Cajun Music and Rain (30th August)

The day dawns gloomy and it is raining. Not your gentle sun shower, but belting down, "can't see 30m" rain. We leave when the rain slackens a bit, but it doesn't last for long and it is pouring down again. Anyway we arrive at the Bar by 8:50, and have settled in. The bar hosts a radio show every Saturday morning with live Cajun Music. We watch some of the people country dancing to the tunes, but they are sung in French so we don't know what they are about. Cajun Music requires a fiddle and a piano accordion, and this mornings band also has a steel slide guitar, a bass and drums. The music is a folksy country sound with a sort of polka rhythm. The rain hasn't slackened off any but does as we head for Opelousas and the Evangeline racetrack and Casino. The races start at around 5pm on a dirt track, but there are plenty of slot machines to keep people busy!! We visit Lafayette, the capitol of French Louisiana, and view a fine court house and Cathedral. Our scenic viewing is curtailed as the rain comes and goes, but we pass rice paddies, sugar cane and soy beans. We have lunch at a Cajun Restaurant in Breaux Bridge. Great food. Cypress Island Preserve is a bird reserve located in a swamp. The rain abates enough for us to get a couple of pictures. At St. Martinville we see a statue of Evangeline at St. Martins Church and she is the depiction of the character Evangeline in the Henry Wardsworth Longfellow poem of the same name. Don't bother to look it up, it is the longest poem in history!. It is a slow drive to Morgan City due to the rain, it is intense. We arrive, do some washing and finally the rain has stopped, so maybe a good sign for the festival tomorrow.