Our January Trip to Louisiana.....Part 4

Part 1 of our trip is HERE.
Part 2 of our trip is HERE.
Part 3 of our trip is HERE.


So Chris got home from work and off we went to dinner to a place called The Fish River Grill.

"A Funky Junky Redneck Joint" as the menu says.  My kind of place! lol

It's a local casual dining restaurant that serves local seafood which is right up my alley.
They serve something called "Swamp Soup".
An ominous moniker for a food, but it tasted much better than it sounded.  lolz

Every diner gets a free sample cup of it with your dinner. It's basically a greens and beans soup with a hint of sausage.  I'm not a big fan of beans(except the pork and bean kind)and it has beans in it(Great Northern/Navy)but it had a great flavor.  I may have to try to make this some day...maybe the next time I visit my brother because I KNOW his wife will love this sort of thing!

Hubs got a fish dinner and I got a combo fish and oyster platter(which Hubs had to eat about 1/3 of for me).  I love this photo Lorraine took. I was squeezing my lemon on my fish when she snapped it and the lemon squirted Hubs in the eye so his smile turned into a grimace as he hurled an expletive in my direction.
Priceless!

On the way out of the restaurant I spied these colorful plastic miner hats with headlights attached.
The sign said they were crabbing hats.

Is nighttime crabbing a thing?
I spent Summers of my youth crabbing all. day. long.  We used lines of chicken backs on string to lure them in to shore.
But never at night just using lights and a net.

But it seems to be a "thing" down here and the video below is from a crabber in Virginia where I am from so it's a "thing" there too and I never knew that.



Anyway as we drove back to Lorraine and Chris' house I noticed all the Holiday lights in town........

I forgot that it was still the Christmas Season and decorations would be up. lolz
Home and a couple of hours just talking before bed.

The next morning by the time Hubs and I got up Chris was already at work, Lorraine had run a marathon, painted the house, cured cancer AND gone out to a local pastry shop for Donuts, Kolaches, and Sausage Breakfast Pastries for us.
Nom nom nom

And Lorraine had fixed us each up a present.......

A pack of Abita Mardi Gras beer, beads and a mask for Hubs.........

And a bag of red and white striped candies(Red Bird mints, Hershey kisses)a Peppermint Chap Stick and a handmade soap in the shape of a candy plus a small wooden sign to hang in my kitchen.
I LOVE peppermint Chap Stick and I used to always have one in my purse.  I used my last one up about a year ago so this one will be cherished and used......did she know I loved this?  I don't think I've ever blogged about my addiction to peppermint Chap Stick.  I guess she has omniscience as another one of her Super Powers, huh?  8-)

So after a quick photo together, since we hadn't taken one yet...........

Notice I let Lorraine stand on the fireplace hearth to be taller than me in the photo because ya know, I am soooo much taller than her in real life. *snort*

And a blurry photo of  Zoe where her eyes are glowing and she looks possessed......

No kitty photos because basically they hid from us for the two days we were there.  I hear cats tend to do that around strangers.

And back in the rental car we went and headed West to Louisiana.  We still had a 6+ hour drive to the hotel in Shreveport.
We stopped somewhere in Eastern Louisiana for lunch.  It was rainy and Hubs was in a crappy mood because I tried to use a coupon on my Burger King app AND pay with a gift card for his meal and a freebie coupon for my meal I still had from their Xmas promotion.  He gets annoyed so easily.....especially when he needs more coffee.

I just got the so yummy chicken fries, no drink or anything because I didn't want to sit there with him so I just sat in the car by myself for awhile.
Can you tell from my chicken fries selfie I am annoyed with him? lol

So back on the road with another pit stop somewhere between Baton Rouge and Alexandria, at a McDonald's with the nastiest bathroom I've seen since the Summer of 1999 on a trip down to see my family and we stopped at THE WORST BATHROOM OF ALL TIMES.  There was also a convenience store attached.

3 pennies found by the Mickey D's registers and 1 penny found in the  convenience store while Hubs waited on his coffee order.
I also saw locally made pork rinds.........

And this soda........

Delaware Punch soda.
I'm 60+ years old and I've never seen this soda before.
It's a grape fruit(not a grapefruit)punch flavor, not carbonated and not caffeinated.
I say, "What's the point of it then?". lolz

Seems it can be found in parts of Arkansas, Louisiana and around EasternTexas and was invented in 1913 by Thomas E Lyons.  Ya learn something new every day.

Just one more stop for gas and for potty time outside of Chopin LA.  The bathroom was the size of a broom closet and the door knob was in peril of falling out of the door and there was no lock but this place seemed to do a booming business mostly in fried chicken and booze sales.  Well it was a late Friday afternoon so most places do a brisk booze business at that time/day.

We got into the Best Western in Shreveport at 4 something pm.
After checking in and unloading the car we headed back out to meet our older son(who flew in from Virginia), daughter, her fiancé and a couple of his friends at a local Brewery at 5 pm.

They were running some sort of Holiday promotion and were giving out envelopes with prizes in them for every beer you ordered.
Hubs and I paid for this gathering(my daughter's idea of a pre-wedding dinner as there was no rehearsal)and we all won brewery stickers like pictured above, 50% off food items, money off your next beer, and stuff like that.
I gave the 50% food coupon I won to my daughter since we wouldn't be coming back here anytime soon. ;-)

Hubs, our eldest and the fiancé's friend enjoying their brewskis.

They also had live entertainment(a singer/guitar solo act)which was pretty good though we were sitting a little too close as conversing was difficult with the noise level.

Everybody ate and drank and had a good time.  Hubs and I left around 10 pm as we were beat and needed a good night's sleep as the wedding was the next day.


Sluggy