returning to New Orleans

It is said the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. My daughter is now living in New Orleans! And, we are returning to this great area of the world for a visit. She is actually outside of the town, in Metarie, which is evidently the first "suburb" of NOLA. That though is close enough for me! . . . . We're staying in the quarter on Boubon, at the same hotel as before and we're already planning out our eating schedule for the four day trip. Of all the places I've visited in this vast world, I have traveled to New Orleans the most for pleasure. This will count as the fourth eating soiree and I'm been there for work another five times. I recently sent my son down there to visit his sister during the Marde Gras and he had a hoot. I don't mind missing that madness, but I do miss that food and culture.... I also miss my daughter. I have not seen her since November.

what a wonderful world

Sitting in Fremin's that night so very, very long ago, ages and ages now it seems, it was hard to disagree. It was the last night of our spectacular trip to Louisiana and we had dinner in this elegant place in the historical district of Thibodaux. The 1878 three story building once housed a drug store, but on this night, this serene and wonderful night that seemed to stretch forever like the warm enveloping arms of a lover, every sensual nuance of Louisiana was on display. We had martinis and wine, chargrilled oysters, redfish and crawfish in one last expansive meal. We lingered over more martinis and a very talented jazz ensemble playing on this Wednesday night kept us enthralled. We did not want to leave. But, because we had listened to an informative and harrowing dissertation on the loss of Louisiana land and the damage done by Rita and Katrina by a park ranger in Thibodaux that day our appreciation of life’s preciousness was heightened. Despite the travails of this world though, the medicinal elixir being stirred here in Fremin’s kept us safe and sated. We truly felt happy that night in Fremin's and the very idea of returning home seemed baffling. Life goes on, even when it goes badly is a phrase I often use, but the approach to life here in Louisiana, given the history of the Cajun people, changes that sentiment from a survival course to a way of enjoying life no matter what is tossed in their path.

I have learned a lot while here in Louisiana, but the dearest lesson gained is this approach to life. Listening to that jazz ensemble play Louis Armstrong's standard “What A Wonderful World,” that delights in the simplicity of life, it all made sense and I hope I remember it for the rest of my days.

Laissez le bon temps roule.

Sigh….

This is the last entry for our trip to Louisiana. I apologize for the break in time, but it was my birthday last week and well... laissez le bon temps roule... come'on...!

Thanks so very much for reading and for all your emails. I hope you all find happiness in this world as well.

love,

greg

make levees not war…

Make levees not war. That’s a popular t-shirt these days in New Orleans. Vying for the tourist’s attention among other classic shirts that say “pinch the tail and suck the head,” usually with an affectionate looking crawfish smiling lasciviously from the shirt, and “I’m not an alcoholic… Alcoholics go to meetings,” we are reminded that a serious, serious catastrophe hit this state and specifically this city less than 3 years ago. Sadly, despite the nice phrase, people are making money off this calamity. I was particularly mortified when I saw signs offering tours of the devastated Ninth Ward. I did not inquire if any of the proceeds from the tours went to the displaced citizens of that part of the city; it just seemed so viscerally wrong.

As it was explained to me by a U.S. Park Ranger several things happened to broker the New Orleans disaster. Not to go into incredible detail here, but the levees that were created to control the river, or to circumvent the Mississippi River by ships, and building far too dangerously close to Lake Ponchatrain all led to the disaster. The eye of Katrina hit Mississippi. It was the storm surge that shot up the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal or MRGO that raised the waters of the Lake and then eroded the levees in the Ninth Ward. Look at a map. Trace MRGO from the Gulf straight into the heart of the Ninth Ward. It’s eerie to see how the disaster can be easily explained and how man unwittingly disrespected nature and created all the conditions for this to happen. If the wetlands and marshes south of New Orleans were not being eroded, by oil, by the controlling of the Mississippi’s course via levees and were able to absorb the brunt of hurricane force storm surges, this may have been averted. If homes were not built on what really is marshland, reclaimed from the lake, the disaster that horrified America in 2005 might not have happened.

