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After looking at some of the show flyers that were on the wall (including a killer one for X) we decided to head over to a cemetery to take a look. Since New Orleans is below sea level everybody has to be buried in crypts or else when it floods the bodies will rise up out of the ground and start floating. Some of the crypts were well taken care of and some were falling apart. That comes from either extreme age or the fact that a family cannot pay to maintain the crypt. In these cases the bodies may be moved and the plot sold to someone else.
The pyramid crypt seen above is said to belong to actor Nicolas Cage and will be his final resting place whenever he dies. Originally I had wanted to see the 9th Ward area where very few people live anymore. After Hurricane Katrina almost nobody that lived there came back, they just relocated and left their houses. Parts of the ward are deserted and a lot of house are falling down. Unfortunately it was farther away that I would have liked so we elected to start our drive back.
After jumping on the highway I got engrossed in my new Android cellphone and Tom missed our exit so we ended up going the wrong way. Instead of backtracking we elected to take a "shortcut" that would get us back on the correct highway. Or that was the theory. The shortcut seemed to take forever due to the numerous small towns and the equally numerous slow drivers. Eventually we reconnected with the highway and all was well. After a brief stop at an outlet mall we found a fish market in Baton Rouge that had a great deal on shrimp for Tom and they directed us to another place called Tony's Seafood market & Deli that was bigger and better where he could get some crawfish or mudbugs as they are commonly known. While there I went over to the deli side and decided to try some boudin since that was something that had been highly recommended to try and I hadn't had any at that point.
Once there however I changed my mind and had the boudin balls after the worker gave me a sample of each of their three kinds. First was seafood, next was crawfish and last was Cajun. As I tried each of them they got better and better and I ended up buying a dozen of the Cajun boudin balls. I can honestly say that this was the best food I had all trip long! Tom and I were smiling and laughing as we devoured them in the truck, that's how good they were. You know it's good food when it brightens your mood and makes you happy, even giddy. The long drive into the night continued and our plan was to stop and get a room in Dallas and get something to eat there.
We realized however that by the time we got there nothing other than fast food joints would be open so we elected to discontinue our plan of only eating at local places on this trip and have a late dinner at the single open restaurant that we could see, Cracker Barrel. Hey, the breakfast food was pretty good and since it was so late it came out pretty fast too. Again, there was no reason for pictures of the food there. After about another hour and a half of driving we were able to stop and get a hotel room but were unable to use the internet because of the policy of this unmentionable hotel to charge for it. Needless to say, we won't be going back there again. So off to slumberland we went and when we woke up, day four of our journey would begin.
Published by Don Leach
