The Road to New Iberia

We had a bit of a mix-up with a sister's bike, so Elder L and I took a little drive to New Iberia today to make a bike exchange. This is one of the areas in our mission that we've never been to before, so it was fun to do something completely different. New I is about 80 miles from Baton Rouge, but it's still in the BR Stake!

On our way down we passed through St. Martinville, a little 250 year old city that sits on the Bayou Teche. I thought we were going to take a driving town to see some of the most visited locations, like Evangeline Oak Park. The tree there is named for the heroine of the poem "Evangeline," written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1847. 

The only places we actually stopped were at the bakery for Marc and the cemetery for me. I'm still completely captivated by Louisiana cemeteries. But today I saw something I don't recall ever seeing in any cemetery--in Louisiana or elsewhere.

Every grave faces the same direction except the 2 on the right. I thought all graves  were positioned east to west, with the feet toward the east in anticipation of the Second Coming. Perhaps not. Anyway, that was a first.

Some very old graves in St. Martinville Cemetery

We made the bike exchange with the New Iberia Sisters, Sister Encizo from Texas and Sister Truchard, from Southern Calif.

Love these Sisters, but we sure don't get to see them very often. 

We passed the Atchafalaya Basin to get to New Iberia.  Looks like the spring melt was really early this year!

The water's higher than we've ever seen it--much higher than a month ago when the Blocker's were here. We've been on a swamp tour when the boat couldn't even go through this area because there was almost no water.