Water always finds the easiest route to take. Water will go where it “wants” to go, was a lesson my Father taught me. The Mississippi is kind of headstrong on this subject. Sure, we control it with levees, but that is until it finds a better way to go. As it was explained to me by the Park Ranger in Thibodaux the Mississippi River is like a huge garden hose, flopping about if unchecked. Of course the flips and flops take hundreds and hundreds of years to complete. Bayou Lafourche and the Atchafalaya water basin were once the main routes of the Mississippi River. This river that flows at such incredible volume taking sediment with it from as far north as Minnesota builds lands, thrusts up natural levees as it rushes to the gulf. It floods too. That’s what it normally does. But, since monstrous, towering levees were built along its banks, the Mississippi complies, at least for now.

Our plan this day was to see a plantation. Sugarcane made the area west of New Orleans prosperous and a couple of the old places are open for tours. We settled on the aristocratic Oak Alley Plantation. We listened politely to the tour, marveled at the opulence and gaped in awe at the three hundred year old oaks gnarled and wise, stretching over the main entrance and giving this place its name. But from the second floor balcony where we were afforded a spectacular view of the oaks lining the alley, barely a sun splash making it through the thick canopy, I kept looking at the large hill across Route 18. It was the levee. I figured I have been reading about this river, I have to go see it. When we left Oak Alley Plantation we drove directly across the small road and parked in a gravel area. We took pictures of the plantation and then we walked to the top of the levee.

It was alarming because it was so unexpected. The Mississippi River, completely hidden by the levees that create a country lane-feel to this sleepy road, is so wide and is moving so swiftly that it is hard to consider that the two are side-by-side. Yet here it is and suddenly the power of this great river is before us, whisking the air from our lungs. Afterwards we drove with reverence along the many twists and bends of this great river all the way to Donaldsonville. We did not mind that this piled on the miles; it was fascinating to follow upstream every whim of the Mississippi.

Bayou Lafourche, once joined at the hip with the Mississippi, starts in Donaldsonville. Now separated from the might river by less than 1,000 feet, the bayou is a nothing like the water it sprung from, yet Lafourche will take you all the way to Grand Isle. We drove along the appropriately named Mississippi Street that separated the two water courses and marveled at this comparatively withered street of water before heading north to drive past the Nottoway Plantation in While Castle. No sliders here.

But, hunger was getting the best of us. We headed in, away from the river to take a typically circuitous route back to Thibodaux. We used route 69 and eventually 70 to get us to Morgan City and route 90, but we got on some roads that drove as deep into the Atchafalaya water basin as possible. Any more into it and we would have needed a boat. There was once a small colony of people living here in the 1920’s, called Bayou Chene. The trappers, fishermen and lumberjacks and their families that once comprised this community eventually disappeared and according to a film we saw at the U.S. Historical Park, the exact site of Bayou Chene is unknown today.

I think we found them….

Well, we did drive by some very poor homes. We drove past trailers, ramshackle, clapboard listing homes, some sitting in water and hoped these were just camps, where people would come to hunt and fish. But, then we saw kids playing amongst eviscerated cars and Spanish moss looking particularly ghost-like and figured that a large part of this poverty was called home.

Thibodaux seemed especially cosmopolitan when we returned. We had a ho-hum dinner at Flanagan’s and then went to her sister restaurant in the historical section of town, Fremin’s, for a much needed martini; anything to affirm our place in the fortunate social order of things.

Thibodaux

There is no “th” sound in the French language, so this is why a lot of Cajuns say “dis” instead of “this,” “dat” instead of well… you get the picture. Sprinkled with French the whole act of conversing with a Cajun is quite an adventure. Just trying to get through the pronunciations for cities like Iowa or today’s destination, Thibodaux has led to hours long discussions between us. T-be-dough? It certainly passed the time for us as we drove along the relatively rural route 90 and avoiding the madness of interstate 10. We paused briefly in Iowa to take pictures of the Dirty Rice Saloon and drove slowly through sleepy towns like Jennings and Crowley to admire some nice homes. Crowley is known as the Rice Capital of America, and we meandered down the main avenue, snapped pictures of the Rice Theatre and peered at a couple of elegant homes, but sadly we were not in time for the International Rice Festival, so we continued on to the half way point to Thibodaux… Prejean’s.

