Neil and I met up with Alan and Dawn, and their baby Iliana, in Lafayette, Lousiana. I know that's a ton of names to keep straight from one sentence. I also know that technically I didn't leave the country and it seems this website is geared toward those types of travels, but oh well. Music is the soul of a lot of people down there, and I'm not sure why but that makes everyone seem more alive.
We visited Creole to the southwest, only a mile or so from the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf is silty, Mississippi River brown, with massive amounts of particles from all over the central US just floating out to the horizon. And inland is marsh for miles, really really flat. All the houses are built on thick telephone pole stilts, though the stilts vary from maybe 0.5-3 meters tall- 0.5 meters would just make the bottom of your house not rot if the land turned to mud but would be useless in a flood. One of Dawn's relatives owns the only house left standing in that area after Hurricane Rita. It's different, seeing southern LA, everyone comes around to talking about the hurricanes if you give them a couple of minutes, and everyone refers to happenings as either before the hurricanes or after the hurricanes. I mean, I knew they were big events for that part of the country, but I didn't realize that every single person was sorely affected by them.
Some great jazz and blues comes out of LA, obviously, but man it's awesome how there's always at least a few places with live music. Walking through New Orleans, or parts of the French Quarter anyway, we kept flowing from music playing behind us to music playing ahead of us. I like it, I wonder what the musicians think of people (random tourists) who come to listen for 1/2 hour or so.
Okee doke, enough for now!
