Around Oak Grove and Creole
After a hot shower and an incredible meal of rice and shrimp in a roux sauce that first day, Jo-Ann took us on a tour of the local area. Asking how we felt about pizza for dinner (the answer was affirmative), we headed west on Hwy 82 to see if the section of highway Donny had mentioned was navigable for us or not, and then we drove north and east on Hwy 27/82 towards Creole.
Jo-Ann kept up a running commentary on the areas, pointing out the damage from Rita and Ike, still a huge factor in local lives around here. We saw the Catholic Church in Creole being rebuilt after Rita, complete with gargoyles on the roofline; and we saw the local hospital with its automated door in the emergency room.
One of our favorite stories was about those automated doors after Ike. The doors are set to open automatically when anyone pulls up in a car or arrives by foot (they opened for us as we pulled into the drive-through). The local area was overwhelmed with snakes and alligators after Ike’s storm surge, so much so that they were literally everywhere. One afternoon the door to the emergency area opened, and in walked an alligator!
Since that first trip we’ve been on several short outings to local businesses, and had a great lunch at a restaurant in Creole – Sha Sha’s.
Lake Charles
Though we were only an hour or so from Lake Charles during our time in Gueydan and Lake Arthur, we’d only had one quick trip to see it with Erika, Heuetta’s daughter. Since Jo-Ann frequently has errands to do, we’ve joined her on several trips to “the city”.
The first day was almost overwhelming. Jo-Ann fit in at least a dozen errands in various parts of town, managing along the way to drive us through nearly every housing subdivision and commercial section in the city – many of which were really interesting.
We had a delicious lunch at a local institution – Steamboat Bill’s – shrimp po’boy, catfish po’boy, and oyster po’boys; they were the best we have had so far in Louisiana, even better than ones we had in New Orleans. Then when Jo-Ann discovered that we’d never eaten a pistolet, she insisted we have some.
A pistolet is a dough pocket, similar to French bread dough, deep-fried and stuffed with anything that strikes the cook’s fancy. We had one pistolet stuffed with crawfish and another with shrimp. The bread had a slightly sweet taste; the shrimp and crawfish were in rich tasty sauces. We wanted to try a pistolet stuffed with ice cream, but Steamboat Bill’s didn’t have any.
The pistolets were like beignets in the sense that I’d have another in a heartbeat.
We saw the beautiful downtown waterfront area, and Jo-Ann showed us the brick she bought for her husband, commemorating his service in the Korean War, part of the various war memorials in the waterfront area.
Our Lake Charles trip wouldn’t have been complete without a trip to L’Auberge du Lac, the gaming casino downtown on Lake Prien. In Louisiana gambling isn’t allowed, but with some fancy footwork on the legal wording, gaming is allowed. There’s another caveat – no gaming is allowed on land, so all gaming operations are held on boats or barges.
L’Auberge du Lac is a beautiful casino and hotel right on the lake. It’s a higher end casino, with beautiful shops and restaurants; it even has facilities for guests to arrive privately by floatplane.
What tickled us is that the gaming operations of L’Auberge du Lac are held on a floating platform (the barge) that is tied so seamlessly to the rest of the building that it’s impossible to tell unless you’re outside looking at the water and the building. They even maintain the fiction with two big containers of life jackets outside the barge in back (useless for any real emergency).
We slowly wandered around the casino, taking in the sights, then paused for gelato in the dessert shop – our first time ever for eating gelato. After three big scoops of gelato we were ready to finish up the final errands and head for home.
Our last big excitement of that first trip was just a few miles from home when Jo-Ann’s truck died. Getting it started proved impossible, so Chelsea and I pushed it down the highway, getting a great upper body and calf muscle workout, slapping constantly at mosquito swarms as we muscled the truck off the road to safety. Let’s hear it for girl power!
We’ve had a few subsequent trips to Lake Charles – one Friday night we attended a wedding in the old area of Lake Charles, at the Baptist Church, followed by a tour of the waterfront at night. Another day we did errands with Jo-Ann again, with the added treat of eating at an old local place, Smokey Joe’s barbecue.
