hi everyone -

on our next trip to new orleans in october we want to rent a car and go spend the day driving through cajun country and i am trying to figure out the best drive.

has anyone done the drive down into lafourche parish by la.1?
or should we instead head out towards lafayette?

though it is not considered cajun country, we were also considering possibly driving down 23 alongside the mississippi.

the furthest i have been out in the country is vacherie when i visited some plantations a few trips back. we really want to go deep into LA for the bayous, swamps, photo ops and hopefully some good cajun food along the way ;)

any recommendations are greatly appreciated :)

are you in the us? you realize that noew orleans is being hit by a category 3 hurricane right now right? remember what happened last time? not saying we're definitely in for a repeat but make sure the city's in good enough shape before you go there.

thanks for the sarcasm. yes i am well aware and i spend quite a bit of time there. i'm not going next week, i am going in a few MONTHS.

thank you again.

and not sure how behind your news is but the storm has passed so far without a repeat of katrina.

this area will always get hurricanes, it always had and always will. i think it is ridiculous to cancel a trip for months from now. seriously? is it news to you that gulf states always get slammed with hurricanes? so we should all just stop traveling there?

and even if there was/is a repeat i am signed on already to volunteer to help and if need be will fly down even earlier than my trip date. so i will be going down either way.

sorry. little cranky today.

it's september, you said you're going in october, and, let me check my math, but i think that's one month from now, i don't know i could be wrong. the news i read this morning said the storm hasn't fully passed yet and the damage is uncertain at this point. and i wasn't being sarcastic i was (i guess wrongly) assuming that you were one of the people who instead of doing research just comes on here and posts hoping to have all your questions answered. yes, i understand that the gulf states get hit by hurricanes every year, but frankly, if this one is anything like katrina, which hopefully for the citizens of that region it isn't, it doesn't matter if you wait 1 month or 10, the whole place will still be f---ed.

To actually answer the question, your best shot at "Cajun Country" is going to be around the Atchafalaya Basin west of New Orleans. New Orleans itself was always more of a Creole city and the Cajuns settled in the swamps south and west of the city.
New Iberia, Abbeville and Lafayette are all good starts for cities. Breaux Bridge and Saint Martinville will also show some nice Cajun towns. Anything west of Abbeville or north of Lafayette is not going to be what you're looking for.
South of New Iberia, you can hit the Tabasco factory and farm (or whatever they call it). I went a few years ago and found it to be kind of a jip (15 minute tour, dropped off in the gift shop and sent home with one of those tiny bottles of Tabasco), but there's some sort of swamp drive that you can do. You could also do a swamp tour. They leave from near New Orleans, but I would think that the ones around Grosse Tette and Breaux Bridge would be better.
Your best shot at experiencing real Cajun culture is to hit a place that has Zydeco music and dancing on a Friday or Saturday night. The cities I listed plus Baton Rouge will have at least one place doing this. Those places also tend to have food available. But the real Cajun experience is the crawfish boil, but you'll be lucky to find one that isn't private and isn't a tourist-serving farce of a festival. Otherwise, there's a lot of Creole food out there, especially in New Orleans, and it's important to realize the difference before you start seeking out anything "Cajun."
Good luck though.

you are doing a great service of just starting on VT - but i am
leaving october 30 and staying through the first week of november. so
yes, your math would be terribly incorrect - unless of course you go
by some sort of "special" calendar.

do you know anything about nola or la? do you realize that it wasn't
the *entire* city of new orleans that got flooded? do you realize that
in my question i was also asking about land well to the WEST of new
orleans? do you realize that the entire city did not float away? have
you even been there to understand the lay of the land? if you even
took a minute to "research" you would see that i am fairly knowledgeable
about the area, have been there quite a many times, participate in
these forums quite often and if i could, would go down to that city
today with my galoshes and buckets and find ways to pump my hard-earned tourist dollars into the city. so you would see i am not one of
those who people who just show up and "expect an answer". according to your page
you have never even been to this state.

the hysteria in your response only shows the mentality of people still
to this DAY regarding what happened with katrina and their fear of
returning. that the *entire* place got smashed and flooded out and
that it is not tourist-friendly again. yes it got a terrible wallop,
but you would be sadly mistaken because most of the more touristy
areas were spared the full wrath that the 9th ward area received. and no matter what, i would be returning.

