End of the February Project already?

It's hard to believe but it is already the end of the project.  We have had time to see a lot of things here and complete a lot of tasks as well.

Over the weekend we spent some time in Crowley, La.  When Henry Ford was making the Model T he also set up a number of distributors who were also reassembly plants.  This was one of them.  He found that if he took the wheels and fenders off of the cars he could stand them on end in a boxcar and get a lot more of them in there.  Then they were sent to over 100 distributors like this one, reassembled and sold.

Also in Crowley there is a 50's hamburger joint called Frosto's.  It was originally a Zesto's (like the one in Watertown) but they closed and sold the business to someone else and that owner didn't want to pay the franchise fee so they named it Frosto's and reopened.

With all of the crawfish farming that goes on there are a lot of egrets, greater and lesser, who like to take advantage of the easy lunch.

Another thing we learned at the Ford Museum was that rice was brought here by the African slaves and later became a staple crop for Louisiana.

Remember the crawfish traps? Here is one of the boats they use to harvest them.  Since the bogs are only 3 to 6 inches deep, the boats often ride on the bottom.  Many of these boats are equipped with wheels to climb over the levies and instead of a prop they have a hydraulic pump in them used to drive the wheel like a paddle wheeler and push the boats along. 

On Valentines day the youth at the church we are attending served a special meal for couples.

This is the loft above the gym.

Work?  Oh yes, that is why we are here!  While installing a water softener on the loft, not the one behind me, we noticed the heater behind me wasn't vented out of the building.  I cut a hole in the stack from the furnace and vented the hot water heater through the same stack. 

On Wednesday evening a group named Real Encounter came to the town of Mamou to demonstrate their skills on bikes and motorcycles and then to present a clear gospel message to the youth attending the event.  This guy could make his bike climb and jump nearly anything.

This is a motorcycle jump over 9 people.  Notice they are all watching him intently.

This poor old bush hog is nearly shot but we put it back together one more time.

Of course there are always the potties that need to be clean and fresh for the next group this weekend. 

Our RV site is right in the middle of the camp and is very nice.

Friday night we made a trip to a local restaurant called GI's.  The food was good and it was spicy.  They have a Cajun band play on weekends.  By the way, Cajun is a corruption of Acadian.

French settlers from the French region of Acadia traveled to Nova Scotia then were expelled by the British and moved to Louisiana (which became the Louisiana Purchase) and settled with the local tribes.

There were several different tribes which moved through here but only two were native to the swamps.

More great information we gleaned from the Jean Lafitte Acadian Cultural Center in Eunice.