We spent September 24-28 visiting my dad's family in and around Lafayette, Louisiana – it was still a road trip, but we left our car and 90% of the stuff we brought with us in Tulsa and traveled in style in my parents' SUV. We drove down on Thursday and back on Monday, about 10 hours each way, and those were long days even with three drivers trading off. East Texas and northern Louisiana are, frankly, not that interesting, but I have a newfound appreciation for the rolling wooded hills (technically, mountains...?) in southern Oklahoma and I think I'd like to explore that area one of these days. The last part of the trip south was distinguished by what we think was the same rainstorm we drove through coming home from Bartlesville on Monday the 21st but it wasn't quite as bad as before and we got to Lafayette at a reasonable time. When we left Tulsa it was 56 degrees, in Lafayette (at 7 pm) it was 82 degrees with 77 % humidity. This is the second time on this trip we've gone from fall back to summer...
On Friday, there was a family meeting in Abbeville and some of us ended up at Shuck's for lunch – 2/3rds of our table ordered gumbo so William and I balanced things out with crab and corn chowder and stuffed shrimp. Abbeville is a small, picturesque town featuring at least one intersection of Lafayette and Lafayette and a complicated traffic pattern around the courthouse square; we spent a few minutes taking some pictures (next post) but the heat drove us back into the car. We had dinner that night at Johnny Carino's which managed to accommodate 1 omnivore, 1 gluten-free diet, and 2 vegetarians...very impressive. Saturday was a lazy day for us, we stayed at the hotel reading and taking it easy while my parents drove out to Crowley to pick up one of my aunts and then met up with my other two aunts at Don's back in Lafayette. We did go for a walk around the area near the hotel that evening after it had cooled down a bit – as far as we could tell, the only things nearby were other hotels and some office parks, but only a few blocks away we found a family of raccoons, a large field of sugarcane and a patch of what can best be described as jungle. It doesn't take long for the plants to get out of control in that climate. Dinner that night was at Bonefish which was loud and crowded but quite good overall.
Sunday, my parents and I went to Mass at St. John's Cathedral in Lafayette and paid a visit to the live oak tree on the grounds which is a member of the Society. Afterwards, we picked up William and visited my Aunt Eve for coffee and fabulous homemade cake, and then went out to the community of Leleux (too small to have a post office!) and the farm where my dad grew up. It was a beautiful afternoon, there was reminiscing and pointing out of landmarks, the puddles of water in the recently harvested rice fields shimmered gently in the sun, and...I stepped on a nest of fire ants. I didn't realize that this had happened until I got back in the car and noticed that my ankle hurt. REALLY hurt. I squished the ants on my leg and a few on the floor, and then panicked and grabbed the (dark red) floor mat and banged it on the side of the car a few times because I could see far too many dark specks crawling around on it. About 24 hours later on the way home, William woke up with an ant biting his neck (he got to it before it did too much damage) but I think I got most of them out in a timely fashion. Incidentally, it's now two weeks later and the bites on my ankle are still blistered. DO NOT STEP ON THE FIRE ANTS.
We suggested dinner at Masala for Sunday night and everyone enjoyed it, which of course made us very happy. Monday was a lovely day for driving and we got to Tulsa around 6-ish, foraged for dinner in the freezer, and collapsed. I'm very glad that we got to do this trip so that William could meet some of my family and see southern Louisiana, and my only regret is that we didn't go out and find some good Cajun music while we were there. Just like everywhere else on this trip, we hope that someday we'll get to go back.
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