This is Cajun Country: Abbeville Louisiana

Seemingly since the beginning I'd been hearing about Betty's RV Park in Louisiana. Folks said it was a "must stay", a "real experience".

Without knowing what else to expect we rolled in to the tiny little park. It's actually Betty's backyard. And it felt just like home right away.

Lance and Betty on her patio

Happy Hour is every afternoon at 4:30, hosted on Betty's patio under the collection of license plates brought by returning travelers from over the years, surrounded by fountains, lamps, sculptures of colored glass and Mardi Gras beads. Everyone brings a tasty treat to share and a cuppa something tasty. The adventure stories and the laughter flow freely.

Bloody Marys in Cajun country are typically served with pickled okra garnish, and plenty of Tabasco

This is the heart of Cajun Country. Music festivals are everywhere, great food and bloody mary drinks are on every menu. There are drive-through daiquiri shacks. I was in heaven.


First up: the Cajun Food and Music Festival. The stage turned over one band after another playing a range of music from Zydeco to blues and the audience swayed to the music while gobbling fried corn on the cob, gumbo, and ice cream sandwiches. Crowds of children flocked around to pet Chloe; she was the center of attention at the festivals and rarely walked far without an entourage.

Ice cream sandwich in a sliced donut

Next: The 5000 egg omelette festival. The ceremony was conducted primarily in French, except of course for the singing of the national anthem. The omelette festival has been going on since Napoleon (click here for more about the Giant Omelette history), and Abbeville adopted this international tradition years ago. Each year they add one more egg to the total. This year's 5035th egg was presented to the crowd by a 6th grader who informed us the egg's name was Abraham Lincoln Eggbert, as decided by the local schoolchildren.

The chefs then paraded out, cracked all those eggs and set to making the giant omelette on a 12-foot diameter cast iron pan heated on a wood fire in the middle of the street downtown, and plates of omelette were shared freely with all in attendance.

Chefs warming butter on the 12' skillet in preparation for the Giant Omelette

The omelette festivities also included a car show. The winner of Best of Show this year was a souped-up Jeep.

Best of Show award

Live Oaks gracing the entrance at the Tabasco factory

Just up the road from Betty's is Avery Island, home of Tabasco sauce, one of my favorite foods. The surprise treat was to discover it's also sustainably grown by a ecologically-focused company with deep family roots in the community. Many of the employees have lived on Avery Island for multiple generations.

The Tabasco factory, largely unchanged since the 40's

The peppers rest in salt-covered barrels for three years before the sauce is extracted, pressed, combined with vinegar and bottled. The skins are sold separately for dry rubs.

The McIlheny family had the grounds surrounding their factory declared a sanctuary to monitor and protect the birds, fish and reptiles that live there, and currently work in close conjunction with LSU on assorted animal preservation projects. Their mindful attention has brought the snowy white egret back from the brink of extinction. The Jungle Gardens are open to the public and we were able to get as close as we dared to alligators and snakes, turtles and a plentiful assortment of birds. There is also oil under the island and they allow it to be extracted with careful supervision, a perfect marriage of capitalism and ecology.

Snowy White egret at the Jungle Gardens of Avery Island

Cypress love wet feet

The next thing we knew, Betty was shooing us out the door again - she had hooked us up with a concert and tour of a local accordion factory. The Martin family hand-makes Melodians in nearby Lafayette, Louisiana, and both the Cajun music and the instrument crafting techniques are handed down through the generations orally. They played a brief concert for us and a few other guests, and the music ranged from blues to country, gospel to Zydeco to Cajun.

Junior Martin and his pedal steel slide guitar

Three generations of Martins played an assortment of instruments; the most beautiful of which were the hand-made Martin Melodians. The most confounding was Junior's pedal steel guitar, which demanded action from both knees, both ankles, and both hands all at the same time - it was amazing to watch him elicit beautiful sounds from such a complicated machine. After the brief concert they walked us through the process from wood selection to a finished Melodian, the patience and attention required to hand-make each one is mind-blowing.

Joel Martin playing Amazing Grace for us on his favorite Melodian, singing in both French and English. The Martin signature crawdad on the bellows is hand-painted by an artist in California.

Examples of color and wood options. These will become part of future assembled Melodians.

Closeup of a hand-made Martin Melodian

The nightly happy hour at Betty's involves an ever-changing cast of characters, and folks enjoy sharing their own tasty homemade creations. One night we had okra gumbo and it was unbelievable. Everyone has their own recipe for gumbo and readily debate the best ingredients and seasonings; a person could eat a bowl every day in Cajun country and never have exactly the same meal twice. Even the local Chinese buffet had their own spin on gumbo and offered it on the buffet alongside shrimp toast, Asian noodles and fried catfish.

Beignets

Next up: the local cemetery tour "if these headstones could talk". Betty again hooked us up. The local historians dressed in costume to tell us with first-person intimacy about the lives of local residents buried in the Masonic cemetery downtown.

Local historians hosting "if these headstones could talk"

At first glance Abbeville seems like a sleepy, small town. But there's always something going on and nothing escapes Betty's attention.

Live Oaks are typical in this part of Louisiana, these ones live in the downtown square of Abbeville