On to Abbeville

September 9, 2012

Well I guess this officially starts the second half of our trip as the game is over.  We pack our camping stuff back into the car and say goodbye to Howard and Jean Merrill and head toward Cajun Country and Abbeville.  We stopped at the rest stop on I-10 and watched a short film on the Atchafalaya basin.  We stopped at Jean Lafitte National Park historic site in Lafayette, which is a cultural center on the Acadians.  We watched a very sad but interesting documentary about how the French Acadians ended up in Louisiana.  About 50 settler families came to France and settled in Nova Scotia at about the same time as the British settlers came to Plymouth Rock in our country.  They were hard working, industrious peaceful people who built canals and helped create productive land for crops.  They lived peacefully with the native people, both exchanging ideas.  Their numbers grew to about 8000 people.  The British wanted their land, conquered the French and imprisoned the Acadians.  Some were murdered, families were separated and eventually they were put on different ships and deported.  Some ships went to England where they remained imprisoned, some were sent to the colonies but very few colonies allowed any of them to land as they were French Catholics (what happened about freedom of religion?  Isn’t that why the American colonists left Great Britain?) Many died of diseases.  Some were allowed to land and eventually the ones in English prisons were released.  By that time New Orleans was established and under Spanish rule.  They welcomed the Acadians and gave them land to settle west of New Orleans.  Many of these families are still here with a long French history.  They were poor people and learned to live off the land, developing meals from the food available to them and the blending of other cultures who were settling here.

On to Abbeville where we walked for a little bit and then went to meet our new ATC hosts, Marcel and Cheryl.  We are housed in a lovely private apartment in their backyard.  Very nice and very private.  Cheryl cooked us crawfish ettoufee and made a lovely salad and served all  with red wine.