Louisiana Off the Beaten Path® by Jackie Sheckler Finch

Author:Jackie Sheckler Finch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Globe Pequot Press
Published: 2019-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

The ninety-minute tour takes you into a different world—a jungle of plants such as wild hibiscus, lotus, and elephant ears. Lots of trees also grow here—cypress, hackberry, willow, and oak, to name a few. The swamp serves as home to alligators, nutrias, muskrats, minks, opossums, otters, ducks, turkeys, wading birds, and other wildlife. You’ll glide under the Swampland Expressway, the 18-mile span on I-10, which opened up Cajun Country to the rest of the world. Building this bridge, once considered impossible because of the basin’s boggy bottom, required considerable engineering ingenuity. If you encounter fog when driving on this stretch of interstate over the swamp, please exercise extreme caution. Heavy mists come with the terrain, and being suspended over a swamp magnifies the hazard. Tours are offered daily, starting at 10 a.m. If you arrive before or after a tour begins, you can grab a sandwich or full meal at McGee’s Atchafalaya Café. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mon through Thurs, until 10 p.m. Fri and Sat, and until 7 p.m. Sun or 8 p.m. during summer.

From here head south toward St. Martinville. You can either return to Breaux Bridge by way of Route 347, which continues to St. Martinville, or follow Route 31 south from Breaux Bridge. Another option is Route 96, an off-the-beaten-path road by way of Catahoula.

Only a few minutes from downtown St. Martinville in a serene park setting at 1200 North Main Street, you’ll find the Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site (337-394-3754 or 888-677-2900; crt.state.la.us/Louisiana-state-parks/historic-sites/Longfellow-evangeline-state-historic-site/) on the banks of Bayou Teche. (The word teche, pronounced “tesh,” comes from a Native American word meaning “snake” and refers to the bayou’s serpentine path.)

This large complex offers a museum and visitor center and an Acadian farmstead and facilities for picnicking. The park’s main thrust, however, is to preserve and interpret the history of its early French settlers. Many Acadians who were forced by Britain to leave their Canadian “Acadie” in 1755 later made their way to South Louisiana. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline, the symbol of all Acadiana, tells the story of their long struggle to find a new home.

On the Olivier Plantation, an 1815 Creole raised cottage serves as the park’s focal point and contains furnishings typical of that period. This plantation house and its detached kitchen and herb garden, in a setting of ancient live oaks for which Cajun country is famous, present a living history lesson. Stop by the visitor center for a look at the variety of exhibits related to early Acadian and Creole lifestyles. Except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, the park is open Tues through Sat from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tours take place on the hour with the day’s last one starting at 4 p.m. Plan to arrive fifteen minutes early to watch the video site introduction. Admission is modest.

Continue to the charming downtown area of “Le Petit Paris,” as St. Martinville was once known. The town became a haven for aristocrats escaping the French Revolution’s horrors during “the worst of times.

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