You can have your beer caddy — and drink it too!

There are Build a Bear Workshops and paint with wine parties. Now, there’s a chance to build a six-pack beer holder while tasting a flight of six craft beers! 

It’s the Build-A-Beer Workshop this Thursday, July 19, 2018, at artspace in Shreveport, Louisiana. The fun begins at 5:30 p.m. and all parts and tools are provided to create a beer caddy while artspace Studio Artists will lend a hand. The six different beers to be sampled will be provided by Eagle Distributing Company/Budweiser, whose employees will answer questions about the brews. The beers will be GRB Rhinestone Life, a wheat IPA; Parish Canebrake Wheat Ale; Tin Roof Voodoo Pale Ale; New Belgium Fat Tire White Ale, a new beer from the brewery; Bells Two Hearted IPA, just ranked the no. one IPA in America; and Founders Dirty Bastard Scotch Ale.

If that wasn’t enough incentive, a craft six-pack goes home with you as well. And…the first 30 people to purchase their tickets receive a bottle opener for their beer caddy.

Tickets are $30 and participants must be age 21 and over. Click here for more information. 

Weird, Wacky and Wild South is written by food and travel writer Chere Dastugue Coen, who loves a great craft beer and a great craft project.

Take a bite out of this crocodile

Visitors to Louisiana are often scared of our reptilian creatures. And no, our alligators are not crocodiles. Those ferocious beasts native to Australia and a few sections of South Florida are really scary! Our gators get fairly freaked out when humans get close and that's a good thing.

What visitors should do is take a bite out of our crocodiles. I know I said we don't have any but in Shreveport, we do have a few, those of the chocolate variety. The Chocolate Crocodile at The Louisiana Boardwalk in Bossier City (just over the bridge from Shreveport), serves up a host of chocolate goodies and other sweets, but don't miss the Monster Crocodile Pecan Apple, a Granny Smith apple that's dipped in homemade caramel, rolled in pecans and topped with hmilk chocolate. It's even drizzled with white chocolate as the finale. Talk about scrumptious good.

If you mention you are a fan of the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau, you'll receive 35 percent off your purchase. Read more about that discount here. 

This weekend is the perfect time to visit Shreveport and Bossier City for the Mudbug Madness Festival happens today (May 25) through Sunday. There's live entertainment on three stages, fun for all ages and lots and lots of crawfish and other Cajun specialties. Active duty and retired military with ID will get in free all four days.

Cheré Dastugue Coen is a travel and food writer from South Louisiana who appreciates the weird and wacky side of life, including those delicious, decadent chocolate crocodiles in Bossier City. Write to her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

A beer by any other name

We love beers with a sense of humor. Take Great Raft Brewing in Shreveport, for instance, home to Reasonably Corrupt dark lager, the perfect drink while enjoying Louisiana politics. Great Raft has several beers with weird and fun names: Grace and Grit, Southern Drawl, Creature of Habit, All My Tomorrows, At Arm’s Length (good for when creepy men come hitting) and Awkward Uncle (see photo), what they call their "boozy winter seasonal." We’ve visited this brewery twice, enjoying its enormous and hip tasting room, brewery tours and, of course, the delicious beers.
            If you visit the taproom, you can fill up a jug and bring these tasty beers home. But if you can’t make it to Shreveport, Great Raft beers are located in stores that sell craft beers throughout Louisiana; see their web site for details.

Ziplining over gators, are we crazy?

When I told people I would be ziplining across alligators, they felt my forehead for fever.

The truth was I was going to zipline over 100 alligators not to mention camels and other exotic creatures at Gators and Friends Alligator Park and Exotic Zoo in Greenwood, Louisiana, about 10 miles outside Shreveport!

The first thing you consider is how this has to be a novelty and that there can’t possibly be 100 gators lying beneath you waiting for a snack to fall. But the first thing one sees upon entering the park is several five- to six-foot alligators basking in the sun. Definitely cause for pause. One of my partners in insanity doubted they were real. They were real all right. So were the dozens of gators in the pond stretching beneath the zip lines.


Our guides went to great length to assure us that the cables and all related contraptions attached to our bodies, the poles at the top of the stairs we would climb and the double cables on which we would swing were all completely safe. Once I spotted what was involved, I have to admit I couldn’t imagine anything going wrong.

