Some things never change....thankfully.
Your favorite explorers of all endeavors that are cheap or free got a little selfish this past weekend and indulged themselves. The world famous Vacations From Home team made their yearly trek to the Crawfish Festival at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in Augusta, NJ. This is the fifth year for your illustrious team to nibble on all kinds of God's critters, Cajun style, and to dance & boogie to swamp pop and jazz music. This year though was a tough decision. Sadly, the Crawfish festival is not cheap, especially in today's economy. At $40 per person just for the right to enter the grounds which did not cover food and drink, both very very necessary ingredients to the day, the cost was nearly prohibitive and it was a calculated risk. Even if the VFH team were flush with cash, the cost of the day runs counter to its credo to mooch and slouch its way through the summer and to pass on to you fair and wonderful readers of this blog all the sordid details so you may also enjoy on the quick. But, this event this Crawfish Festival now in its 21st year and held the first weekend of June is a must for us and we took a deep breath, counted out our money and then drove to the upper regions of New Jersey. It proved to be the best year.
Truthfully it is worth every penny.
After 5 fesitvals we are already seasoned travelers to this event though we neither camp, nor set up party tents as many other long time visitors. Each year we marvel at these people who spend the weekend and decorate their tents with beads and other trinkets and set up elaborate displays and carry poles adorned with masks and and feather boas, and then happily settle our butts down in lawn chairs near the main stage (and a beer station) to gather in the music and the people festooned in hats and garb as well as a great number of Bruce Wray worthy Aloha shirts. Each year we say we're going to camp, each year we say we're bringing a "posse" (to get a group rate) and each year we roll our eyes and sip our beer.
After we pick our spot we get food. First it's a carton of crawfish boil. Janet had never eaten a crawfish before she started coming here and now she can suck the head and pinch the tail like a regular old coon ass. Then red beans and rice and alligator sausage. We stopped here at this point, though in years past we would eat far too much and we couldn't walk back to the car! But there are other delectable items on the menu: etoufee, crawfish pie, boudin links, oyster po-boys, shrimp creole, beignets and Jambalaya. But, because of the BP oil spill off the Louisiana coast there were no fresh oysters available. Evidently all the crawfish are farm raised and out of harm's way, that is until they get to the boiling pot!
The food is very good. You watch the people cooking the stuff in the back and you think it's just a mix of some sort. Well, a couple of years ago at one of these stands we met the head chef of a restaurant in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was making sure all the Jambalaya was cooking to order. He gave us his card when we told him we were traveling to Louisiana that summer and we had the best meals at Prejean's. We actually drove out of our way on the way back from Lake Charles just so we could eat a lunch there. The food was excellent. If you'd like to read about that particular trip you can always go to http://cajuncountrytravels.blogspot.com/.
That was back in the day when the Vacations From Home team was flush with cash and able to go to exotic locales. The crawfish festival is not exotic, but it is a must event....we just have to figure out how to sneak in next year...
http://www.crawfishfest.com/
After the food and a couple of beers we were ready to shed our dignity. We danced to Jeffery Broussard and the Creole Cowboys at the dance hall. There is a definite way of dancing to cajun music, whether it's a waltz or a two-step and well, we limped and boogied and sweated and laughed at ourselves and then sat and marveled at how beautifully some of the people danced to a band that featured an accordian player with a cowboy hat and a "spoon guy", someone who wears a washboard over his shoulders and strums at it with spoons. Then we bopped over to the Jaegermeister hall to weave precariously to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Janet flirted with the Sax player in a feeble ploy to score beads....women....
Evidently they have dance lessons from 11-12. Janet and I say the same thing every year, that we'll get there early enough...then we sip our beers and roll our eyes.
The main act for the day on the main stage was Taj Mahal. I was mildly interested because that's a big name in music, although we really liked Amanda Shaw and the Cute Guys. Shaw plays a mean fiddle, but Taj Mahal didn't hold our interest and we danced a whole lot with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
Thanks for reading, hope you put this event on your calender for next year.
