Tripometer – 14,578 mi
Gas Gauge – 1135.024 gal
Location – Grand Isle State Park, Grand Isle, LA
Lodging – $25
Cans of OFF – 4
Knowing we were within striking distance of New Orleans we started the morning by making reservations at Grand Isle State Park as recommended by the folks we met at the gas station a few days ago. We set off this morning knowing that we would be relatively warmer by night fall.
While looking for a place to grab a bite to eat this morning Paul ran across a restaurant advertising itself as a ‘meat kitchen’. We’re always up for new dining experiences and there was no way we were going to pass up a Louisiana Meat Kitchen. Inside the restaurant we found the most amazing assortment of heart attack-inducing vittles we’ve ever laid eyes on. Everything in the restaurant was either meat or fried and many of the offerings were fried meat. So many of the food items were unfamiliar to us that we had to ask for help from the kitchen staff. The cashier explained to us that we were going to be eating what her father liked to call ‘Fat Boy food’. We ordered a smattering of items from boudin to crawfish pistolettes and were richly rewarded with some amazing new flavors and textures to experience. The most impressive item we ate was the Boudin (pronounced Boo-Don (don, as in Donkey). Boudin is a French style sausage traditionally made from pork and rice with an enticing array of herbs and spices. It was not hot-spicy, but rather deliciously flavorful and complex… surprisingly so. Looking back on Rabideaux’s, we should have stocked up on some of the sausages and pastries but we were simply too new to the area to appreciate what we had found. We may well place an order for shipment once we get home to share some of the flavors that we found here with friends and family back home.
Shortly after lunch we left the I-10 at Lafayette and headed South towards the river delta area along the Bayou Teche. Knowing we had a ton of time to get to Grand Isle and no real plans for the day we took several side trips from the main road through the area to travel along the older smaller road that runs along the waterway. This area was historically plantations and the associated small towns to support them. Most of the area was lower income with the occasional vacation home along the bayou, but the old little towns and plantation houses were still intact and gorgeous. What thrilled us the most about the area was the historic landscaping done when the plantations were in their heyday. Huge old trees lined many driveways and the main streets in the towns were dripping with Spanish moss, looking a bit like a movie scene from Gone with the Wind.
Travelling over the elevated roadways through the bayous and swamps in lower Louisiana presented a new difficulty for us today. The long stretches of concrete roadway were all similarly bowed so as to make the entire truck/trailer rig ‘porpoise’ down the road like an undulating snake. We could go faster than the harmonic or slower, but at the magic speed this effect threatened to throw us off the road into alligator infested swamps.
Arriving in Grand Isle late, we were thrilled with the warm temperatures. We set up the trailer this evening in shorts and t-shirts while swatting mosquitos (something we haven’t seen for quite a while). Ranger has had it. He’s grumpy and keeps throwing us dirty looks as we shove him around the trailer getting everything ready for bed. When Paul threw a load of blankets on his head this evening he didn’t so much as shift for the next 15 minutes. The poor guy has had enough car for a few days.
Special Note: Snacking is so much easier in the Southwest. An open bag of chips, cookies, candy, or any baked or sugary good goes bad in a matter of hours on the east coast. Chips become soggy and stale, candy becomes sticky and clumped. In the southwest we noted several times that a bag of chips left out over night is a little stale in the morning but honestly, quite fine relative to what we expected. We can recall eating several sandwiches in the desert where the bread started to get crispy on the outside by the time we were finished eating, simply from drying out. We’re back in the realm of humidity now and we learned that lesson via snacks on the way to camp today. We won’t be leaving the snacks on the center console as we drive any more. It was nice while it lasted.