Careful now, we’re entering Cajun Country… where you might see random, atypical roadsigns…
and where you can experience live Zydeco at many an eatery, such as Prejean’s Cajun Restaurant. (For the lapbookers out there, Stephen had a eureka moment while watching the band. “So THAT’S why they call it an accordion fold!!”)
Meanwhile, David couldn’t stop bouncing to the music. (Can you tell the difference in the personalities of these boys?!? I can’t believe they’re related sometimes…)
I think everyone could tell we weren’t from these dese parts. Gary was commenting on the “cute Cajun accent” I picked up after spending a week in South Lousiana. What’s a Cajun accent like? Well, you can read A Cajun Night Before Christmas. It’s a pretty good sampling of what you might here ova (over) dere (there). (All in good fun… I used to work with some crazy Cajuns when I worked offshore Lousiana!)
Things to do in Lafayette, Lousiana:
Jean Lafitte Acadiana Cultural Center
Stephen earned his Junior Ranger Badge at the Acadiana Cultural Center – a wonderful museum detailing the history of the French and Acadiana in America (and FREE!). Let me just say that this was my first introduction to the Junior Ranger Program, and now we have a whole bunch of ideas for our family goal of 50 States Before They Graduate. Do you have any of these national parks close to where you live? Hot diggity dog! We do!
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| I’m sure the park rangers were amused at our pronunciation… |
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| Several exhibits tied in with our memory work… As if they didn’t think we were a little strange already, we broke out into song about the French Revolution and, of course, the Louisiana Purchase. |
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| Stephen works on his Jr. Park Ranger scavenger hunt. |
Zoo of Acadiana: Where you can find some awfully but wonderfully strange animals. I mean, even the parrots kept confusing me by hollering, “Mom-Mom! Mom-Mom! Mom-Mom!” Just between you and me, I think the boys put them up to that.
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| “Mom-Mom! Mom-Mom! Mom-Mom!” |
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| The Patagonian Cavy is the world’s 3rd-to-largest rodent. It has the body of a rabbit, the face of a squirrel and the hop of a kangaroo. Now there’s something stranger than a nutria! |
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| Levi laughed every time the snake stuck out its tongue. And the white tiger? He gives me many a reason to be a little nervous. (Levi, not the tiger.) |
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| We’ve been thinking about getting goats for the farm. Is this a sign? Well, duh! Of course it is! |
Though this zoo is not nearly the size of the Houston Zoo or the Nashville Zoo, the kids absolutely loved it! (Maybe because it wasn’t so big and crowded, the layout was very much like a nature trail, and you could get up really close to the animals!) It was a wonderful place to visit!
Vermilionville Living History Museum
In 1755, Acadians were sent into exile from Nova Scotia, Canada by the British. Now referred to as Cajuns, these Acadians found their new home in Southern Louisiana. Vermilionville (the original name of Lafayette, LA) offers a living history museum consisting of 19 structures that capture the lifestyle of these Cajuns and Creoles (those of African, West Indian, and European descent). The most recent addition to this museum includes an exhibit on the environment, where we learned about watersheds and experimented with the formation of clouds and meandering streams.
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| I’m going to start telling my boys, “Lache pas la patate” as they prepare for Memory Master this spring. |
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| Making miniature baskets and wooden spoon dolls. |
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| In the school room… |
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| The church |
Bash the Trash at Acadiana Center for the Arts
As we were researching things to do in the area while Gary worked studiously in his classes for Well Control Certification, we found that a New York Company called Bash the Trash would be performing at the first of the new family series at Acadiana Center for the Arts. It was a GREAT way to take a bunch of boisterous boys to the theatre. The focus was on the science of sound and how to reuse trash. They also incorporated the definitions of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle without losing the attention of even our two-year-old. What a symphony of sound! I started laughing when they started playing Straw Oboes (which we made just a few weeks ago). Ever since we went to the “symphony,” the boys have been asking to make a musical instrument out of EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF TRASH. (And I’m sorry to say we have not been doing that…) The Bash the Trash website offers instructions for creating your very own trashy bashy instruments.
