Sunday, March 16, 2014

Cajun Lafayette LA (March 16, 2014)



The Place

Lafayette, Louisiana just can’t help itself.  It wears Spanish moss, dances to cajun music, speaks with gentle Cajun/French accents, and smells delicious.  More about the delicious in another post.  We are staying in the Acadiana Park Campground, a campground so small that most of the locals haven’t heard of it.  It is a municipal park and nature center with an elderly, charming campground of about 40 sites.  The center of the campground has enormous live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss that look like they should be in a movie.  

The Adventure

Today we went to Vermilionville Living History and FolklifePark.  It has many restored or recreated Cajun, Creole and Native American buildings that tell the cultural history of Lafayette (originally named Vermilion).  Each house has a different theme.  For example, in one house we found artifacts around spinning cotton, weaving, and quilting along with a costumed interpreter spinning and telling you about the textile work of the time.  Fascinating and wonderful.

We got an extra dividend, today they had a live zydeco band playing in a performance hall and local people had come to Cajun dance (I think they call it a two-step).  The music is fun and happy, and compels your toes to tap.  The dance style can be as simple or complicated as you want to make it.  The upper body seems to remain very quiet, while the feet do all the work.  The most wonderful part was the happy expression on each dancers face as they danced.  You could tell this was something they loved.

On the way home from Vermilionville, we stopped at the  lovely brick St. John’s Cathedral with the 500 year old live oak tree.  The tree is over 9 feet in diameter and the largest branch is estimated to weigh 72 tons!


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