This is the mark of a quality motel because a night without a Thermasol is like a night without a vibrating bed, and imagine we only paid $33.66 for the night! Sadly, it wasn’t working. If it had been working, you can bet that we would have been steam bathing all night long.

It’s raining out here or should I say it’s “Thermasoling?” The land is flat, with moss and lichen growing on everything. Caroline has even started accumulating moss on her teeth, though she insists it’s broccoli. (We’ve been dealing with her plant-attracting teeth for a long time now.) What’s with all the dead nutrias around here? Apparently, when rivers are high and these giant beaver rats try to cross the road, they aren’t very successful. Before coming to Louisiana, I didn’t even know that these 14-pound monsters existed. Turns out that at one time they were raised on fur ranches for people who like to wear water rat clothes and that they are an invasive species. To be honest, I’m glad we’re only seeing dead nutria because I’d have a digested load of shellfish in my drawers if one came at me.

Funny how it was just a couple of days ago we were in the hill country of the South, and now we’re in some nearly tropical swampland where everything is wet.

The French didn’t sell us a bunch of land; they sold us a lot of water infested with beaver rats, probably some water snakes, mosquitos, mold, slime, moss, and unintelligible accents from the locals. At least it all looks good!

We’d better start looking for some indoor activities because we’re seeing a lot of rain, that or head for higher ground.

Now we’re getting somewhere as in our book there’s nothing so great as history or a factory tour of something really interesting which is about anything to Caroline and me. This is a crown jewel in the world of factory tours for us as whoever thinks that they’ll go see how Tabasco is made. So, what did we see on Avery Island? Vats of peppers fermenting in vinegar and guess what? It makes your eyes burn even though you have to look through the glass to see the actual vats. We left with a tiny bottle of Tabasco mounted on a fridge magnet, which couldn’t have been more than a teaspoon in that 1-inch tall jar, and several pounds of red pepper pulp for boiling seafood.

This wonderful woman was our tour guide for the Konriko Brand Rice Factory tour; her name was Elaine. As I said earlier, we needed to find some indoor activities to keep us dry as we weren’t yet ready to start the drive through Texas.

Don’t tell anyone, but our pockets are full of rice right now because as good as the tour was, we felt we deserved some free rice. While they were selling rice in the gift store, there’s nothing better than free white rice, and we have that Tabasco from the other factory tour to splash on our ill-gotten gains, so we’ll be eating like kings as soon as we get to a place we can boil some water. By the way, I didn’t admit this earlier, but back in Vermont, we scored two mouthfuls of free syrup when no one was looking.

Don’t believe anything from that previous paragraph; it was all fake, like we thought the mythical turducken was fake too. Well, not only does Charlie’s of New Iberia bring turduckens into reality they somehow find fryers large enough to be able to offer whole fried turkeys….because the sugary yams with marshmallows and butter-soaked rolls and potatoes don’t offer enough of the “kill-you” nutrients that make your food just that much yummier. I wonder if the owner of Charlie’s ever gets up to Waukesha, Wisconsin, to visit Jimmy’s Grotto for a Ponza rotta, which is a DEEP-FRIED CALZONE? You just know that Caroline and I have that on our list of places to go and things to try; hopefully, Jimmy’s has a factory tour so we can steal some calzone.

We didn’t get far today, and by evening, we were only about 100 miles from Houma, Louisiana, where we started our day. Dinner was at Don’s Seafood in Lafayette, as was our stay at the Travelodge. We never did need to take advantage of the hurricane evacuation route.