Louisiana Gulf Coast March 13

Tuesday, March 13

Woke for some sunrise pictures this morning and walked a little on the beach.  Got chilly last night and is 48 degrees at 7:40AM.

 The coffee maker wouldn’t complete its cycle this AM, so we just had some oatmeal and hit the road.  We are following route 82 which goes along the southern coast of Louisiana, which is surprisingly long (397 miles of coast!). Also known as

Near the town of Cameron there is a ferry across the Calcasiu River/Ship Channel.  We only have about a ten minute wait and cross with five or six other vehicles.  The actual crossing only takes 4-5 minutes.  During that time three dolphins cross in front of us, heading for the Gulf! Think Flipper.

There used to be many ferries in the area, but most have been replaced with drawbridges, of which we see many.  A few open bookwise, but most lift directly up. I'll show you one later...

 There are lots of boats at Cameron, including many shrimp boats and we see  frequent signs for people selling “fresh from the boat”  "never frozen" shrimp and crabs.

After a little while we come to a sign for Rutherford Beach and take a small detour to check it out, as it is another place that we could have boondocked.  It is a short drive and less populated, so would probably be a better place to stop should we come this way again.  There are four or five rv's there now.

We continue along 82.  There are houses periodically, almost all of which are built either on stilts (wooden or concrete or brick) or on a high rise of ground. Greg notes that there are some lots with foundations only where people did not re-build.

They called this one the Cajun High-rise.  We even see a few that have installed elevators.

Next we see a turn for Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge and decide to have a look.  It is a large refuge with just one major road.  It is open for fishing and crabbing and such and nicely maintained with several docks and a lookout tower.  Mostly grassy and open wetlands with many birds.  Talk with a local gentleman fishing for gar and a few others are crabbing.

Fun watching the birds hunting and doing their bird things.

 As we are leaving, we are waved over by a friendly game warden doing a check.  We read the rules as we entered and since we are “ancients”, we didn’t have to pay a fee.

After another half hour or so we reach civilization again and we head a bit inland to Abbeville, where we fuel up on monster shrimp po’boys at a little unassuming place called BC Seafood & Po Boys.  (They are so large, that we end up having them again for dinner. ) Yum!

 

We pass by several crawfish farms.  The small orange dots are the handles on bell-shaped wire traps.

We are in Cajun and Creole country now where the accents are delightful. A sign for the Konriko  Rice Mill and Company Store  in New Iberia catches our eye.  There we see a short film about Acadiana and then are given a tour of the oldest operating Rice Mill in the US.  

Most of what we see is historical, but interesting, excluding the many cats that provide pest control. (We are asked not to pet them as they are working.) I may be the only one who didn’t know that brown rice and white rice come from the same crop with brown rice retaining the bran.  Also learned that Louisiana rice is planted by plane these days, and many of the rice areas double as crawfish ponds so that 2 crops are produced.  The store  had samples and sells varieties of rice, along with rice crackers, local sauces and pre-packaged goodies. 

Most of the rice is grown about 40 miles to the northwest and indeed, you can see some of the fields when traveling across I-10.   Sugar cane is more popular in the area we are in now and there are several old sugar cane plantations near here as well as processing plants.

Next we head to Thibodaux, where we’ll spend the night at Walmart.  The nearby State Park we had thought of visiting is still closed for repairs after flooding. First we visit St. John’s Episcopal Church, one of the oldest Episcopal churches in the Mississippi Valley, organized in 1834.  They have a historical cemetery which includes veterans from the Civil War, War of 1812, World Wars I and II as well as the Spanish American War.  Other notables were plantation owners and politicians.  Here, as throughout Southern Louisiana, many of the tombs are above ground.

 It was quite pretty, with long clear windows rather than stained glass.  Unfortunately we just missed the caretaker, so weren't able to go inside the church.  But the cemetery was interesting.