MONSTERS, FLYING PIGS AND SERPENTS

             

We left Grayton Beach to continue our route around the Gulf Coast.  We made a brief, if somewhat disappointing stop in Mobile.  I’d always heard that the French Quarter there rivaled the one in New Orleans and was a lot less commercialized.  Well, it’s smaller and the streets are not lined with hawkers for strip bars.  There are a few wrought iron balconies and some French restaurants.  But, like the fine old mansions of Mobile, it’s been swallowed up by the modern city which is getting more modern day by day. 

Some of the modern architecture is as stunning as the old.  We had a fine meal at Wintzell’s Oyster House, a mainstay of local eateries.  The walls there are covered with quotes, many quotable, many not.

They serve up a dish invented in Mobile, West Indies Salad.  This is a version of the various ceviches served throughout the Caribbean.  This one uses fresh crab meat marinated with onions in vinegar for 24 hours.  Different, light and fresh.  I still prefer conch salad!

            We drove along the coast through Biloxi.  This is apparently the place to go to see some fine old mansions! We’ll definitely stop there on the way back.

            We stopped in Cajun country near Lafayette, LA.  We pulled up on the side of the road at a city park in Breaux Bridge.

Our “campsite”  was across the street from an above ground cemetery so common in lower Louisiana.  The city park on the banks of the bayou is shaded by huge live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. The hours and half hours were marked by the Big Ben chimes from the nearby church.

Breaux Bridge is located on the Bayou Teche.  “Teche” means “snake.”  The story goes that there was a huge venomous snake that terrorized the local Indians and caused considerable damage.  The chief got his men together with the intent to kill this monster.  Of course, they only had bows and arrows.  Not having flint, they tipped their arrows with the head of the Gar fish.  It took many days to subdue the creature, after all, it was over ten miles long.  As it lay there in the throes of death, it twisted and turned and wallowed until its body made the long twisted, depression in the earth that is now called Bayou Teche.

            Breaux Bridge was where a Cajun settler by the name of Firmin Breaux put a small suspension bridge over the bayou.  Over time, a community grew around the site.  When steamboats and packets began to navigate the bayou, it became necessary to modify the bridge so a portion of it could be raised using ropes, pulleys and mules.  Today, there is a mechanical lift bridge there.

            

 Breaux Bridge is a Cajun town in the heart of Cajun Louisiana.  It is the “Crawfish Capital of the World” and crawfish étouffée is de rigeur!  At Shuck’s, a Cajun restaurant in Abbéville a few miles away, the crab cakes are beyond delicious and the red pepper, dill cream sauce heavenly.

  Nearby is Vermillionville, a reconstructed Cajun/Creole village where hosts in period costume show and tell how life was for the Acadians who settled the area.