Shrimp Festival Adventure

So....Saturday I was up bright and early for the highly anticipated shrimp festival that I've been talking about since I found out about it back in February. Sean wasn't quite as thrilled to get up early since he'd gotten in from the field in the early a.m. He was a sport though and got ready to go without much prodding from yours truly.

We start out on the Great Shrimp Journey and it takes us about 3 hours to get to Delcambre. We had to deal with idiot drivers, lots of heavy rain and a wrong turn or two before we make it there.

I'm envisioning the shrimp festival to be a buffet of my favorite shrimp dishes, I literally have the voice of Bubba from Forrest Gump in my mind naming things off: shrimp creole, fried shrimp, boiled shrimp, shrimp jambalaya. Shrimp is obviously a favorite of mine. My immediate family loves it, in fact, at almost every holiday we have a big platter of boiled shrimp and it's gone within no time.

Imagine my disappointment when walking around the festival and seeing none of this great spectacle that I'd imagined in my mind for the past six months. It was a collection of kiddie rides/ midway games, a few local bands, some beer tents and then a large pavillion with boothes underneath it selling various shrimp dishes. I'll give them the fact they had boiled shrimp, shrimp jambalaya, shrimp po' boys and a few others, but not nearly what I expected. I was all about getting me some boiled shrimp until I realize they didn't serve it with cocktail sauce. Instead it was served with ketchup. Ketchup! Ok...I'm sorry shrimp unless fried cannot be enjoyed with ketchup. I require coctail sauce. So I immediately nixed the idea of eating boiled shrimp. Instead I settled on some jambalya and a cold pina colada that wasn't half bad. Seeing the shrimp boats was neat though. I even got a picture of one.



Sean was a good sport about driving all that way for really not much to do and we only stayed about an hour before we high-tailed it out of there (not without my souviner t-shirt though!)

We decided to head back up I-49 to Alexandria where we did some shopping and ate at an Applebees. It wasn't the perfect day I thought it would be, but any day that I get to hang out with Sean is pretty superb in my book.

I was thinking about hitting the Natchitoches Meat Pie Festival in September, but after this festival experience I may have to think twice....