Our last night at Betty’s

It has been a wonderful month. We have met a lot of very nice people and have enjoyed happy hours, lots of food and restaurants and parades and friendship.

It is like leaving family. And tomorrow morning it will be a lot of sad good byes. Nine of us are moving on in different directions, and some of us are going the same way.

Four couples of us are heading to Bayou Signette state park in Westwego, which is Linda's and my favorite Louisiana state park. We will be spending 3 nights there before moving on to Sam Raybourn corp of engineer park in Texas for two weeks. Jim and Bobbie are going with us. Rich and Terri are heading to Texas tomorrow and on to Colorado to open the campground that they manage for the summer. Jim and Bobbie will move on to Colorado after Texas and we will start heading back north to Woodstock, Illinois. Plan is to arrive there around the first of May.  We will be “home” for about 6-7 weeks before heading to Colorado to join Jim, Bobbie, Terri and Rich for the summer.

Today is Fat Tuesday http://en.wikopedia.org/wiki/mardi-gras  and all of the cities have parades. We decided that we have done enough parades over the years and stayed home, only going out to lunch at a local restaurant/grocery store in Kaplan. They are known for their local food and we had a wonderful lunch.

 

I think shrimp po boys were the choice of most, but I had a Philly cheesesteak po boy.

After returning to Betty’s we started to put stuff away in the rv’s for the trip tomorrow and happy hour started really early. Plan was to have a chili cook-off  for supper and, as usual, the food was great. As well as the friendship and good times. it is going to be a sad day tomorrow saying good buy (oops, I think I already said that)

notice the matching shirts

The mason jar that you see is apple pie (do you remember that from Campbellsville?). We had talked about experimenting with the apple pie using vodka instead of shine and Jim and Bobbi worked out the recipe. It was just as good. And they shared almost half a gallon of it with the group.

These are some of the bottles that were collected during our stay. Betty paints some of them and is decorating a stump in her yard. She still has about 200 bottles left to do.!!!!! O.K. so there were 34 of us here, give me a break!!!!

and time is winding down, it is only about 7:30, but everyone is heading home for the night………

Bye Betty, we have enjoyed your hospitality and your love and getting caught in your “web”.

Love to all of you also

Jim and Linda

Church Point LA traditional parade

Yesterday we drove to a farm in Church Point for a very traditional mardi gras parade. Betty has been taking her campers here for the last 4 years. The property owner invites a lot of his friends and they have a big bbq going cooking two pigs. Along with dj music and lots of people. Our group was a ways away from his family and friend and he put us in a protected area away from the strong winds…it was also cold, with a high of 66. But at 7am….yes folks we managed to get on the road at 7:30am…..it was about 45 degrees. That does not slow us down though. About a gallon of bloody mary’s and a grill going, along with lots of food and drinks got everyone in the mood for the parade and festivities. We had to wait until about noon for the first of the parade to reach us. The parade stops at some of the farms to beg for food.

As best as I understand it here is how it works:

The grand leader of the parade asks the owner of the property for permission to come on his property and beg for money and/or ingredients to make a gumbo. In this case one of the ingredients is chicken and the farmer turns loose 3 chickens, one at a time and the beggars have to catch them. It was a very wonderful experience with everyone mingling together and the beggars asking the women to dance with them. Some of them are on the ground begging for money to help with making the gumbo.

remember, you can click any picture to enlarge it.

here is Terri trying to teach the rest of them how to whistle….they were all slobbering over themselves!!!!!!

some even came in a bus.

here is the “captain of the parade” with his assistants asking for permission the owner is on the left in the camo jacket and hat

 

 

catching the chickens

the rest of the parade, lots of beads being thrown

Remember this is a small farming community, and these folks make their costumes and floats so there are none of the big time floats like you would see in New Orleans, or Mobile.

It was a wonderful experience with all of the traditional costumes and pageantry.

Have  a wonderful week where ever you are, and remember we love ya.

Jim and Linda

Laissez les bons temps rouler

I had this French saying on the back of the motorhome along with it’s name “RUF’N IT” and have been wanting to add it to the trailer for quite some time.

We finally got it done. In English it says “let the good times roll”

Years ago a good friend of our who spoke French, said that it was very poor French. It is French that is spoken by the Acadians or Cajun’s. We found out when we did the museum that this is French as it was spoken in France in the 1600’s. When these people immigrated to Canada in the 16oo’s they spoke French and they have continued to teach their children for all of these generations the same French. If you look in a French dictionary of today you will not find a lot of the words used, but they are in a 1600 dictionary.

Earlier this week I made another bench for Betty. Had to go to Lowe’s to get wood for all but the top which is another piece of cedar. I only have a Bosch sabre saw (jig saw) and a sander to work with, and this bench took about 3-4 hours to make.

This area has lots of rice fields, and when the fields are empty they fill them with water and stock them with crawfish or mud bugs. This is the boat they use to harvest the crawfish. It has a paddle wheel on the back that looks to be hydraulic controlled for up and down. The water in the rice fields is very shallow and a propeller driven boat would not work.

It has been a pretty quiet week here at Betty’s except for happy hour which starts at 4:30 daily.

Have a wonderful day

love to ya

Jim and Linda