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| The trash takes center stage |
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| Boys at the “symphony” |
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| A quick pic with two of the Bash the Trash crew |
Lafayette Science Museum and the Children’s Museum of Acadiana
Because we are serious museum-goers, we had to stop by the two science museums in Lafayette, though neither participated in the ASTC Passport Program. Dinosaur exhibits are always perplexing to me (largely due to the matter-of-fact stance the scientists have about it all – only to change their mind a year later). For example, now they say dinosaurs are NOT extinct because birds are dinosaurs. And then, the very next exhibit mentions the extinction of the dinosaurs with the possibility of a catastrophic flood wiping them out. And did you know that only ONE T-REX FOOTPRINT has ever actually been found? (Which has me wondering how they knew it was a T-Rex footprint to begin with…) They are now also saying that they can re-create an entire dinosaur just by looking at the foot bones because computer programming has come just that far. Really? You can design a whole animal by just looking at its foot? How about that Patagonian Cavy up there? Anyway, I always take it with a grain of salt, but they did have a really neat moving model showing how they now think dinosaurs walked.
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| Every time I see one of these things, it reminds me of Night at the Museum. |
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| Computer simulations show that dinosaurs probably moved a lot different than they do in the movie Jurassic Park. |
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| A replica of the only T-Rex print ever found. |
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| Levi enjoyed moving the bones around… |
The Children’s Museum was a hit, even though it’s not nearly as big as the one in Houston. (But how can Lafayette compete with Houston?) We all really enjoyed the Bubble Room where you could even get inside of a bubble.
Levi enjoyed picking up fake bones and making me take pictures over and over again,
and David gravitated to the restaurant once again to play Chef and to the grocery store to learn how to operate the cash register. He also figured some arithmetic on the giant abacus.
Stephen – well he went to work on the U.S. States & Capitals puzzle.
One of the rooms at the Children’s museum included posters of artwork by Degas, Monet, Seurat, and Van Gogh. So much for seeing these works (by the famous artists we’ve studied) at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston – we just needed to go to the local children’s museum to look at posters of them….
Tabasco Factory & Jungle Gardens at Avery Island
The McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce Factory at Avery Island was such a fun place to visit (and free, too)! Now I’m convinced Tabasco sauce is the best condiment ever! I ask for it every time we go through a drive-thru. People think I’m nuts, but really! I’m even decorating my kitchen with it now. And the kids play with the little bottles we received on the tour, and they even thought to pick up some Hot & Spicy Cheez-Its for me the last time we were at the store. They’re in love with Tabasco, too, and they don’t even like the way it tastes! That’s how much we enjoyed the Tabasco Tour (though I may be playing it up too much here; I think we liked it because it was so manageable to do with the four of us).
Here are some fun facts about Tabasco:
- After the peppers are hand-picked when they reach the color of le petit baton rouge (the little red stick), they are mashed and mixed with a small amount of Avery Island salt (from a salt mine on the island) and aged for up to THREE YEARS.
- After a member of the McIlhenny family inspects the mash, it is run through three sieves and then mixed with vinegar for up to 30 DAYS.
- Approximately 720,000 bottles of Tabasco are processed EVERY DAY.
- It is shipped to over 160 countries and is currently labeled in 22 languages.
Evidently some other people like Tabasco, too.
The Jungle Garden at Avery Island was created by the McIlhenny family as a bird sanctuary (called “Bird City”) to save the then-threatened snowy egret. It was eventually built to its current size of 170+ acres. Exotic plants and beautiful, Spanish-Moss-laden live oaks cover a landscape teeming with water birds, alligators, and other wildlife. You can also visit a Buddha at the Buddha gardens. Evidently, the Buddha was a random gift sent to Edward Avery “Ned” Mcilhenny by his friends, and he felt compelled to make an entire garden for it. This place is incredibly beautiful, and I can only imagine how lovely it is in full-bloom as the snowy egrets return in the spring.
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| Natural canopy over the road. |
Cajun Country Swamp Tour
We enjoyed a two-hour swamp tour to wrap up our visit, fulfilling Gary’s lifelong dream of going on a Louisiana swamp tour. We saw all sorts of birds, trees, plants, and gators, including a mama alligator with her babies. But I didn’t have my Handbook of Nature Study with me, so I just had to settle with enjoying the animals and plants without classifying them this time around…
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| Cypress trees covered with Spanish Moss |
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| Mama Alligator lurking close by… |
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| Baby alligator enjoying his swampy home under the watchful eye of his mother. |
We seriously enjoyed getting to know Cajun Country. The boys can’t wait to go back there dere!
Our family is slowly working our way across the United States to visit all fifty states before our children graduate.
Care to visit 50 states with us? How about visiting just one state? What about your own state? If so, we would love for you to become a part of a network of families traveling the USA. Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions for your favorite state(s), or virtually visit the other states we have been to to offer your recommendations on those pages!