January 8-9 2013 Vermillion county, Louisiana

We spent Friday at home in the park. Lovely day, sunny after am fog burnt off, 72 degrees. We hiked on the nature trail in the park.

Palmetto Island State Park, a palmetto leaf. The book says they are 3 feet wide, but I think some are 4-5 feet wide.

palmettos and the comfort station from the nature trail.  Cypress trees in the swamp. It is all pretty swampy, they have had a lot of rain lately.

anoles, they can turn either green or brown. I think they are what we had as kids that we called chameleons. Alligators by Evangeline lake.  I love the one half in and half out.

Today I biked around the park. Pretty big place. Here are some of the flowers I saw blooming.

Today we went into town for some local color. Here is the Abbeville cemetery- lots of flowers, yellow flowers blooming beside the road by a couple big live oaks.

Downtown Erath. Pronounced eeerath, accent on the eee. The building on the corner is the Acadian museum, or Musee Acadian in French, the museum is bilingual. The Acadians spoke French. Inside the museum- packed with stuff. 

We went to Erath to see the Cajun music jam at the museum. It was actually  next door at the Café Du Musee. Here are  the players. It sounded a lot country western to me. The museum was inducting Clyde Vincent into their living legends also today. He is sitting in front of the band here. They moved the band, had some speakers, gave him awards. He set up the Acadian museum just over the border in Texas and was president for 30 years. The bar itself looked an awful lot like any town small bar, about 50 years ago.

The rest of downtown Erath.  Across the street at Bob T’s seafood supply we saw these crawfish. They sell them live in these huge bags of 30 or 40 lbs. They were kicking in the bag.

 

Afterward we went to Dupuy’s Oyster shop in Abbeville. This is our waitress Mandy, the waitresses wore these T-shirts.  Our meal, gumbo, alligator sausage on a stick with local sugar cane syrup to dip it in, boudin balls, and oysters on the half shell.

two more flowers I saw today and I am working on a new masterpiece. The pieces are sitting on the green needles I am still trying to dry.