The lunch we had at Prejean’s was perhaps the finest meal we’ve gotten so far in Louisiana. We were served two expansive meals that reduced us to giggling schoolchildren by the end! The nuance of the flavors spread across our taste buds was remarkable. Janet later would say I get that faraway look in my eyes as my senses are caressed by the wonderful food. I consider myself very fortunate to eat such meals and I am amazed consistently at the flavors. At Prejean’s we had another order of the Sassafras Shrimp and we tackled the waitress when she tried to remove our plate… Janet was still trying to lick the plate clean. Then we shared two meals. I had Catfish Pontchartrain that was lightly fried and topped their “gold medal crawfish sauce Pontchartrain”. Now, I’ve been eating a lot of catfish while in Louisiana, mainly because the oysters unless pasteurized are not in season, and the crawfish run was finished in late May and so there’s no boil available. But, this catfish at Prejean’s restaurant in Lafayette was light and tender and the brown catfish Pontchartrain sauce had a deep taste with a slow smoldering spice. Topped with several little crawfish, I almost did not want to give up my second half to Janet. I was glad I did though. She got Oysters Saxophone! Fired oysters and shitake mushrooms are piled into a hollowed loaf of bread and covered with a lemon parsley beurre blanc. Normally we try to avoid carbs… but you’ll want to use this bread to sop up every drop of the sauce.

All told we were in Prejean’s for two hours! They begged us to leave. Janet bought a t-shirt, but they made me give back the stuffed alligator. (I wouldn’t have fit it on the airplane anyway.)

After leaving Prejean’s for the last time (3 meals in all) we barreled down route 90 toward Thibodaux. The destination was more a matter of convenience than an interesting place to hang our hat for a couple of days. We picked out the town as a close enough point to reach plantations along the Mississippi River and to New Orleans.

We were somewhat disappointed in Thibodaux when we first arrived. It seemed dreary and the historic district at first looked to be a row of empty storefronts. We checked into a hotel on the other side of Bayou Lafourche. We had traveled along the latter length of this particular bayou on our way to Grand Isle so many days ago. It is called by some down here to world’s longest street and for good reason. Many of the homes would face the bayou and not the streets behind the homes and would use the bayou as the main means of transporation. Lafourche is from the French word, “fork,” and at one time this slow moving water was actually a part of the Mississippi River itself. A French priest in the early 1700’s stood near where the Mississippi and the Bayou Lafourche once split off and wrote that he could not tell which leg was the main branch of the river. But, in 1905 the fork was damned and then reduced to a slow moving, almost stagnant bayou.

Well, despite all the history, we almost did not venture out of our hotel that night. The town seemed shuttered and without promise. But, beer, that strong elixir given to us by the gods beckoned and we drove out into the night searching for a barstool. After plying the empty streets of Thibodaux for a bit we decided to park in the historic district. We had seen some neon lights and thought to investigate. Every place we looked into was open, but empty. It was not until we gulped and headed into Rene’s Bar. It’s windows were nearly boarded up and there was only a faint light filtering beneath the door. It seemed dead, or dangerous. But at Rene's we found solace. Perhaps another time we would not have been so adventurous, but we had learned that such fearful steps only lead to disappointments and throughout our time in Louisiana we have encountered nothing but good times behind such similar clapboard facades.

Rene’s did not disappoint, though it was far from the charm of other places we’ve visited. We were more in civilization than in the rural backwaters. We were not the life of the party. Thankfully we were just another couple that bellied up to the bar (a metaphor that was quite appropriate given our sated guts). It was a bar! Janet had her beer wrapped in a napkin… I did not. People played pool. Others at the bar in voices that were not tinged with Cajun accents joked with the bartender, but ignored us. We smiled, happy to have found this place.

Thanks for reading….

