Cajun Country

We have been exploring the Southeastern portion of Louisiana. At the park we are staying at (Hidden Ponds), we met a couple traveling to Texas for the winter from their home in Wisconsin. Meet Larry and Sharon Chick. Larry is a retired pharmacist and Sharon a social worker.

On Tuesday we traveled to the Grand Isle area to see where "the" oil spill occurred. The area, in the past, was 9 miles of white sand beach. This is what we found. The beach is closed, blocked off with fencing. The sand was dark gray-brown in color and was furrowed into rows. Tents were set up every several hundred yards with workers who are supposedly cleaning up "Tar Balls". We walked into one of these tents to find 9 guys sitting around a table playing dominoes. We talked with the only one who could speak English to find out that they were Mexicans brought in from California to help clean up the oil. So much for employing the locals who's livelihood was affected by the spill. Here are 2 photos.

Today we took a tour through the bayous and canals of the wetlands. 75% of America's wetlands are in this area of Louisiana. The tour lasted almost 2 hours and was conducted by a local Cajun man. He sang us traditional Cajun songs as well as pointing out the critters of the area. Below are just several of the pictures we took. As in the swamps of Okefenokee, there were no bugs or smell as you may think there would be in a swamp. The air was fresh and exhilarating. We saw all types of birds and several alligators.

Afterwards we went out to a local restaurant and had Cajun cooking. It was really good shrimp, alligator and something called boudin balls. It was rice, sausage and peppers rolled into balls the size of hush puppies and deep fried. They were really great.
Tomorrow we leave for Texas. Our reservations give us 3 days to go 570 plus miles. John is going to have to drive further than he has been doing each day. We will be staying at Lake Medina for several weeks until the new year.