In transit - Beaumont, Texas - 6 month celebration

Today is our 6 month anniversary of being on the road. We’ve traveled 12,000 miles so far and passed through 26 states in US and Canada. We left Lafayette this morning and crossed into Texas in the early afternoon (our 27th state). As a celebration for ourselves we are staying in a nice hotel. We went for a swim this afternoon but ate a simple picnic in our room this evening. Tomorrow we continue on toward Round Rock, just north of Austin. We'll likely pull up somewhere for another night on the road before arriving there on Friday. Temperatures are in the 70's and expected to be in the 80's near Austin. The girls are starting to complain about the heat. The parents are loving it! We had a riotous good time for Mardi Gras on Feb 24th... After attending a morning parade in "downtown" Lafayette (picture above - Rose & Ruth calling for beads) we drove up to the small 2,000-person town of Iota and walked their small but crowded main street sampling good local food and enjoying the foot-stomping live music. Most striking was the change in Mardi Gras costumes from city glitter of New Orleans (and Lafayette) to the very rural look of pointed hats, screened masked and clown-like outfits. Not everyone was in costume but we enjoyed a performance by 30-40 youngsters in full regalia. Much of the singing was in Cajun French. Part of the rural scene is for costumed Mardi Gras celebrators to lean forward pointing to their hand and ask you for 5 cents (or any change you might have). We experienced more of this as we traveled even further inland to Eunice where we were ecstatic to see more than 100 horse riders coming into town as part of their local parade (picture above). The riders had been on the go since 8:30am Mardi Gras morning, riding in a long caravan and calling in on the local farms. Historically they would be asking local farmers for a chicken to bring back to town to put in the Gumbo (a Cajun soup of sorts). There was a respectable amount of drinking going on and by the time the revelers made it to the parade a rather drunken though good-natured rabble of riders added to the overall celebration. Rose and Ruth got more beads and "throws" from the horse riders and floats in Eunice than in all the parades we've been to so far (picture above - just some of the beads). They were ably helped by an elderly woman and her two (older) daughters we were standing next to at the parade who would pass along beads to the girls that they didn't want. (It's a strange but true phenomenon that you scream out for the first beads but by the time you have 15-20 strands you start being more selective -- only wanting the "good stuff"). Unlike the other parades, in Eunice the horse riders came right alongside the crowd. We petted more than one horse as it went by -- after the rider invited us to -- as well as stroked a half-dozen or so chickens being carried by various proud riders, since catching chickens is part of the rural Mardi Gras tradition (picture above - rider with chicken). Some of the strange and wonderful sights cannot be described in writing. We can only hope we caught them on camera. Overall we have loved our time in Louisiana amongst the warm and friendly Cajun people and celebrating Mardi Gras with them.