If you’re keeping track you’ll notice that this entry is quite late. Our last few days in Louisiana were a flurry of activity with not a lot of downtime. Plus the added inconvenience of having to endure weather related plane delays kept us in New Orleans for an extra day…af the airport, unfortunately. After finally returning home and finding my house needed to get put back in order, I have had little time to write, but I will finish the next couple of entries in the coming days. I hope you’re enjoying reading about this great state as much as we had exploring it!

finding my way

The way I like to travel is when I see a road that is interesting I take it, even if it's not in the intended direction. Like a latter day Yogi Berra coming to a fork in the road, over the years I have done this, a lot. But, I have had my greatest successes while traveling alone without having to answer to anyone. When traveling with others there is always an agenda and wailing voices that plea, “are we THERE yet?” Janet though is different. When I get to that proverbial fork in the road that just begs me to make a left, although making a right is really the correct way, Janet smiles coyly, whips out her array of maps and says, ‘Okay.’ Dang, she has even suggested side-trips while out here in Louisiana. She calls them “Greg’s way.”

Sigh.

Throughout our travels in Louisiana, traversing the southern half of the state, we have deviated from the agenda and have gone out exploring on plenty of these roads that don’t even SHOW UP on the official Louisiana state map. It has led us to a myriad of delightful experiences. From the tumult of New Orleans we’ve traveled through the high water serenity of bayous in the Atchafalaya basin and found isolated windswept vistas of the Gulf. We’ve been enchanted by songbirds and hypnotized by the clang of penny slots on a riverboat casino. Without our brave forays into the much smaller roads we would have missed out on a cool refreshing beer at Red’s Levee Saloon. The act of traveling is often more rewarding than the destination and this wonderfully diverse state affirmed in me the joy of traveling along a road just to see what was around the next bend.

Yesterday, a trip that was supposed to be a quick jaunt into the Lacassine Wildlife Refuge, the last leg of our trip along the Creole Nature Trail, turned out to be an all-day affair. We intended to take a swing out to the refuge and hurtle back down the country roads to our hotel in the Charpentier district of Lake Charles to swim in the pool and eat an early dinner before our long drive today. We went out into the fierce, bright sunlight of Southwest Louisiana and drove along the prairies outside of Lake Charles. We passed field after field of rice. Each time we paused to ogle an interesting sight, like a dilapidated barn or listing home, the heat and humidity pressed against us like a drunkard. We drive without the air conditioning on with an eye to the gas mileage and because it’s not quite as big a shock when we exit the car to snap a picture or peer out onto some vista. This may sound ludicrous and we do sweat, but we are used to it, and the beers afterward taste especially refreshing.

Our first stop in the Lacassine Refuge was the pool, but it is certainly not for swimming. It is 16,000 acres of freshwater marsh at the convergence of the Central and Mississippi flyways of migratory birds and a major landing spot for all these tired and hungry birds on their own instinctive travel agendas. Created by a series of low levees by the government, the pool is also home to a large variety of birds. Despite the brutal midday heat we took our time, slowly driving down the chalky dust road to birdwatch. (Ricky would have been SO proud of us.)

Our greatest sighting was a Roseate Spoonbill. We gasped at the beautiful pink feather of this oddly beaked bird as it gracefully flew away. Evidently the Lacassine pool is home to a rare nesting rookery for the Roseate Spoonbill.
We also saw a Common Moorhen prance across lily-pads the side of plates at a country buffet. Each time the colorfully-faced Moorhen hopped to another pad it squawked. Refusing to fly it would hop and leap and step gingerly pad to pad, squawking merrily as it hunted for morsels of food.

Because the Lacassine Refuge is a freshwater pool the plant life is different than in the salt marshes. There are water lilies sprouting hearty flowers that turn the landscape in every direction white or yellow. The yellow lilies have a seed pod that appears when the flower blooms looking like a shower head, which then dries and holds the seeds in a little cup waiting to be tipped into the water. I’m bringing home one of the seed pods. I crept down to the water’s edge and plucked one that was growing near to the shore.

I would not have been so brave though had I known what was in the water aside from gators. Later on when we got out of the car near some fishermen to walk along the road which was being repaired and was closed to car traffic, we shuddered at the sight of a massive fish that broke the surface of the water. A passing fisherman explained the roiling water was from an Alligator Gar. There was a stuffed Gar hanging on a wall at Prejean’s and it was big and ugly! It is particularly vicious looking; its body is like a gator with fins, but its snout is narrow and well…ugly. The fisherman, wearing a tight fitting baseball cap and a tight fitting t-shirt seemed unconcerned about this ugly critter’s proximity. He was catching perch. We thanked him, but he just mumbled something about Gar not being good eating, unless you made some kind of Gar ball, and then without another word turned and cast in the water.

