Mardi Gras Traditional Geocache
Plangegang: Will reopen in new location under same name.
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(regular)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
USE CAUTION. Several baby rattle snakes were present when cache was placed. Medium clearance 2W in good weather.
This cache was adopted and moved. Original owner was Cajun Team. We (plangegang) went to Mardi Gras 2011 and had an epic time. This cache is in memory of that trip. All beads were "earned" or caught during the many, many parades. Enjoy the cache and please hide as well as when found. The following is info from the original owners.
Mardi Gras History 101
Carnival traditions were brought over to North America from Europe along with the first colonists. Louisiana was founded by the French and for about 45 years was ruled by Spain, then briefly by France again before Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803. The 85 years of combined French and Spanish rule resulted in a strong European cast to the settlements established in this part of the country, which were carried through by their Creole inheritors.
When the United States took possession of Louisiana in 1803 and Americans began settling in, establishing their presence in New Orleans, there was, for more than 40 years, a bit of antagonism between the Creole society and the American upstarts, who controlled two separate sections of the developing city. The more puritanical Americans shunned Carnival, while the Creoles continued to celebrate it, though the celebration began slowly to die in the 1850s. The break-out of riots in 1856 did not help matters, and it seemed that Carnival traditions were about to die out altogether in the growing port city.
That same year, a group of transplanted citizens from the city of Mobile (which had been celebrating Carnival since 1705) who were members of a marching/ball society calling themselves the Cowbellions, met in the third-floor room of a pharmacy in the Vieux Carre and decided to form a carnival society of their own here in New Orleans. They also decided to do something which had been virtually unknown up to that time in New Orleans carnival --to field a tableaux display consisting of marchers in elaborate papier-mâché costumes, and three floats. They fashioned themselves as a royal court in the traditions of Old England, even down to adapting the word "crew" in Chaucerian fashion so that it came out, forever afterward, as "krewe". They chose, as their central figure representing themselves, the offspring of the Greek god Bacchus and the sorceress Circe, as filtered through the poetry of John Milton, and thus was born the Mystick Krewe of Comus.
All of this to say, Goose & Scratch, watching the light of Reno/Sparks comming on in the early evening felt a little home sick, so we named this cache "MARDI GRAS"
Happy Caching
Scratch & Goose
Cajun Team
Fallon NV.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Qbja naq haqre.