We have been moving as if our pants are on fire for the past few days. The last time I wrote, we were just leaving Cajun Country…we stayed in Broussard, just south of Lafayette, LA for a couple of days. The colors of the bayous and fields are pretty and the attitude of the Cajuns hint at a very pleasant, easy-going life. We walked through a cemetery in Broussard, by the Catholic church (of course). Names that sound foreign to a southern girl, andI’m sure I mispronounced them all. Many Hebert’s. I wish I had written down a few, just because. The names of the people and the history of the place remind me, again, that we are a country of immigrants. Many of us never stray, once we find the place called home. We never did buy any boudin, but we’d had it before. Essentially sausage with rice, stuffed into a casing. A local taste treat, family-owned meat markets proudly advertised it in big hand-written letters on neon poster board signs in their windows.
From Broussard, we drove west to one of our favorite small LA towns: Maurice. Home of Hebert’s Meats. When we walked in, three middle-aged women laughed, one of them grabbing me by the arm. “I KNEW y’all were coming here!” They had followed our annoying travel trailer, on the country roads, all the way from Broussard. And, she really did say ‘y’all’. We filled our freezer with some of Hebert’s famously delicious stuffed chickens, picked up some etoufee for dinner, and headed towards Lake Charles.
We are so close to the Gulf I think I can smell the salt air. You can certainly see the impact the oil industry has on the local economy. For days now we’ve seen all the support businesses for the oil industry. We’ve seen the oil rigs out in the Gulf, and the oil refineries from the moment we hit the Gulf in Mobile, AL. We’ve seen the parking lots for the off-shore workers, with airports, helicopter landing pads or shuttle bus garages by them. And, with this driving trip, Stuart and I are doing our best to keep all these people in business!
We passed through Lake Charles, an industrial-looking city, and unhooked our Cottage in a parking-lot-looking campground outside the town of Sulphur. We’ll be here less than 18 hours. Sulphur is a more industrial looking place than Lake Charles, if possible. The Sabine National Wildlife Refuge is south of here, which is named for its western border river. Seems incongruous; all the heavy, ugly industry and the thousands of acres of calm, quiet marshland preserve. We drove past a huge complex of smoke-belching, pipe-mazes, oil refineries, on our way to the SNWR. I think the smoke was steam…
There isn’t much stirring in the middle of the day, and today there is a strong wind which doesn’t help birding, either. It’s cold, and we put on hats and gloves to walk the grass trail, looking for birds. My bird book is safe at home, we’re handicapped in the ID department. But, it is a sunny day, we had a nice walk, and we did see some water birds. On the way home, we detoured a few more miles south, through the marsh to Holly Beach, home to about 6 travel trailers and a few skeletons of stick-built houses. In some ways, it reminds me of Topsail Beach, from years ago. Hurricane Ike, 2007, hit this little barrier island beach hard, and the recovery is slow. The road is a causeway that runs for more than 20 miles, connects the firm land to the island. If I’m in this area again, I’ll continue east from Holly Beach along the coast, cross over the Cameron river on a two car ferry, and up the east side of Cameron Lake, to make a circle tour of the area. Even better, I’ll do it on my bike! But for today, the sun is almost gone and we drive back to the Cottage.
Public radio has kept us informed and entertained. It’s the first thing I do when we get to a new campground and get plugged in: look for the local radio station. We don’t have tv (our choice, every private campground offers all the stations), making All Things Considered even more important every evening. We listen while we have a drink and popcorn, our normal evening routine. Later, many stations run local music programming, or some of our favorite national shows (Performance Today, Fresh Air, etc). This week, between Christmas and New Year’s, Fresh Air has been a repeat of some of her best interviews of the year. Tonight, we listened to an interview with Woody Allen.
The weather has been cold and rainy for three weeks, but the past 48 hours have been blissfully sunny. Cold, but sunny. I shouldn’t whine, when I think of my friends in NC, MD, VA and WV, some of whom are getting lots of snow and ice. Some places are ordered to have snow and cold this time of year…I just got a note from a friend in London, with the snowy street scene I expect from him this time of year. But on the Gulf Coast, it’s somehow just Wrong to be this cold for this long!
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