The refuge trail was eventually blocked for construction, so we had to backtrack in the high heat and humidity around to the other side to exit. We had noticed that there was a “do not enter” sign on the way in; this was the end of the refuge trail; but this exit was not blocked. Janet, usually the rule follower in such matters, urged me on. I was more than a willing follower. We drove down the gravel road until we came to a levee that had a small road on it. We followed this low lying divider in the pool for a long while until we came to a covered platform that stood 20 feet above the water. We have been in this state for nearly two weeks and we are still amazed at the beauty and vastness of it. As swarms of blue dragonflies hovered in the air near us, apparently approving our sense of adventure we looked out onto the Lacassine wildlife refuge, at its enormity and solitude. Somehow the heat seemed less oppressive from this beautiful and breezy vantage point.

Most people just kind of flit through these places in their air conditioned cars. We are a couple of knuckleheads though and laden with day old biscuits from Prejean’s we came to a wooden bridge as we drove the opposite way. Afraid that this was still under construction, we thought the bridge would not support the weight of the car. So, we got out to feed the gators. But, the gators here are not used to humans like the ones we’ve seen at Avery Island, and our offerings were ignored by the two that happened to be in the water when we stopped. Janet hit one in the head with a biscuit and the gator quickly disappeared under the surface as if Janet killed it! From then on Janet has been calling her biscuits “Gator Bullets.”

We eventually tested the bridge after seeing construction workers driving to their work site go over it in their pick up trucks. They ignored us as we stood on the side of the road sheepishly holding our weapons.

One thing about gators… if there aren’t any birds in the water, it’s a sure bet the gators are close. All the time we traveled into this closed off section of the trail we did not see one bird. But, we saw A LOT of gators. A quick count was pegged at nearly a dozen in the half mile drive to the actual construction site where we had to turn around. The gators were everywhere we looked in the water, although we looked from the safety of the car only! At one point three were gliding down the water together. Another one snapped and thrashed at something on the far bank. I launched a bullet in their direction but the gators were on some sort of mission. Perhaps they were trying to head us off at the bridge and then drag us from our car to beat us up? Janet did conk that one gator on the head! Even though I’m fooling around here, it did seem like the gators were traveling together in a similar direction. We fled the pool, happy that we did not have to use the gator bullets on ourselves.

We drove out of the pool and down to the main part of the Lacassine Refuge where we took a chilling 200 yard hike. We parked on the side of the road near a trail marker. Just a few steps away from the road we entered a roughhewn trail that had a swamp on either side. He had doused ourselves with bug spray, so mosquitoes were not a concern, but everything else gave us the willies. The road quickly disappeared and we were alone. Our voices echoed off the still water. Cypress knees broke out above the surface of the water in places looking like the hands of drowned men. Using binoculars we watched a snake slither into a man made bird house. We felt like we were being watched, or sized up. Were we worth the aggravation? The swamp looked like it harbored all sorts of dangerous critters just beneath its surface and behind every cypress there was certainly a bear lurking or a snake was ready to drop onto our heads. We noticed that the spider webs that were everywhere along the trail were the homes of very, VERY large brown spiders and when we finally saw a dragonfly in its death throes being sucked dry by one of the spiders even our willies had the willies. Spooked, we headed for the car again.

This time we rolled up the windows and turned on the air conditioning… all the way back to Lake Charles.

Our favorite restaurant in Lake Charles, Chastain’s, was closed, this being a Sunday, so we settled for a chain Mexican restaurant for our dinner. Later that evening after a swim in the cement pond Janet and I walked through the Charpentier historic homes district of Lake Charles where our hotel is located. Charpentier is French for carpenter and some of the homes in this small area date from the late 1800’s. Evidently there were no real architects in the area when some of these homes were built and according to the official website for Lake Charles, the homes took on the individual characteristics from the carpenters who built them.
Assured we would not get tackled by a gator seeking revenge we took a leisurely stroll through the area to peer at the lighted facades and interiors of these beautiful homes.

