The 100 Best Affordable Vacations (7 page)

National Storytelling Festival,
800-952-8392,
www.storytellingcenter.net/festival
;
Town of Jonesborough,
866-401-4223,
www.historicjonesborough.com
.

party at mardi gras, dance at dawn in louisiana’s cajun country

LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA

Throw me something, Mister!

—
MARDI GRAS REVELERS’ CRY

8 |
What’s the winter without the pre-Lenten Mardi Gras fetes that still thrive in Louisiana?

Best known is the bacchanalia of New Orleans that culminates in the Fat Tuesday Carnival, that last wild fling before the repentance of Ash Wednesday. But just a couple of hours away, the Cajun Country of Acadiana celebrates in a family friendly way. Communities such as
Church Point
(www.churchpointmardigras.com),
Eunice
(www.eunice-la.com), and
Iota
(www.iotamardigras.com) maintain the medieval European tradition of Courir de Mardi Gras, when bands of horse riders romp through the countryside dressed in costumes, “begging” for the fixings to make gumbo. At the end of the day, they return to feast and dance.

Cajun Country’s big city of
Lafayette
(pop. 115,000) combines spectacle with tradition in a free five-day festival of carnival rides, live music, fireworks, and, of course, parades—including a parade for dogs, a night parade, and a children’s parade. Cries of “Throw me something, Mister!” are most likely to land you plastic beads and doubloons if you’ve got a cute kid or are hoisting a handmade sign indicating you’re out-of-towners (such as “Family from Detroit”); unlike in New Orleans, revelers baring breasts and other body parts get arrested. Because Easter is a floating holiday, the dates for Mardi Gras and Lent vary but generally fall in February.

Whether you are in Cajun Country for Mardi Gras or visiting at another time of year, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to experience the Cajun and Creole culture. Revel in the region’s cuisine by ordering up a dish of étouffée, gumbo, bisque, or a home-cooked plate lunch—likely with a stew, fricassee, or smothered liver. In Lafayette, check out
Pat’s Downtown
(107 E. Main St., 337-289-5270) or
Creole Lunch House
(713 12th St., 337-232-9929). Grab a po’boy from
Olde Tyme Grocery
(218 W. St. Mary Blvd., 337-235-8165) or boudin sausage from
Johnson’s Boucaniere
(1111 St. John St., 337-269-8878). Don’t miss a meal of crawfish, served during the crawfish fishing season that runs December through spring. The
Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival
(337-332-6655,
www.bbcrawfest.com
) is usually early May; tickets $5–$10, depending on the day.

MORE TO DO IN CAJUN COUNTRY

 Visit the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve Acadian Cultural Center (
www.nps.gov/jela
) in Lafayette.

 Take a swamp tour (
www.lafayettetravel.com/attractions.aspx
).

 Test your taste buds on the Tobasco factory tour on Avery Island (
www.tobasco.com/tobasco_history/visit_avery_island.cfm
).

And then there’s the music. Grab a fiddle and triangle, mix bluegrass with French and touches of German, Spanish, Scottish, Irish, Afro-Caribbean, and American Indian—an American mix if ever there was—and you’re starting to hear the tunes. Throw in washboard, spoons, and a hefty touch of abandon, and you’ve got Zydeco in all its late night, foot-stomping glory. You’ll find live music at restaurants and clubs at lunch and most nights—but always on weekends. Traditional venues for dinner and dancing include
Mulate’s, The Original Cajun Restaurant
(325 W. Mills Ave., Breaux Bridge, 337-332-4648),
Prejean’s Restaurant
(3480 I-49, N. Lafayette, 337-896-3247), and
Randol’s Restaurant & Cajun Dancehall
(2320 Kaliste Saloom Rd., Lafayette, 337-981-7080). If you’re out for music sans food, don’t miss Lafayette’s
Blue Moon Saloon
(215 E. Convent St., 337-234-2422,
www.bluemoonpresents.com
), on the back porch of the Blue Moon Guesthouse, where artists, politicians, and travelers kick up their heels and hoist a few, even when the weather turns chilly.

Whatever you do, drag yourself out of bed early on Saturday for Zydeco Breakfast at
Café des Amis
(140 E. Bridge St., Breaux Bridge, 337-332-5273). Or heck, just stay up all night. Breakfast and tunes start at 8:30, arrive by 7:30 to snag space.

Lafayette is a college town where lodging chains abound. For something unique, try the
Blue Moon Saloon & Guesthouse
(215 E. Convent St., 877-766-2583,
www.bluemoonhostel.com
) has both private rooms and hostel rooms available (beds in hostel rooms from $18). The aforementioned Blue Moon Saloon is out back, so if you’re not up for music, bring your ear plugs. Or stay out of town in Breaux Bridge in an 1800s bayou cabin starting at $75 per night at
Bayou Cabins
(100 W. Mills Ave., 337-332-6158,
www.bayoucabins.com
).

