3 Days in SOUTHERN LOUISIANA! | Motorcycle Road Trip, Cajun Foodie Tours, and ALLIGATORS!
[Music] welcome to Southern Louisiana a place where culture and Cuisine perfectly combined to form one of the most unique regions in the United States Lafayette is better known as the heart of cinjun country and the cultural epicenter of Louisiana's Heritage for the next 3 days I'm exploring as much of this area as I can including swamp tours and museums trying some of the best Cajun dishes in the area and more [Music] good morning from Lafayette Louisiana well technically Scott Louisiana I'm here at cjun har Harley-Davidson documenting the 2024 cinjun country Hog Rally on behalf of Harley-Davidson working on their HD app for Content doing my photographer thing here but I wanted to take you guys along for the ride because I wanted to come down to Southern Louisiana for a while now I grew up in Texas I absolutely love Cajun culture and this is just not an area I get to come down to very often and the food down here is really really good but let's back up to yesterday actually before we get into today's ride because I got to see some pretty cool stuff yesterday so just reverse this here for a second [Music] so I feel like you can't come to Lafayette and truly experienced Lafayette without coming to oldtime grocery this place has been recommended to me so many times to get a pooy so of course I had to get a shrimp pooy and this is a half they do make cool ones too but I don't need that much food so we got a lot more eating to do but I got it dressed which means that it also has tomato and mayonnaise and lettuce and all the other things on it I've heard nothing but good things about this place so I am so excited to eat this this bread is incredible so for those of you who are not from the Gulf Coast you probably don't know this but you can definitely tell a difference between a gulf coast shrimp versus maybe an Atlantic shrimp or a farm race shrimp and these shrimp are so good like this sandwich is like a taste of home for me since I grew up in Texas um on the gulf this is just it's so good I can't believe this is a half sandwich this is massive trying to film this video right now when it's super windy out is proving to be a little difficult cuz things keep trying to fly everywhere so I'm going to go ahead and get this finished up and then we'll hit the road and go to our next spot one of my favorite Parts about this event is that they had pre-made ride routes that were available in the HD app and since I'd be focused on group rides the next 2 days I decided I'd try a shorter self-guided ride route to an area that was nicknamed the end of the road [Music] you know I was just thinking to myself how the weather is so amazing for April it's sunny and like 75 right now especially here in Louisiana this weather is incredible when this place is quite literally a humid swamp most of the year um and I was thinking about how you know there's no mosquitoes and I haven't been bitten yet and I'm standing here and there's these giant mosquitoes biting me through my jeans so I'm going to cut this very short and just give you a brief explanation so I went ahead and just took one of the ride routes from the dealership uh the end of the road run and it's about an hour south of cjun Harley-Davidson and it drops you here at the inter Coastal barway um I actually got to see a big bar ship move through the locks just a little while ago which was pretty cool but uh yeah it was nice I got to go past some uh little crawfish ponds where they were harvesting crawfish or at least that's what I think they were doing um just a nice you know chill two-lane country back road especially from Abbyville down to here the last 20 miles was beautiful but that being said we're going to head over to Abbyville because I was told that there's a spot that I have to stop at and get a crab cake so that's what we're going to do next [Music] [Music] so the next stop on the list is to in Abbyville Louisiana this place has been here for over 150 years in this exact location and it came highly recommended by everyone there's a cjun Harley-Davidson this morning from hog chapter members to some of the employees there so I figured it's on the way back to the dealership for the afternoon so why not stop here on the way now de is actually like famous for their oysters but I don't really eat oysters so I went ahead and just got a crab cake and gumbo let's go ahead and dive in that is an excellent crab cake I love crab cakes but this is so so good the cream sauce on top is fantastic like this is just a whole lump he of crab right here M that's so good that was a great recommendation now the other thing that I got was the seafood gumbo gumbo is a big deal in Louisiana you will see it on a lot of menus especially like cinjun menus and it's basically a kind of Stew um this one is seafood so it's got crab shrimp and uh oysters in it I don't typically eat oysters uh this this place to is actually known for their oysters but I won't eat them on the half shell it's just not personally my favorite thing in the world so I figured I would go ahead and try their seafood gumbo um I usually get chicken and sausage gumbo but when you're here you got to you know do the thing now this one has a big oyster in it so this is about as oyster as I [Music] get oh