coon-ass tidal waves

Now you may think that the term “coon-ass” is an indelicate, derogatory name for the Cajun people, but they quickly describe themselves and everything they do using this word. The short woman ladling out the shrimp gumbo at the Cajun French Music Festival told us she had lived in Virginia for ten years before she demanded her husband get her “coon-ass” back to Louisiana. A jury-rigged piece of equipment might be called “coon-ass” engineering. Some people may consider it an ethic slur, but I use it with as much endearment and appreciation as the people who live here. I may not yet be an honorary Cajun “Coon-ass”, but I think I’ll get the hang of being one pretty soon. Maybe I have to eat some more gumbo...

From our perch in the upper rung of the Burton Coliseum in Lake Charles, Louisiana it looked like a tidal wave. We were at the Cajun French Music Association’s 21st Annual Food and Music Festival. People, young and old, would enter the large dance area whenever the band started playing and depending on the song the crowd would flow into the waltz, the many and varied couples moving nearly in unison counter clockwise around the floor, or into a lively two-step. When the song ended the crowd would quickly empty off the dance floor and into the general seating area as if the tide was going out. Each time a new song would begin, the crowd would file back in. This went on all day. Young men and old women danced together. Old men and young women danced together. Kids danced with other kids or adults. Teenaged boys in wranglers and cowboy hats danced with teenaged girls wearing dresses and sparkly tiaras. Parents two-stepped around the dance floor with their infants cradled in their arms. For hours this went on, through Joe Simon & the Louisiana Cajuns, to Lesa Cormier & The Sundown Playboys all the way through the “Swamp Pop” of Don Fontenot & les amis de la Louisiana. Except for the changing of the bands the music continued until 11:00 p.m. and the crowd ebbed and flowed throughout.

Janet and I were the only ones who seemingly did not dance. People would work the crowd looking for a new dance partner for each new song and we saw some unlikely pairings. There was a skinny guy who danced with a very tall and large woman dressed in pink and then the next song he twirled with a tall skinny woman. There was one short, stout fellow wearing an orange shirt and baseball cap who jerked and twittered throughout the day and night with a myriad of women, young and old. From eye level the dancing was an unusual sight. The dance floor was sectioned off from the rest of the arena by a fence covered by red, white and blue bunting. Because of this obstruction we could only see the top half of the couples and their bodies seemed to flow past us as if adrift on a river as we could not see their shuffling footsteps.

There was evidently a Queen of the Festival contest and a dance contest. There were several young women wearing spirited tiaras, and some wearing far too much makeup for their innocent ages, who danced throughout the festival. They danced with anyone who asked and also posed for pictures at the mere sight of a camera. We watched a man and woman who danced beautifully take home a huge trophy for their fluid movements. We watched young men of 18 or 20 teach girlfriends how to dance. We watched young men ask the frailest of older women to dance, though we did not believe they would survive the dance floor, but then gaped in amazement as they moved with such grace we were embarrassed to even try to get out there ourselves.

What we did do a lot of was eat…

We had one of everything. Boudin balls, sausage on a stick, crawfish etoufee, jambalaya, shrimp gumbo, red beans and rice, smoked cracklings… and homemade sweets. This event was a slice of Americana that few people would know of outside of this wonderful world. We had gotten a “taste” of it while going to the Crawfish Festival back home with the music and dancing and food, but this was by far a greater experience. Though we stuck out like sore thumbs; people eyed me up and down and commented often on my Aloha shirt; we were only met with gracious, friendly people proud of their world and very happy to share it with us. These people of Louisiana are good people.

Iway

The bearded old man wearing the coveralls and tattered baseball cap leaned into me at the bar and whispered, “Be careful.” We were at the Dirty Rice Saloon just outside of Iowa, Louisiana along Route 90. Janet and I had spent the day driving the western half of the Cajun Nature Trail that ran along the extreme southern coast of southwestern part of the state and we were hot and miserable and very much in need of a beer. We had tried to get a place in Sulphur but we quickly found out that place was too edgy for us. It was filled with transients and we drove down the frenetic traffic of Route 10 to Iowa and found us a place that was much cleaner and quieter. We then went out for our beer.