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH

Lafayette Convention & Visitors Bureau,
800-346-1958,
www.lafayettetravel.com
.

Southwest Mardi Gras Association,
www.gomardigras.com
.

experience the wild and woolly

BLACK HILLS, SOUTH DAKOTA

Leave me alone and let me go to hell by my own route.

—
FRONTIERSWOMAN CALAMITY JANE (1903)

9 |
The Black Hills region of South Dakota is both wild and woolly. Wild, as in home to Custer State Park, the nation’s second largest state park, with 71,000 acres of open range, a twisting highway through miles of granite spires, and a 7,242-foot-high peak. Woolly, as in bison—1,300, give or take—and mammoths.

Add in Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Monument, and the historic town of Deadwood, and you have to wonder if there’s a more truly American place on the planet.

“It’s different from the Rocky Mountains. They’re kind of forbidding; you can’t imagine climbing one. This is more intimate,” says Nyla Griffith, a fourth-generation South Dakotan and former Deadwood city commissioner. “The Black Hills area is homey.”

And so it is—if you stay out of the casinos and the badlands.

But let’s start with the mammoths. The town of Hot Springs is the 21st-century home of the animated movie
Ice Age’
s Manny, the
Mammoth Site
(1800 U.S. 18 Bypass, 605-745-6017,
www.mammothsite.com
, $8). Actually, the 55 beasts here aren’t woolly mammoths but rather Columbian mammoths, victims of a massive sinkhole that formed some 26,000 years ago. Scientists believe the sinkhole resembled a mud wallow—a favorite mammoth hangout. But once the mammoths waded into this particular pit, they were stuck—and preserved for visitors who come to tour the still working dig and exhibits.

Next stop:
Mount Rushmore
(Hwy. 244, near Keystone, 605-574-3171,
www.nps.gov/moru
), where 60-foot-high presidential faces were carved into the granite cliff beginning in the 1920s to draw tourists to the region. The place sounds hokey—until you see it and join a ranger-led tour explaining the phenomenal effort by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and those who worked with him to craft the monument during 14 years. Seventy years later, some three million visitors come each year to gaze into the faces of Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt. Even the cynical may feel a burst of patriotic swell.

If Mount Rushmore is a testament to American boldness, the
Crazy Horse Memorial
(12151 Avenue of the Chiefs, Crazy Horse, 605-673-4681,
www.crazyhorsememorial.org
, $27 per car) is witness to the nation’s unflagging spirit of determination. In 1949—a few years after Rushmore’s completion—the Lakota Indians of the Black Hills invited sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to honor Native Americans, choosing as representative the great Indian chief hero Crazy Horse. Progress was and still is slow; Ziolkowski died in 1982, but his family carries on the effort. The monument will be 563 feet tall and 641 feet long once completed—still years away.

For a foray into the American past, head over to
Wall Drug
(510 Main St., Wall, 605-279-2175,
www.walldrug.com
), just off I-90 near Badlands National Park’s Pinnacles Entrance. In the early Depression years, the drugstore put up billboards promising Free Ice Water to travelers. The place became a magnet, and over the years it’s grown from a small shop to a department store of Western-abilia, with Stetsons, boots, mounted wildlife, a free kids play area, and homemade donuts worth every calorie.

Devotees of the HBO television series won’t want to miss the town of
Deadwood
(800-999-1876,
www.deadwood.org
). Haven’t seen the show? Go anyway. Despite the gambling halls—or maybe because of them—the cozy town feels strangely authentic. After all, Wild Bill Hickok—shot in a card game in 1876—is buried here in the Mount Moriah Cemetery, right next to Calamity Jane. Those days seem especially fresh each summer during Wild Bill Days in June, when free concerts spill into the streets and the cowboys compete in fast draw competitions, and during the Days of ’76 rodeo each July.

The Black Hills’ impressive man-made attractions are window dressing, however; the real star in this rugged part of the world is the land.
Wind Cave National Park
(26611 U.S. 385, Hot Springs, 605-745-4600,
www.nps.gov/wica
) encompasses more than 28,000 acres, home to bison, elk, pronghorn, and an intricate cave system. The park is free but a fee is charged for cave tours. The vast acreage of
Custer State Park
(13329 U.S. 16A, Custer, 605-255-4515,
www.sdgfp.info/parks/regions/custer
, $15 per car) stretches from bison and elk ranges to fish-rich lakes. You can catch a Jeep safari, pan for “gold,” join a ranger walk, ride a horse, go fly-fishing. Or just rest your head in a park lodge, cabin, or campsite; cabins with electricity start at $45, campsites start at $16. Plan your visit for fall to catch the annual bison roundup and auction (yes, some bison sold at auction do end up in the freezer). But perhaps the most compelling landscape is that of
Badlands National Park
(Interior, 605-433-5361,
www.nps.gov/badl
, $15 per car), where a jagged wall of raw rock, banded with layers of color, separates miles and miles of north from south. As with all great landscapes, pictures—and words—don’t come close.