These early mornings are killing me. We had another 6 o’clock wake up call today, but we didn’t go to Waffle House, we had breakfast at home for a change. This morning we headed off for an almost three hour drive to Avery Island, the home of Tabasco.
There sure is a lot of water in this state, everywhere you look there’s a lake, a river, a swamp, or a canal. Most of the roads we have been driving on are up on pillars and all that’s below us is water. No wonder this place gets flooded so often, there’s just no getting away from the water, and adding a hurricane to the mix can never make things better. This is a really pretty area, but I don’t envy the people who live here at all, they can keep Louisiana, I like my ground above the water table. Perhaps the only thing that is as abundant as the water is sugar cane; there are fields of it everywhere all at different stages of growth.



Anyway, after driving for a long while, and going through the largest swamp in the state, heck in the US, the Atchafalaya Swamp, we headed south onto Avery Island. The McIlhenny family has been making Tabasco sauce here since 1868, and it is on this island (which is actually a salt dome) that all the Tabasco Sauce in the world is produced using salt from the island. Mike was really excited about going to visit this place and it was cool to learn about how it’s made and to see the bottling process in action. They gave us little sample bottles to take home with us, and at the country store we got to sample all the different sauces they make, as well as Tabasco ice-cream which was just ok. We bought a couple of bottles and as a gift we were given a jar of pickled okra – what the heck am I going to do with pickled okra?
When we came out of the store it was pouring with rain; I think this is only the second time we’ve had rain since getting back here. We made a run for it to the car; that rain was cold and we got soaked but Mike didn’t care as he had his sauce.





We headed back north along a different route than we had taken this morning through a number of small towns, trying to stay ahead of the storm that was trailing us. We stopped along the way for Mexican but ended up leaving before eating, as it was too expensive. I object to paying $12.00 each for tortillas, beans, rice and cheese – am I being cheap, I don’t think so. We stopped off at the Croc store again, as one new pair of Crocs just wasn’t enough for Mike, and finally got to eat lunch.
We didn’t dilly dally on the way home, just hit the freeway and headed east; there are only so many run down towns I want to look at and there are not so many along the main traffic routes.

Mike: Yeah! for Tabasco! Yeah! for Croc's! Boo! for Tabasco ice cream!