yeah taste like dirt like an oyster they're not exactly my favorite things in the world this is how you know that the cream sauce was really good cuz I'm literally scraping the plate before I leave that's so [Music] good now today we are actually going to be doing a couple of rides and we're going to start out doing the boo run I was told that this is something I had to do at this event and essentially we're going to be stopping at multiple Budan spots along the way and trying different types of Budan and I'm very excited because I love buan so let's go ahead and get on the road I actually let the group go ahead of me so that I could photograph them leaving so definitely running a little behind here so let's go catch up to [Music] them here's a fun fact about Louisiana you'll never hear some someone say that they visit here for the quality of the roads they're pretty bumpy to put it nicely however the food here is amazing and the locals can definitely pick out a food destination and make a great ride out of [Music] it the first stop on the buan Run took me 45 minutes Northeast from the dealership to t-boy slaughterhouse in the small town of mimu you have edible inedible and then you got mine as a bit and I got all the wars to prove it people will drive out of their way to stop at t- boys where they make their award-winning traditional Budan fresh using all parts of the pig which is processed completely inhouse the pork meat is simmered then drained ground and then heavily seasoned and combined with vegetables such as onions celery and bell peppers plus cooked rice like many small gas stations and General stores in Louisiana t- boy offers ready to eat Budan and krackin in addition to Fresh pre-seasoned meats that you can take home and cook yourself or you can sit outside and enjoy your Cajun snacks at a picnic [Music] table I wish I could smell this it smells so good so the first thing that we're going to be trying is just regular Budan this doesn't have like any special flavoring in it um you can add cheese to them you you can pretty much add whatever you want to buan these days but this is just your Good Old regular buan you kind of see there all the rice and goodies now I've had a lot of buan over the years but I can already tell that this is this is special the casing is pretty thin on it it's also very warm which I'm super excited about um let's just go ahead and dig in oh my God that was incredible wow it perfectly spicy some people might say this is really spicy I don't think it's spicy at all but wow this is TR I get I get why he's won so many awards Let me just put it that way I would pick buam over regular sausage any day of the week that's how much I like buam and this is really really good Bo last but not least we're going to try traditional pork crackland I've actually never had a real pork crack BL before so here's kind of what they look like here nice and fried little piece of goodness wow this should be a good one this is like all fat M so much flavor I really like these kind of fatty style ones the ones that have meat on them are a little more chewy but they're so good I think if you like pork grinds you'll really really like these These Are A Step Above for sure [Music] [Music] how you doing good how are you yeah I'm good that's the pass that goes with your bike on your pouch or on you either [Music] or now I went ahead and broke off from the Budan ride because there's something else I wanted to do today down south and that is go to the Tabasco Museum and Factory they make Tobasco hot sauce here and they always have it's a Louisiana staple but there's something else you can get here and that's ice cream so before we go check out the factory and everything here we're going to go grab ice cream because the country store closes in 15 minutes I barely made it here all time so let's go check it [Music] out so now that I've absolutely panicked and rushed to get down here I found out that that little store actually stays open a little while longer but I'm glad I was able to get some of their famous ice cream so they changed the flavors out consistently so the one that I was actually told I needed to get isn't available right now but I was able to get it in a bottle okay I got a couple of them because there are some Tabasco flavors you can only get here this raspberry chipotle one is the one that everyone told me that I had to get but they don't have it right now so I got their jalapeno one and I'm super excited to try it at home I put their Chipotle Tabasco sauce on my eggs like every morning and that was the other ice cream flavor so I was like let's try something a little different here so I went ahead and got the [Music] jalapeno it's just like a subtle hemp ooh it's kind of spicy like a little bit that's super interesting I never thought that I would be like man I love jalapeno ice cream but this is really good this is well worth breaking off from the Budan run for as much as I would have loved to eat more buan I am so full from T boys ice cream's like the perfect way to top it [Music] [Applause] off to Basco sauce has been made on Avery Island Louisiana by the meleny family for over five generations Edmund meleny grew his first commercial pepper crop in 1868 the next year he sent out 658 bottles of sauce at $1 a piece wholesale to Grocers around the Gulf Coast