 
The real scare, it turned out, was climbing up a spiral staircase that rattled as you ascended and stepping off the first platform and letting yourself fly through the air. We did this several times, through woods and pastures, each one a little more advanced than the previous flight but never less scary in my eyes. Flying across a stretch of land on one of Louisiana’s finest autumn days was a thrill but I found myself gearing up so much to step off those platforms that I was exhausted by the last run.

And what a run that was. The longest stretch and one in which you fly the fastest is also the run over a large pond filled with gators. By this time you’d think you wouldn’t even consider the ancient reptiles below but still I did a double take. Now I would be stepping off that frightful platform and flying over creatures that might not kill me, but would definitely take off a limb or two.

I did it. I ziplined over gators!

“Don’t worry,” our guide informed us. “They are hibernating and don’t eat this time of year.”

Well, that was a relief.

Gators and Friends is great fun and now that I conquered my ziplining trek over unhungry gators I would confidently encourage anyone else to try the experience. The park’s also a great spot for walking among exotic animals and letting the kids pet tamer beasts such as miniature horses and deer. And when the gators are actual hungry, they even let the tourists feed them.

Cheré Coen is an award-winning travel writer specializing in the Deep South. She is also the author of “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana” and co-author of “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

Of Crafts, Coke and Cotton: Monroe joins the Louisiana Holiday Trail of Lights

            For years Shreveport-Bossier City and Natchitoches have teamed up with three east Texas towns for the annual Holiday Trail of Lights. This year, it’s all about the Bayou State, with Texas leaving the trail and Monroe, Minden and Alexandria joining the fun.

            The 2011 trail makes a nice loop through the state with Natchitoches and its 85-year-old popular Christmas festival at the core. On its left flank will be Monroe, which offers a unique holiday experience.

            Christmas on the River will be a month-long holiday celebration that includes both Monroe and West Monroe, each facing the sleepy Ouachita River. Here will be dancing lights along Antique Alley (a great place to find unique items at great prices), a downtown gallery crawl, the fourth annual Bawcomville Redneck Christmas Parade along with a parade sponsored by the Kiwanis Club and a pet parade, chili cook-off, theatrical performances, fireworks and much more.

            The Children’s Museum will transform into a Santa’s Christmas Village with photos with Santa and snow falling, letters to Santa at the Peppermint Post Office, a place for children to create ornaments and a store to purchase gifts for family. In addition, there’s ice skating outside. Admission is only $5, $10 for ice skating.

            The Biedenharn Museum and Gardens has built by Joseph Biedenham, the first bottler of Coca-Cola. His daughter Emy-Lou, a European opera singer, lived in the home for years, creating a beautiful garden and conservatory out back. Today, the house and garden is open for tours, along with the Bible Museum next door (Emy-Lou collected Bibles and the museum exhibits both hers and traveling displays) and the Coca-Cola Museum on the corner with its Model T delivery truck, memorabilia and machines that sell the beverage for 5 cents.

            Christmas at the Biedenharn will include unique decorations of each room throughout the month of December. There will be a Chamber Arts Brass Christmas Concert on Dec. 6 in the fountain room and an open house Dec. 8-10. The Coca-Cola Museum also has a gift shop with wonderful unique gift items, not to mention a fabulous artistic nativity.

            I mentioned shopping on Antique Alley — there are numerous antique shops in the Cotton Port Historic District of West Monroe, and they vary from collectibles and Americana to 18^th and 19^th century furniture. Since I like to include a book to enjoy in travels, I recommend Memory Lane Antiques with its extensive collection of old books, many Victorian with gilded covers and unique illustrations. I found an old copy of Longfellow’s “Evangeline” with photos of Nova Scotia and the original Cajun homesteads, plus a Golden Book of “Rudolph” — remember that one?

            As for a great place to eat, don’t miss Cotton, formerly known as Coda Bar & Grill, run by Chef Cory Bahr, a recent Louisiana Cookin’ Chef to Watch and winner of the Louisiana Seafood competition. The restaurant, with its menu of exquisite boudin balls, red bean hummus, creamy shrimp and grits, tender pork loin and so much more, is housed in the second oldest building in Monroe.

            For more information on the holiday festivities, visit www.christmastontheriver.org or call (318) 387-5691.