The Question is:

The question most ask is where are you and what have you been doing. For an answer, let's back up a few days. We left Lake Conroe, TX on Monday March 2nd and drove to Lake Charles, LA where we stayed at Sam Houston Jones State Park once again. The drive was short so we did some geocaching in the afternoon. Tuesday we traveled on to Chicot State Park near Ville Platte, LA following the Zydeco Cajun Prairie Scenic Byway. We spent a couple of days touring Ville Platte, Opelousas, and Eunice LA. It seems that every small town in Louisiana is the capital of something or other. Ville Platte is the "Swamp Pop Capital of the World", whatever that is!! It's also the "Smoked Meat Capital of the World". A little further searching turned up the headquarters for "Slap Ya Mama". This has been one of our favorite Cajun seasonings for several years so happening across their offices and company store in Ville Platte was a special treat. We dropped in, had a nice visit and left with what is likely to turn out to be a life time supply of every available flavor of "slap Ya Mama" from very hot to V E R Y HOT. Interestingly, for those of us old enough to remember, Sears Roebuck sold houses and cars back in the day. "Slap Ya Mama" has their corporate offices in a 1914 Sears Roebuck house pictured here.

In Eunice, we visited the Cajun Music Hall of Fame and the Jean Lafitte Prarie Acadian Cultural Center. Both of these are fascinating stops. For us, we're finally getting to connect some dots that we started on when visiting Nova Scotia several years ago. Many of the French speaking peoples that first populated this area of LA in the mid 1700's originally lived in Nova Scotia. When they refused to swear allegiance to England, the British forced them to leave. They were loaded on ships and delivered to various ports along the US east coast and to New Orleans.

Thursday was a short travel day. We followed more of the scenic byways to Fontainebleau State Park which is on the North shore of Lake Pontchartrain. From here we see the New Orleans sky line across the lake. Our current plan is to spend the next few days visiting New Orleans, touring one or more of the plantations along the Mississippi and eating some Creole food. More later!