particularly in New Orleans he labeled it Tabasco a word of Mexican Indian origin believed to mean place where the soil is humid meleny secured a patent in 1870 and tobasco sauce began its journey to become a worldwide hot sauce brand today Tabasco sauce the basic recipe the process by which it's made and the ingredients remain virtually unchanged Tabasco is labeled in 36 languages and dialects in addition to being sold in in over 195 countries and territories it's the most famous pepper sauce in the world if you get the chance I'd recommend visiting Avery Island and taking the self-guided tour you'll learn a lot about the brand in addition to the unique history and geography of Avery Island the home of Tabasco sauce you'll need at least an hour to an hour and a half to do the entire self-guided tour but you could easily spend an entire afternoon checking out everything here including the jungle Gardens which I didn't have time to see since I had to get back to work but keep your eyes peeled you just might see a black bear it's been a while since I've seen a bear prooof trash can but there are black bears here on Avery Island which is so wild there's also black bears in Mississippi as well as the Panhandle Florida so like it's not that surprising but I don't know this you just have to be down here to like be surprised by the fact that they don't have just alligators out here the tour was pretty cool it took me like an hour hour I want to say to really walk everything and read most of the little signs and stuff inside it is self-guided so you can go at your own pace you can take more time if you want or less time but it's definitely pretty cool uh the first thing that I went into was the country store which is where I got the ice cream right here and then right next door there is a restaurant and you can eat here but the restaurant closed at 2:30 and to be completely honest I'm still so full from the buan at t- boys because he gave me so much extra buan and crackland I'm so still and it was so good um I'm still so hyped on that experience it was so cool I don't need to go to the restaurant today a little behind the scenes moment for yall here I'm waiting on some people to come around the corner here on their bikes but it was so funny because they recognized me from the Arkansas tourism guides the motorcycling guides and this guy goes you look a lot like the girl in the Arkansas book and I was like oh that's me and so then we were talking about it and long story short I've had multiple people come up to me over the last two days alone I still have a whole another day here in Southern Louisiana and I've just had so many people talk about how I've basically inspired them to take a trip to Arkansas and I love that let me know down in the comments below if you've gone to Arkansas because of one of the videos I made um I love Arkansas I love Louisiana too this has been so fun the last two days but thank you all for for letting me be a part of your adventures it is so cool to hear yall stories I love it all right now today is the third and final day of the cjun country Hog Rally and I am here bright and early at 7:15 in the morning because today we are doing a swamp tour I've never seen an alligator before ell Le's like in the wild and I'm so so excited to do that [Music] we haven't even got on the boat yet I'm about to see my very first alligator right over there I just walked on the open open open okay yeah I'll call you I love that they have them all named the little one's name is pee before we're even on the boat there's another one like right here named Junior it's hilarious we're Allied here at McGee you know but who you want to see an alligator named Peewee or an alligator named Hank the tank right yeah we going to look for Hank the tank mcge swamp tour takes roughly an hour and a half and on the way you'll learn about the history of the Acadian people who are better known today as Cajun the atalia Basin and the floor and fauna that call these swamps their home had I not done the swamp tour I would would have never known that these bald cypress tree stumps which are viewable from the interstate as you ride over the aolia Basin are from a period when logging operations nearly clearcut the area of Old Forest bald cypress that were over a thousand years old today bald cypress trees are protected in Louisiana but only a few scattered old growth stands remain some of which are close to McGee's eventually we made it to a quiet little Cove where we got to see a bunch of alligators [Music] to my surprise they're much smaller in Real Life TV shows had led me to believe that they're large and aggressive Monsters And while I have no interest in going for a swim with them I definitely have a New Perspective and better understanding of these animals thanks for coming to thege everybody that was so cool you got to see a ton of gators all different sizes of them um also I think honestly my favorite part was all of the history lessons and fun facts that the boat driver provided for us I learned so much about the swamps and I think that alone was honestly the Highlight like I was so excited to see a gator in real life but I think that was the coolest part was just learning so much about alligators as well as just Southern Louisiana and this area as a whole so definitely something I would