The food was incredible at Smokey Joe’s – we had pulled-pork po’boys and French fries, sitting outside at a picnic table under the huge overhanging oak trees, enjoying one of the only truly nice weather days we’ve had. Smokey Joe’s smokes all their food on the premises in an old separate smokehouse – check out the photo gallery for a picture of it.
At one traffic intersection during the afternoon of errands Jo-Ann suddenly pulled into a parking lot. She’d seen a big yellow van/truck with a familiar logo, and she recognized the driver, Edgar. Edgar runs a small business selling fresh produce from his truck.
Prior to Rita, Edgar had made regular runs down the Cameron/Oak Grove/Creole way, but since Rita there haven’t been enough customers to make it worth his while. Now he has other routes, and spends time selling in Lake Charles. Jo-Ann chatted with Edgar, catching up on news, picking out fresh strawberries, bananas, and cane syrup.
On the same trip we went to the Mardi Gras museum to see an unbelievable collection of costumes and gowns for Mardi Gras dating back to the 1960s. It’s hard to believe how extensive it was, and how beautiful the collection was. We have a whole photo album of just the costumes – be sure to check it out.
Movies, shows, work, Kenneth and Heuetta
Jo-Ann has introduced us to Dancing with the Stars – we’ve seen both episodes a week for the last few weeks, and we’ve had great fun with them. We also started watching Cupid, a fun new series that follows Dancing with the Stars. We told Jo-Ann she’ll have to let us know who wins this season’s Dancing with the Stars.
We’ve watched several movies so far – Quantum of Solace (the latest James Bond movie with Daniel Craig), A Louisiana Story (made in 1948), Wall-E, and we’ve got Jeremiah Johnson in our stack to watch.
We’ve spent time catching up on our large backlog of emails, writing and posting blogs and photos, chatting with Donny, doing laundry, updating and printing our route schedule, studying birding books, doing errands with Jo-Ann, hearing stories about the local area, and working on articles for publication.
Chelsea spent most of one afternoon before Easter cleaning and putting up Jo-Ann’s collection of Easter figurines that survived Rita – they’ve not been up since before Rita.
We’ve downloaded some fixes for Chelsea’s computer – when we put on Ubuntu a few things got confused; she has needed to defragment her hard drive anyway, and we’ve been working on getting Picasa to recognize her file folders, fixing some problems that occurred in the transition. (Her computer twice took over thirty-six hours to defragment.)
The first Saturday we were here, Kenneth and Heuetta came by to visit us on their way to Holly Beach. We didn’t get too much time to talk, but it was awesome to see them again.
It’s really strange having spent so much time in Gueydan and Lake Arthur – it feels now as though we are just on a short trip and we’ll be heading back home to Gueydan soon. Seeing Kenneth and Heuetta really revived that feeling and got us feeling homesick.
Cameron
The Saturday we saw Kenneth and Heuetta, Jo-Ann took us on a ride up to Cameron. We cruised slowly down many of the side roads and rode slowly up as far as the ferry in Cameron. Though it was interesting to see it, the overwhelming memory is the damage caused by hurricanes Rita and Ike.
It’s nearly impossible to absorb how complete the destruction was, and to absorb the impact on life here. Life is definitely coming back, much more than could be expected, but the destruction was so widespread and so complete that it’ll be a while before life is back to “normal”. I’ll be writing another blog on the hurricanes, so stay tuned.
Benny Welch and his alligator business
One Tuesday Jo-Ann made a phone call and announced that we were leaving in fifteen minutes to see Benny Welch and his alligator business. She was sure that he is the one we’d been talking about – the one who makes alligator cell phone covers, expensive alligator pen and pencil sets, and alligator jewelry.
We were astounded by the complexity and extent of Benny’s business. It was so awesome that I’m writing another blog on it, and Chelsea transcribed the full tour (I recorded as much as I could). Be sure to read it when I get it posted.