If anyone has any suggestions for a VFH sojurn please pass such information on to us... Or if you want to invite us over to your house for dinner, especially if you have a pool or beach house, feel free to consider our names for the guest list. .... that's not mooching...is it?
love,
greg
Your favorite explorers of all endeavors that are cheap or free got a little selfish this past weekend and indulged themselves. The world famous Vacations From Home team made their yearly trek to the Crawfish Festival at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in Augusta, NJ. This is the fifth year for your illustrious team to nibble on all kinds of God's critters, Cajun style, and to dance & boogie to swamp pop and jazz music. This year though was a tough decision. Sadly, the Crawfish festival is not cheap, especially in today's economy. At $40 per person just for the right to enter the grounds which did not cover food and drink, both very very necessary ingredients to the day, the cost was nearly prohibitive and it was a calculated risk. Even if the VFH team were flush with cash, the cost of the day runs counter to its credo to mooch and slouch its way through the summer and to pass on to you fair and wonderful readers of this blog all the sordid details so you may also enjoy on the quick. But, this event this Crawfish Festival now in its 21st year and held the first weekend of June is a must for us and we took a deep breath, counted out our money and then drove to the upper regions of New Jersey. It proved to be the best year.
Truthfully it is worth every penny.
After 5 fesitvals we are already seasoned travelers to this event though we neither camp, nor set up party tents as many other long time visitors. Each year we marvel at these people who spend the weekend and decorate their tents with beads and other trinkets and set up elaborate displays and carry poles adorned with masks and and feather boas, and then happily settle our butts down in lawn chairs near the main stage (and a beer station) to gather in the music and the people festooned in hats and garb as well as a great number of Bruce Wray worthy Aloha shirts. Each year we say we're going to camp, each year we say we're bringing a "posse" (to get a group rate) and each year we roll our eyes and sip our beer.
After we pick our spot we get food. First it's a carton of crawfish boil. Janet had never eaten a crawfish before she started coming here and now she can suck the head and pinch the tail like a regular old coon ass. Then red beans and rice and alligator sausage. We stopped here at this point, though in years past we would eat far too much and we couldn't walk back to the car! But there are other delectable items on the menu: etoufee, crawfish pie, boudin links, oyster po-boys, shrimp creole, beignets and Jambalaya. But, because of the BP oil spill off the Louisiana coast there were no fresh oysters available. Evidently all the crawfish are farm raised and out of harm's way, that is until they get to the boiling pot!
The food is very good. You watch the people cooking the stuff in the back and you think it's just a mix of some sort. Well, a couple of years ago at one of these stands we met the head chef of a restaurant in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was making sure all the Jambalaya was cooking to order. He gave us his card when we told him we were traveling to Louisiana that summer and we had the best meals at Prejean's. We actually drove out of our way on the way back from Lake Charles just so we could eat a lunch there. The food was excellent. If you'd like to read about that particular trip you can always go to http://cajuncountrytravels.blogspot.com/.
That was back in the day when the Vacations From Home team was flush with cash and able to go to exotic locales. The crawfish festival is not exotic, but it is a must event....we just have to figure out how to sneak in next year...
http://www.crawfishfest.com/
After the food and a couple of beers we were ready to shed our dignity. We danced to Jeffery Broussard and the Creole Cowboys at the dance hall. There is a definite way of dancing to cajun music, whether it's a waltz or a two-step and well, we limped and boogied and sweated and laughed at ourselves and then sat and marveled at how beautifully some of the people danced to a band that featured an accordian player with a cowboy hat and a "spoon guy", someone who wears a washboard over his shoulders and strums at it with spoons. Then we bopped over to the Jaegermeister hall to weave precariously to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Janet flirted with the Sax player in a feeble ploy to score beads....women....
Evidently they have dance lessons from 11-12. Janet and I say the same thing every year, that we'll get there early enough...then we sip our beers and roll our eyes.
The main act for the day on the main stage was Taj Mahal. I was mildly interested because that's a big name in music, although we really liked Amanda Shaw and the Cute Guys. Shaw plays a mean fiddle, but Taj Mahal didn't hold our interest and we danced a whole lot with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
Thanks for reading, hope you put this event on your calender for next year.
If anyone has any suggestions for a VFH sojurn please pass such information on to us... Or if you want to invite us over to your house for dinner, especially if you have a pool or beach house, feel free to consider our names for the guest list. .... that's not mooching...is it?
love,
greg
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