Small town Mardi Gras, Crawfish tails and sucking their heads.

Where are we today ?

Abita Springs Resort Louisiana

        Wonderful bright sunny skies today warm temperatures and we are heading into town for our very first Mardi Gras (style) Parade. Mardi Gras is on "Fat Tuesday" and it always falls the day before "Ash Wednesday"the first day of "Lent". All religious stuff connected to Easter. Now we have never been in this area at this time of year and never experienced Mardi Gras.    
        We have lotsa parades that we can go to but this one is the closest and the weather is good , not too cold. So off to the Push Mow parade in Abitia Springs.

         It is a small town parade but certainly did give us the feel of what Mardi Gras is all about. We got into town at 9:30 parked our car a found a nice sunny spot on the parade route, The parade starts at 11:00am. Set up ours chairs walked about a bit then just people watched until the parade began.

         Lotsa Police closing roads and keeping an eye on things all is good. They were from Abita Springs, Mandeville, Covington, and St . Tammany Parish.

We have a good spot 

         Now look at the hair on this young lady right? She had to be at least 65 years old, but you would never know from the back would you? Deceiving for sure.

The Krewe of Push Mow in the parade.

Push Mow

lotsa beads

        One of the big attractions is all the "Throws" thats they have , mostly beads, and everybody wants to collect more beads. We soon found out that we could be trampled by some you kids running for some of the throws., Even candies, teddy bears, cups, foot balls lotsa fun stuff to collect.

Look at the beads she collected

here is what we caught today

         Now walking down the street we watched these guys boiling a huge pot of crawfish. Stopped to take a look and were invited for a taste. Once they found out we were from Canada thats made it all the better.
        Suzie was and I were both given many sample of crawfish tails (just like lobster only better) We were told the story of how Lobster from Canada swam all the way down to New Orleans and were so wore our that they became real small. Also that the French from Eastern Canada came here and are now the Cajuns in Cajun country.

tasty Crawfish tails

        After quite a few samples and demonstrations Suzie was able to try sucking the juice from a crawfish head!

there she did it!

Pretty spicy!

I did it too, very tasty

a huge pot of boiled crawfish

         Then we just headed do to the town square, the end of the parade and a party going on. Reasonable food and drinks, good music and they were handing out prizes for some of the best parade "floats".

prices not too bad at all

        So its afternoon and we hungry after walking about most of the town. Grabbed a couple chilli dogs, (no peanut butter thou) two Abita Beer (only $2.00 each) and I just had to have a bowl of chicken and sausage jumbo!

very tasty gumbo

we did pass on the yummy looking deserts 

        The band was excellent and had everybody up dancing in the square, perfect weather too.

        Well enough fun for one day hed back home mid afternoon, read our nooks in the shade for a while and chat with a neighbor Carl and his two dogs for a while. 

        Other neighbors came home and a campfire was started. We chatted with them for a bit while our potatoes were baking on the Weber.

         Then threw on some mushrooms and onions in foil, grilled a yellow pepper and a ribeye steak I found on sale, we had a very tasty supper. After a very busy day.

        Ok thats it i"m done, wore out aftre lots walking a fresh air, time to kick back and relax.

        

        Thanks for stopping in and checking us out, have a great weekend.

Check out the map below to see where we have been this winter

View Winter 2012-1013 in a larger map