February 4, 2017. In Cajun Country!

CAMPGROUND:  Betty's RV Park.  A unique experience!  Small park, with about 10 sites.  Betty herself welcomes you and immediately invites you to a daily happy hour.  A real southern lady.  Everyone is super friendly.  $22/night.  8 stars.  Electricity, water and sewer hookups. Would have rated it a 10 plus, but no showers or toilets.  8 stars

 LOCATION:  Abbeville, Louisiana

WEATHER:  Sunny.  Highs mid-60s

During the night in Cameron, along the jetty, these boats sailed by.  They are mostly carrying oil from the offshore rigs. 

These offshore rigs are everywhere in the Gulf.

We stopped at the library in Cameron to use wifi and then took a backroad that hugged the coast.  We passed rice field after rice field  flooded to raise crawfish.  

Their system is brilliant......They grow rice in the fall and winter, then flood the fields after harvesting.  The crawfish eat the leftover grains of rice and flourish. The harvest season has just started.  We watched the boats hawl in the crawfish.

After about 2 hours, we arrived in Abbeville.  We had stayed here, out of town in a state park, a few years ago and decided to stay in town this time.  Betty's RV Park had been highly recommended on line, so we decided to give it a try.

 

What a place!  Betty is an older lady who runs this place.  When we checked in, she guided us to our site, chatting all the time.  She invited us to her daily happy hour, and to a special Super Bowl party tomorrow.  Then, she encourage us to check out a Cajun Jam Session in the town next to us and told us the best place to eat crawfish.

 

What a blast!  The jam session was in an informal bar.  These guys played Cajun songs, singing mostly in Cajun French.  The musicians changed periodically, with several people eager to play their instruments.  This little 10-year-old even played the accordion for a few songs.

The only bad thing is that smoking is allowed.  After a few hours, our clothes reeked of smoke.  It was fun to listen to the people speaking a mix of Cajun and English.  Everyone wanted to know where we were from and marveled at our lifestyle.  Really really friendly people.  

 

Back at the RV park, we joined the other campers and Betty for happy hour.  Betty had made a bunch of appetizers and campers brought snacks to share, too.  We had to restrain ourselves as we planned to go out for crawfish.  It was a very friendly crowd.

We went to the crawfish place Betty had recommended.  It appeared to be an old house converted to a crawfish shack.  Crawfish is all they serve.  

The options were 3- or 6- or 9- or 12-pounds of crawfish, and level of spice.  We ordered 3 pounds to share, spicy.  After ordering, we went to the kitchen area to watch them boil up the crawfish.

We couldn't make it through this mountain of crawfish, but we gave it a good try!

At every other table, people were eating at least 3 pounds each, some even more.  It came with andouille sausage and boiled onions.  We could have also ordered corn on the cob and potatoes.  We peeled the ones we couldn't eat and will mix them up with grits and eggs for breakfast tomorrow.  What a fun experience!