St. Martinville and Evangeline

Drove to St Martinville, a sleepy little town on the Bayou Teche.  Longfellow wrote a poem about Evangeline. The Evangeline Oak is there & is the most photographed Tree in the Whole World. (Believe it or not!) There is also a statue of a seated Evangeline which was donated bt & looks like Dolores Del Rio.  The story of Evangeline centers on the deportation of Acadians from Acadie (now known as Nova Scotia by the British in 1755. Evangeline & her fiance are separated and search for each other for many years until at last Evangeline becomes a nun in Philadelphia. Traveling to New
Orleans to help with Yellow Fever  Epidemic she is reunited with her fiance who dies in her arms.  The true story is of Emmaline & Jean Louis, also affianced and separated during the 1755. She is heartbroken & dies after finally being reunited with Jean Louis to find he has married another & she is buried near the church of St Martin de Tours in St Martinville.

VICKSBURG MILITARY NATIONAL PARK

We took 2 days to go thru the Vicksburg Military National Park & Museum. There are great stone memorials dedicated to the different State’s Troop who fought there. There are blue markers telling about Grant & his various generals leading the Union Army & red markers explaining about Pemberton & his generals directing the Confederate Troops. The audio tour explains the battles & seige very well. There is a museum for the USS Cairo, a Civil War ironclad that was the only ship sunk by the Confederate gun batteries on the Vicksburg bluffs.

AVERY ISLAND – TABASCO

11/01/2009 – Avery Island where the only plant that makes Tabasco Sauce is located. They only grow about 5% of the peppers there; the other 95% are grown in Central & South America supplied with seeds from Avery Island. Once the peppers are harvested, they combine them with a little salt (from their own salt mine), grind them & let them ferment for 3 years in oak barrels. The barrels come from Jack Daniels’, but that’s another story. At that time, they open the barrels, add more salt & strong vinegar, stir for 28 days, strain & bottle the juice. The stuff that is left after straining is used to make a seasoning to boil crawfish & shrimp in. The barrels are chopped into wood chips for your barbecue when they get to the point they cannot be used again. We got to sample Tabasco soda pop, Tabasco ice cream (2 flavors: sweet & spicy or jalapeno), Tabasco mayo, Tabasco pickles, Tabasco mustard, Tabasco ketchup etc. Yes, there is Tabasco chocolate too but we didn’t get to sample that.  Lunch was Crawfish Etoffe for Gaylon & Red Beans & Rice for Sharon (we were going to share but after 1 taste of a tiny crawfish tail, Sharon remembered the last time she had Etoffe & there was no more sharing). In additon we took a  Buffalo Chicken Wing Survey, (whoo Baby, set our mouths on fire!). Sharon’s mouth was aflame & she was looking for a fire extinguisher; even Gaylon admitted that it was a little hot. In Guam, they put Tabasco on their cornflakes; Guam is the largest user of Tabasco sauce per capita in the world.!

There is also a Jungle Garden where the 1st Tarzan movie was made back in the early 1900’s. Lagoons with alligators; we counted 5 out of the water & 5 we thought were sticks until they started swimming. Glorious masses of Camillias, a Wisteria tunnel lots of 200 & 300 years old oaks covered in Resurection  & Spanish Moss. you can drive through or walk if you like. There was a sunken garden & a palm gardens not far from the Gilded Buddha sitting it a lotus blossom.