i know quite a few people who call new orleans home and you know what?
they all want the tourists back. their businesses are suffering
because people think the entire city floated out to sea and that it
isn't ready for tourists. if you did your research and learned
anything about the area you would know this as well and you would know
this was not the case.

but according to you the *entire* area "is f---ed". so it shows you
are not knowledgeable about this city. i suggest you stick with
answering forum questions you may know something about then as opposed
to lurking in ones you know nada about and choosing instead to give weather forecasts.

i'm done with what you have to offer.
on to an actual intelligent and helpful response to my question.

hi colin - thank you for your thorough response. i figured if i posted
in the new orleans forum i would get more feedback than the louisiana
forum. you give me some good ideas that i can actually see on a map.
i was kind of feeling going out towards lafayette, as i read that is
the capital of cajun country, and many of the photos i see from that
area are exactly what we are looking for, but my companion wants to
see the gulf as well so i was trying to figure out if a more southern
drive would kind of make us both happy.

but i was guessing what you
are telling me, that if we really want that kind of experience then
maybe west would be our best bet. we did originally think about taking a
swamp tour out of nola but decided instead to just rent a car ourselves and go
explore and perhaps find one along our route. thank you very much for your feedback (and the tabasco factory jip factor). it is greatly appreciated :)

The Gulf doesn't really exist in the State of Louisiana. Grand Isle and near Cameron (far southwest part of the state) and that's it. The closest Gulf access you'll get, without a boat, to New Orleans is in Mississippi at Biloxi/Gulfport. But there, there are no waves. If you really want the Gulf, head to Dauphin Island south of Mobile: sugar sands, waves and beautiful water.

hi colin - grand isle is exactly where my boyfriend had suggested we drive down to see the gulf. that was the lafourche parish route taking la. 1 i mentioned.

ah, but dauphin island sounds perfect. and pictures i have found of it look beautiful. and apparently only a 2.5 hour drive from nola! this might just be a perfect choice for us. thank you for your input!! will look into it more now. thank you so much!

perhaps we can fit in both west to lafayette AND dauphin island into our trip. that would be excellent.

> perhaps we can fit in both west to lafayette AND dauphin island into our trip. that would be excellent.

Sure, but that's a lot of driving. You're taking time off of New Orleans when you do these side trips.
The food is much better in New Orleans (like I said, it's not Cajun, but most Cajun food is just not very good) and there is a lot to see and do there. There's nothing to do in the more central parishes south of I-10 aside from the stuff I've mentioned. Lots of chemical plants and refineries down there.
And, in regards to the swamp tour versus the driving tour, on a driving tour, you will not see anything like you would on a swamp tour. There are no real roads into the swamps and you can't really walk around into them. You'll also have the pleasure of hearing stories and info from the guides, who are almost always Louisiana natives, or, at least, play into the tourist idea of what a Louisiana native should be like.
Stick to the Bayou Teche (pronounced like "tesh" with a soft "sh") region if you do end up driving around though. But that's also where the Atchafalaya tours originate.

it certainly is a lot of driving. but after visiting new orleans for the 7th time, it was kind of what i was going for. renting a car early in the morning and just getting lost out in the countryside all day long :) and to be honest we were even talking about how all we wanted to do was seeing a lot of nothing along with a few refineries (dorky i know).

oh, and i definitely wanted to take a swamp tour. just not a full package one that leaves with a van full of people out of new orleans. i wanted to find one to drive to ourselves so that we could driving around at our leisure and your suggestion of an atchafalaya tour sounds like a *perfect* choice :)

you have been an incredible wealth of knowledge and it has not gone unappreciated. these are the very answers i was hoping to receive.

sorry for trying to help, oh king (or queen; i can't tell with an ambiguous name like renee) of the american southland, who, coincidentally, is from the east coast. so sorry to offend your sensibilities. i guess i should have included in my info that I come from kentucky, and we believe in being helpful to people purely on principle, which in all honesty and earnestness i made an attempt at doing, only to be met with open hostility. i'm sorry i didn't look at your homepage. had i done so i would have been much more sarcastic and mean, having found out you needed advice on visiting the area surrounding your "home away from home." seriously? wow.
so you suggested i do research and i did, although it was admittedly half-assed and very brief. maybe now you can do some research of your own, specifically into the meaning of this term from the old country which describes you so well: baggadouche.

fei chang gan xie. wanshang hao.

ahh...this is so pointless

i was asking about the louisiana countryside, not the city of new orleans.

please stop embarrassing yourself.

"Wanshang hao" is a greeting, not a way to "good night".