Cajun Country

I had an appointment to visit First Presbyterian Church in Lafayette this weekend. Lafayette is a little over two hours from New Orleans and definitely the heart of Cajun Country. I was grateful to have company: my friend Lindsey from the Episcopal service corps in New Orleans volunteered to join me on the adventure that ended up covering about 400 miles.


View Larger Map

Here is the thing about southern/southwestern Louisiana: everything is closed on Sundays. National Parks (there are Jean Lafitte museums in Lafayette and Eunice), antebellum homes, anything touristy, music halls, even the beignet shop someone recommended in Lafayette... there was not much for us to see or do besides drive around and just look. I don't mind people closing up shop and taking a day off, because everyone deserves a break, but I was surprised that so many touristy things do not happen on Sundays, when presumably tourists might be free to come check them out.

West of Lafayette are a lot of rice paddies, which I had never seen before-- at first it just looked like soggy fields until I noticed the berms surrounding them, at which point I realized, rice production! We saw some cattle farms and some oil derricks. 

We drove through Eunice, which is the "Gateway to the Great Southwest Prairie" (southwest of Louisiana, that is). 

 


We drove through Opelousas, which is known for the Yambilee Festival (yes, like sweet potatoes, but it was not happening this weekend) and antebellum homes (which were all closed).


(not an antebellum home)

We took a state highway back down through Morgan City and Bayou Blue, a slightly longer but more scenic and less busy way to return to New Orleans. We stopped in Berwick, the town across the Atchafalaya River from Morgan City, to enjoy the lighthouse and riverfront.



It was a long journey but a good day out. We passed through 18 parishes and saw a lot of different environments. The church visit went well too, with a Sunday school lesson on the "web" of creation that involved kids holding different parts of creation (rocks, soil, water, plants, stuffed animals, etc.) and me stringing them all together with a ball of yarn to show how interconnected it all is-- when you hurt one part of creation, it affects the rest, too.

It's fun to think about all of the different ways that the bits and pieces of the world are related too, especially as I drove through so many different parts of Louisiana in one beautiful day with a good friend in the passenger seat.


Berwick, Louisiana