recommend and next time maybe I'll even do one of the airbats I definitely want to try one of those one day for now though I think it is time to go get some crawfish [Music] now there's a few good reasons to visit Southern Louisiana in the middle of April one of the reasons being the weather's pretty great but the other is that it is crawfish season the Crawfish are starting to get big and since I'm so close to the Crawfish capital of the world right now I decided why not ride over here to Bro bridge and check out crazy about crawfish this place has come highly recommended so I wanted to be sure and check it out while I was here cuz I love crawfish I can be a little picky about them cuz I want them to be spicy and I was told if I came here would not be disappointed so I went ahead and ordered 3 lbs of their crawfish as well as two of these little like cornbreadsweet corn and potatoes sometimes mushrooms and sausage it's different everywhere you go and what style of crawfish you do sometimes if you do like a big family style crawfish dinner where they just come and throw them on the table and everyone eats um all those things are mixed in with the Crawfish when they're boiling but this is pretty standard potatoes corn crawfish and we might as well bite into one now so proper way to eat a crawfish you're going to break this little tail from its body and then pull the meat out that's a good little piece of meat right there now growing up in Texas we used to joke around and say that Louisiana has kept all the good siiz crawfish for themselves and gave us what they didn't want and since being here this is the second time I've had crawfish and I'm really starting to believe that because every piece of crawfish I pull out of these they fall that's really good it's huge they only serve giant cra fish here which is amazing and that is a spicy flavorful crawfish this is a good spot we'll go ahead and try some of this dip here try it with a little little baby crawfish I've been here long enough I'm starting to talk like the locals that's good it is kind of like a mayonnaise ketchup e it's almost like a burger sauce I think it's a good way to describe it those crawfish were so good definitely highly recommend this place I would absolutely come back here if I was in bro Bridge again but there's one other thing that I ordered that I haven't tried yet and that is these little corn breads covered in crawfish ATU like I mentioned they're like a jalapeno cheese cornbread so I'm pretty excited about this like wow how is everything it's really good good okay so know need something okay thank you Cajun food is just so good it is spicy if you get good Cajun food there is some heat to it but there's something different about cajun spice compared to like I don't know Mexican food spicy Cajun food just has so much more flavor involved with it and I love it like it's truly one of my favorite styles of food [Music] that food was so good but now I got to get back to the dealership to take some more pictures and then of course I think we'll have to go get a little bit more food this afternoon because we haven't had any dessert yet and I feel like that's something that we need to do while we're here in caging country well it's been a couple of months I'm currently at home editing this video only to realize that I never filmed an outro nor did I go get any dessert that day I was actually so exhausted after 3 days of work shooting photography stuff for 14 hours a day because at the end of the day every day I would have to go back to my hotel and edit this stuff for the client so I was exhausted um so yeah oops but I'm going to go ahead and wrap this video up by trying this Chipotle raspberry tabasco hot sauce with none other than some homemade Bluebell vanilla and the Caps falling off here but luckily I already poured some vanilla ice cream here in a bowl at home and we're just going to go ahead and put some oh wow some of this sauce right on top now I don't know how much I'm supposed to put on here so we're just going to we're just going to test this out together let's get a little piece here that has quite a bit of a hot sauce on it okay I get it now I'm adding [Music] more I will go back to the Tabasco Factory just to get more of this hot sauce y'all oh my gosh I might add it a little too much this time but it's not spicy at all it's much more of a just raspberry it's super super good I'm actually eating everything in this bowl it's turning into slush right now but [Music] this right here is the business highly recommend getting a bottle or two of this and taking it home with you if you visit with that Bowl being devoured I think that's officially going to do it for this video I had so much fun getting to visit Southern Louisiana it's SP a few days down there when I said at the beginning of this video that it is an area of the country that I've wanted to make a video on I'm that's an understatement I have wanted to make a video down there for so long and I'm just so glad that it finally worked out even if it was a little bit hard for me to juggle my photography job for the client with my YouTube channel trying to film a video I know this video was a little bit different than what I typically do over here but anyway thank you guys so much for watching I'll see you on the road later y'all
2024-06-12 10:08
