Amazing Discoveries on the Road

BREAUX BRIDGE, LOUISIANA – We wanted to travel to nearby Lafayette, said to be the capital of Acadiana, and so headed that way around lunchtime. The Acadian Cultural Center was closed (Monday), but that was perhaps a blessing in disguise as it sent us looking around, so that we found, in the middle of downtown, The Lafayette Arts Center, an especially impressive facility for displaying artistic creations, teaching art, and more.

Then off to lunch at a well-known spot, The French Press, where the food was delicious and the piece de resistance was a fried boudin ball in a biscuit topped with maple syrup. It was called Sweet Bejesus, appropriately. Can you imagine!

We then drove west and north of Lafayette into a region called the Cajun Prairie. Here, the land is a bit higher with less swampland and more farmland. There are more blacks in this area and that may account for the fact that this region is the center of zydeco music. We went looking for the towns of Eunice, Mamou, and Opelousas.

But first we found Crowley, a lovely center for the extensive rice cultivation we were soon to encounter. As we drove north from Crowley to Eunice, we saw huge rice growing areas. Some of the rice was fresh up and thus vast fields of spring-grass green while other areas where large rectangular ponds with what seemed to be buoys or markers of some sort dotting the water throughout.

And then, quite by accident, we saw the birds. If someone were to ask us today where to go birding in Louisiana, we would say the rice fields south of Eunice. First we saw the largest ever, for us, circlings of glossy ibis and white ibis. They whirled in the sky together then seemed to return to earth in separate areas.

We pulled off the main road and asked a man at a spot called Kelly’s Landing if we could park there and walk out on the levees between the rice fields. He said yes but added “when you’re through, I’ve got something a lot better to show you!” And thus it happened that we saw our largest ever flocks of ibis, American egret, black necked stilt, Northern shoveler, and, most impressive, roseate spoonbill, all just there enjoying the bounty of the flooded rice fields. That bounty, it turns out, includes crawfish.

Great Birding in Rice Fields

Kelly's Landing

We returned to Kelly Hundley at Kelly’s Landing and discovered an amazing character. He explained to us how the flooded rice fields do double duty—growing rice and cultivating crawfish. Those buoy-like things we saw in the water were actually crawfish traps, a lot like crab traps, and like crab traps, you bait the crawfish trap.

Kelly with his wonderful collection.

But then Kelly says “come inside,” and there he showed us what must be one of the world’s largest collections of toy farm equipment—tiny John Deere, Case, Massey-Ferguson tractors, combines, cotton pickers, plows, harrows, etc. etc.—rooms full. He’s been collecting for several decades, a hobby he started when an eye disease took most of his sight. Humorous and totally engaging, he regaled us with local lore. It was quite a treat, and totally unexpected. Tour groups around the country pay visits to Kelly’s Landing (he gives tours and cooks meals for large crowds) and we just stumbled upon it.

We wanted to eat at Prejean’s that evening but found ourselves late and exhausted, and so to bed. We might go back one night this week.