking out the shrimp boats docked in Delcambre, we headed over to New Iberia to tour the rice mill but the last tour had ended.

So we drove home, ate leftovers for supper – we needed the fridge space – and watched a movie on the Hallmark channel.

The leftovers for me was a bowl of homemade Crawfish Bisque that our Baton Rouge based neighbors had given me to try.  This stuff was awesome and the red things you see are bodies that have been cleaned and stuffed with dressing (similar to turkey stuffing) and when I read about it on line I discovered this is typical.

Sunday was a down day where we worked on the coach a little, made beef stew in the crockpot, and watched the Bronco’s eke past the Patriots.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

1/21 – 1/24/16 event dates