Yesterday Martin, one of the fellows visiting the park, had come into happy hour quite late and said he had just won $38,000 at the casino – wow & double wow!!! We were chatting to Rick & Brenda after Birdie & Jean left when Martin came over, he had just returned from picking up his $38,000 at the casino – in cash mind you!!! None of us had ever seen that much money in cash and just as he was showing us Ginny & Gil came out of their trailer so of course we had to call them over to check it out, they were as impressed as we were!
Martin with his Money
Ginny Feeling the Goods
Yesterday at happy hour Rick & Brenda said they wanted to go to Suire’s for lunch today as they are leaving tomorrow. This is a typical Cajun restaurant, but is located out in the middle of nowhere and has been written up in the New York Times for its good food, so today 13 of us headed to Suire’s for lunch, Gil & Ginny rode with us and we thought we would do a bit of a tour around after lunch.
Betty at Lunch
Ginny, John & I had the plate lunch which was a shrimp stew with whole hardboiled eggs in it (and very spicy) served over rice, fried catfish, potato salad, a roll & a piece of cake for desert and Gil had the seafood platter which had all kinds of seafood on it - very good and the price was right as John and I’s lunch, including a drink, was $17.
After lunch Bill & Shirley heard us mentioning doing a bit of a tour around so asked if they could follow us – sure, no problem, so the rest of the group headed back to the park. Before leaving the restaurant Ginny & I were outside taking pictures
Ginny, John, Shirley, Bill & Gil
and I was standing in an empty parking space when all of a sudden I realized there was a truck waiting to pull in – guess he didn’t want me for a hood ornament – LOL! I apologized to him then moved on to take a couple more pictures but Ginny, bless her, started talking to him (turns out his name was Ray). He told Ginny that he had the property on the opposite corner and today was their big crawfish boil and asked us to come over and join them, Ginny said we had just eaten but he insisted we come anyways, he was just picking up some bags of ice and to follow him back. As an explanation apparently Good Friday is the time for all these huge crawfish boils and on the news last night they said there would be over 3 MILLION POUNDS of crawfish consumed today – unbelievable!
So, off we went following Ray and they had all kinds of parking in the farm yard and after parking he took us over to where they were doing the boil and eating the crawfish. What an exciting time and wonderful experience we had and everyone was so friendly and talkative.
Ginny & I stopped to take a picture of this fellow sitting & enjoying his crawfish & he insisted on showing us how to break them open, take out the vein then gave us each a couple to try - how wonderful!
Some of the little guys managed to get out of the bag so John picked this fellow up so we could take a picture.
Washing the Live Crawfish
Stirring the Boiling Pot (They cook them for 15 Minutes)
These are Cleaned & Waiting for the Boiling Pot
Dumping Another Pot of Cooked Crawfish into the Tub and Seasoning Them
Ray had mentioned that they charged $10 per person but wouldn’t take any money from us, and then he insisted on us taking some crawfish to try, right just a couple as you can see from John & Gil holding them.
Ray with John & Gil & Their Small Taste of Crawfish (They Did Share with Ginny & I!)
They were saying the crawfish are smaller than usual this year because of lack of rain over the winter and we noticed that they were much smaller than the ones we have had here the last couple of years, but they were still as good!!
We sat at a table with a woman (whose husband brought us another huge tray of crawfish) and when we said we were staying at Betty’s she said Betty was her cousin – so we made sure we got her name to tell Betty we had met her. They had a huge covered area set up with a band and they were just starting to play when we left, Ray wanted us to stay for the music but we are going to a jam session tomorrow so figured we should still do some touring around.
When we were leaving John & Gil insisted on giving Ray’s wife, Sis, some money for all the crawfish they had given us. Ray also insisted that we stop and check out the deserts – they had peanut butter/chocolate cookies to die for!
From there we drove down to Pecan Island then checked out a couple of side roads on the way back – pretty country. At one point there was a big turtle on the road and Bill & Shirley were ahead of us so Bill stopped and Shirley grabbed the turtle to get him off the road and the ungrateful turtle peed all over her – she said never again would she do a good deed for a turtle!! We saw a couple of large snakes dead on the road – one was definitely a poisonous one from the shape of his head but the other one was headless so we don’t know what it was. Bill & Shirley decided to check out another side road and they saw a huge alligator but it disappeared into the roadside grass and they couldn’t find it. We all decided that there is no way we would want to go out and wander on foot around some of this countryside!!!
A House on Stilts & So Is the Garage (We Only Saw One Like This!!!)
We saw this house on a bayou and thought the hollow tree was interesting
and we also saw these fascinating oil rigs of some sort.
And There are Some Real Pretty Houses
A Crawfish Pond
When we got back we went over to happy hour so I asked Betty is she knew Venola Broussard, Betty asked how on earth I had met her so we told them how we had got invited to the crawfish boil, boy were they jealous as they had all commented on how they wished they could go to it when they left the restaurant.
The bonus today was that we didn’t see the rain that they had called for and it was a beautiful day weather wise, can we be so lucky that this weather will continue?
Needless to say there is no dinner at the Hacking house tonight as we are still stuffed from lunch and crawfish.
As always, today was another great gift of a day in the sunny, but windy, south and we look forward to another good day tomorrow.
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