Day Six Hundred Seventy Seven

Okay. Louisiana. Louisiana. Who knew that state was so gorgeous? I certainly didn't. Baton Rouge (and all the other parts of Louisiana we drove through) were green and water filled and beautiful, and I was impressed. Even though it was a long 8-hour drive from Austin (thank you, Emily, for being a champ and driving the whole way and not giving me too much grief about being a horrible road trip partner that kept falling asleep in the passenger seat), it was a great and much needed mini-vacation.

The main reason for going was to see Emily's roommate get married on Saturday morning. The wedding was held at a verrrry fancy plantation, and it was brunch themed and had a live jazz band. And since I love both breakfast food and jazz music, I didn't even care that I didn't know anyone there. And of course, we were both dressed fancy and had to use this opportunity for an impromptu plantation photoshoot.

I don't know if you can tell, but we had a pretty good time. And we figured, while we were dressed in our wedding-best, why not hit up some casinos? Okay, it was mainly me that wanted to go to casinos, because Texas doesn't have any and I wanted to play slot machines. Both casinos were on the Mississippi river (one was on a riverboat!), and I broke even...which in my view is basically winning.

If was a full Saturday. And on the trip back to Austin, we stopped just outside of Lafayette to go on a swamp tour. Because once Emily and I learned there was such a thing as a swamp tour, it had to happen. We met our tour guide Ernest, a retired war veteran, who runs his own little tour company called Couret's Swamp Tours (if any of you are remotely near Lafayette, LA, you need to go meet Ernest and let him show you the swamp). He was adorable and knew everything one could possibly know about the swamp and surrounding area. We saw gators and raced around 30 miles of swamp basin in Ernest's speedboat, and it was awesome.

Underneath the giant highways.

There's a gator in this photo. Can you spot it? 

Ernest!

So all in all, Louisiana was awesome, and I was a little bummed to have to come back to work. Today my lab mate and I met with some congressmen to try and get more funding, and I have no idea if anything we said made sense. Cross your fingers!