Monday 2nd September – Labour Day or Labor Day as the Americans say

So after finally accepting that we are not landed gentry and that we had to move on from our antebellum mansion we packed up and after breakfast set off for Lafayette. It we went the direct route it is only a few hours so we had planned a route that went post fort Jessup which was the Western border of the US frontier in 1822, unfortunately because it is labour day unlike the UK everything that has anything remotely to do with the government is closed and this is in a state park so we couldn’t go and visit. All the same we drove through Kisatchie Forest which was nice to start off with but they seem to make all the roads through national forests dead straight so they get a bit boarding after a while! Our plan was to drive to Arcadia Village which was built in the 1970s to improve tourism in Lafayette. It recreated a typical 1800s Cajun village with 10 acres of farmland and a bayou running through it. You would have thought that all this effort and the fact that they moved 7 homes which were donated by families to show what it would have been like that it would be open on what is a public holiday but oh no, they don’t open on Bank Holidays either, our fall back plan was to go to try and buy Chris’ birthday present which we did and we had a wander round an electrical store that was selling 75 inch TVs, that is taller than Chris and to be honest you need a 75 foot room to watch the telly as if you get too close the picture looks a bit weird! A quick stop at Walmart and we went to the hotel and checked in before having a look at what we plan to do tomorrow as we had originally planned to walk into downtown but the guy at check-in pointed out that was difficult as they don’t have any sidewalks (pavements) so we would end up walking along the side of the highway! Replanting complete we rewarded ourselves with a drink and something to eat before heading off to bed.