Monday, September 17th - Acadiana

We had a wonderful day with Terry & Sylvia Hix today!

We started with breakfast at our country store friend, Cracker Barrel, in Lafayette, Louisiana. Then we went to the Acadiana Visitors Center in Lafayette. Acadiana is the official name given to the traditional 22-parish Cajun homeland of South Louisiana.

We drove down to Avery Island and took a tour of the McIlhenny Company plant where they made Tabasco brand products. Of particular interest to me is that McIlhenny buys white oak barrels from the Jack Daniels Distillery (Lynchburg, Tennessee). These barrels are made by Jack Daniels and used ONCE to allow their Tennessee Sippin' Whiskey to age, typically 4-5 years. Then McIlhenny gets the barrels and ages THEIR pepper "mash" for three years. McIlhenny, however, will re-use the barrels for 21 years. At that point, they chip up the wood and sell the chips for smoking meats. The tour was very interesting.

Next, we drove to New Iberia and took a tour of Shadows on the Teche, an antebellum home on the banks of Bayou Teche. The home was built in the 1830's and has quite a lively history as a plantation "summer home". The setting with the Spanish Moss-draped live oak trees was beautiful!

Then we toured the KonRiKo rice mill in New Iberia. This is the oldest, continuously operated rice mill in the USA. And it shows it! The wooden timbers inside the mill are full of cobwebs of some sort. The machinery is VERY antiquated, but interesting. They employ only 27 workers and yet, produce 4-5 million pounds of rice each year!

We drove north to St. Martinsville where we stopped at the Evangeline Oak and the monument to the star-crossed lovers immortalized in Longfellow's poem "Evangeline".

Finally, we drove to Breaux bridge where we ate another Cajun dinner, red beans and rice and a shrimp po-boy. It was named the Crazy 'Bout Crawfish Cajun Cafe.