Actually we were looking for a margarita, but the woman tending bar in the smoky joint sort of winced when I mentioned that drink. We settled for Buds and Janet had her bottle wrapped demurely with a napkin. We munched on roasted peanuts and read the graffiti scrawled on the walls and ceilings and read the electronic message board behind that bar that flashed missives about regulars that were ribald and included many invectives. We listened to the old man singing before his electronic keyboard that kept a beat and the heavy-set bass player with his face nearly hidden by his baseball cap and thought that this was all right. But, then the old man picked up his accordion and started playing Cajun music and suddenly people were up dancing; skinny as a snake old men in cowboy shirts dancing with young women. A big woman tittered in a barber chair near the band. The bartender asked us where we were from and why we were in Iway; I guess we didn’t look like regulars. When I told them she hooted and announced to everyone in the bar that we were here and then tried to get us to drink shots. Everyone in the place cheered and we waved. The bartender took our pictures for her MySpace page. The band began to play more passionately and then the old man came over to me.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “I came here three years ago….and never left.”

A long while later Janet and I were back in our hotel room after dodging the many Sheriff’s vehicles lining the short route from the Dirty Rice Saloon and our hotel and we were trying to figure out how to pronounce the name of the town we settled in for the night. Iowa? Iawo? Iway? It looked like Iowa, but with the mix of accents it was hard to determine. We settled on Iway.

We had left Lafayette that morning after a hearty breakfast at Dwyer’s Diner on Jefferson and headed off for the Cajun Nature Trail. The day was hot and the sun was unrelenting. We passed through small towns like Abbeville, Esther and Pecan Island. We passed vivid green salt marshes that stretched forever and interrupted only by random stands of trees in the far distance. The blue sky was decorated with clouds and whenever we stopped on the side of the road to look at a bird or an oak or a ship far out in the Gulf of Mexico, the silence was absolute. We were very alone.

We entered ground zero for Hurricane Rita in 2005, Holly Beach. She hit this desolate area a month before the catastrophic Katrina and Holly Beach took the full brunt of the storm. Everything was wiped out. There were 6 people living in Holly Beach one year after the storm, that’s how devastating the storm was to the area. There were a few houses rebuilt in Holly Beach, but many of the structures were just mobile homes with canopies covering them. It was eerie to drive through the footprint of the little town. Street after street was laid out, streets crisscrossing each other, but whole blocks were just empty, grass growing where houses once stood. We drove onto the wide beach and watched a lone fisherman standing hip deep in the Gulf haul in fish after fish. I collected some sand to add to my collection of sand from around the world.

It was frightening to consider what it must have been to see a hurricane bearing down on your location and there was nothing you could do but flee. House after house we passed on the remote LA82 was either brand new, rebuilt since Rita, or was scarred and abandoned. We were told hundreds of oak trees, some hundreds of years old, were lost in the area of the Lacassine Refuge, miles inland from the coast, torn from the ground by Rita.

One place that had survived not just Rita but Audrey in 1957 was Sha Sha’s in Creole. The restaurant is not that hard to find. There still are not a lot of buildings in Creole, like Holly Beach, and it’s right on the corner where there’s a traffic light, the only one for a good long way. We ate lunch in this squat, neat restaurant and had some damn good bread pudding with rum sauce for a dessert.

We traveled all the way along the coast clear through to Port Arthur in Texas and then turned right around again and drove back to drive through the Sabine Refuge area. Despite the strong, fierce sun we walked the 1.5 mile wetland trail with its boardwalk that weaved through the marshes just recently reopened a few months ago and looked at all sorts of birds through the binoculars that I had brought. (Ricky would have been proud.) We saw an alligator in one of the waterways and dodged fire ant mounds along the trail. We got on the road again, passing prairies and cattle with great herons, their white feathers ablaze in the sun, looking for bugs kicked up by the beasts. We passed through Hackberry, home to the first oil drills sunk in Louisiana. There were signs of the oil industry all through here, including several oil drills rising into the sun. By the time we reached Sulphur we were hot and miserable and the sight of a monstrous petrochemical plant was not very appealing. Thankfully Iway was in our future. By days end we logged around 250 miles.