We continue to have a really busy time here, especially since we are getting ready to go. We’re packing and getting our food ready for the trip, and I’m calling campgrounds and looking up hosts on Couchsurfing. Chelsea is doing our bike maintenance tasks. It’s amazing how much time it all takes.
Birding – we saw a flamingo!
We managed to see the Cameron Prairie Wildlife Refuge last week, and while it doesn’t strictly count as birding, we really enjoyed the displays about Cajun life in the marshes (new after Ike and Rita). We did see a belted kingfisher (stuffed) so now we can recognize it, along with a marsh wren.
On the way up and down Hwy 27 we have spotted a few little islands in the marsh that are rookeries, and we’ve had great fun checking them out with Jo Ann. Twice we managed to stop and take photos. We’ve seen a number of nests of yellow-crowned night herons, and any number of great egrets, green herons, and great blue herons. We even saw a reddish egret in its dark phase.
On our bike rides we saw a clapper rail and king rail bathing, we’ve seen a number of meadowlarks, and we’ve seen a number of orchard orioles, both male and female (they look very different from each other!), along with all the usual amazing birds. One day a brown pelican lifted off its perch and flew along the Creole canal next to us for nearly a mile, almost at our height.
We finally discovered the difference between a glossy and white-faced ibis, and we can now recognize them. We’ve even discovered that those small brown birds in the marshes in the distance are sanderlings – now we just have to figure out which kind of sanderling.
One morning while talking to Donny along the road we spotted a Caspian tern.
Perhaps our favorite day was last week when we went searching for a flamingo that was spotted in the marshes near Grand Chenier. We cruised with Jo Ann very, very slowly, all eyes on maximum alert, and by golly, we found it! I was so excited I couldn’t even speak. Talk about beautiful! It looks just like they do on TV on the nature shows (smile).
This one was a truly gorgeous shade of deep reddish orange. We found it in the same spot we’d seen the American avocets when we first cycled through here – and the avocets were still there, too. The flamingo is banded, and is from the Yucatan.
Another really big excitement was seeing a scissor-tailed flycatcher on a return trip from Lake Charles. Donny has been telling us about them for about a month, but despite looking carefully, we’d never seen one. And suddenly there it was. Jo Ann is always on top of things – when there’s even a hint of an interesting bird, on go the brakes, and the car kicks into reverse.
This flycatcher was still sitting on the fence post by the time we reversed back to see it, posing for us as though it was on display just for us. We got to sit and watch it for quite awhile, with Chelsea getting some decent photos.
Errands and treats
We’ve been out with Jo Ann for a few days, checking out gators and doing errands. She’d been trying to get Steamboat Bill’s to make us ice cream pistolets for a few weeks, and we were finally successful late last week. By the time we actually got them (we think the clerk had taken them out well before we arrived) the ice cream had melted, but they were quite good anyway.
A pistolet is a type of slightly sweet dough with some kind of rich filling, then deep fried quickly. It looks like a square roll. We’d already had pistolets with crawfish filling and shrimp filling, so the ice cream was quite different. It reminded me very much of a not-too-sweet doughnut with ice cream inside. We’d definitely have more!
Jo Ann picked up the newly repaired stained glass window for the Oak Grove Baptist Church – the window that was damaged in Ike; Chelsea took the opportunity to get some photos of the beautiful etchings and stained glass. Be sure to check them out.
One unexpected stop was to see Jo Ann’s great granddaughter Alyson in a concert at her school. The fifth graders were performing for the fourth grade and for assorted parents. We were astonished at how professional it was…Alyson was in the choral group, and we heard the band as well. They did a great job!
Jo Ann has been looking for the old-fashioned metal ice cube trays with a lever that breaks the ice, so we stopped at a “flea market” near Lafayette. She was successful in her search (we’ve already tried it out – those things work really well!).
Chelsea spotted a collection of skeleton keys that reminded her of the key to the castle where we lived in the Czech Republic. When the owner of the shop found out Chelsea wanted one, she let Chelsea choose one and take it as a gift. Chelsea is going to get a ribbon and use it as a necklace.
Jo Ann has been giving us a culinary tour of great eateries from Lafayette to Lake Charles and another on the list was the Villager’s Café in Maurice. As usual with Jo Ann, the food was great, and the décor was fun – old memorabilia from the 40s and 50s. We got a photo of one of the doors in the back that says, “It’s all good.” We got a laugh out of it, as that’s something Donny says regularly.
Gueydan
On our way up north for all our errands Jo Ann arranged for us to stop in Gueydan. Our first stop was to see Heuetta at City Hall, where we got the message that Kirby at the Bank of Gueydan wanted to see Jo Ann – Kirby and Jo Ann’s husband had worked together as game wardens and it had been years since they’d seen each other.
After a quick trip through the drive-through at the bank to say hi to Kirby, we headed for Fat George’s for breakfast.
The next couple of hours were a treasure for us. We saw Glenn Gillentine (Jane Hair’s brother) and Glenn Hebert when we arrived for breakfast at Fat George’s; we had a chance to talk with Maria and say hi to Carl (the owners of Fat George’s); Heuetta was able to take a short break and visit with us; and her daughter Erika and granddaughter Amanda stopped in while we were there.
We even had a chance to stop by the museum and see Jane Hair and Rene Breaux for a short visit.
It made us miss Gueydan all over again – it’s hard to believe how much that town came to feel like home to us. What a welcoming community it is – warm and welcoming and full of characters!
Trip to Texas
On Saturday we got an unexpected treat – Donny showed up to take us all the way to the Galveston ferry on the Bolivar Peninsula, following our bike route, so we could scope out the conditions and see where we can stay each night.
It was really useful. In Port Arthur I had lined up two state campgrounds, but they are closed because of Ike damage, and the whole area is pretty battered. The campgrounds were fourteen miles out of our way, each direction, so needless to say, we are really relieved to not have to find that out the hard way.
We found a place to stay in Winnie and in High Island, but we’re still looking for a place in Port Arthur. We think our host in Johnson’s Bayou may know of a place.
Paul Cassity had driven the route several months ago to check it out for us, checking the roadways and conditions, and he warned us that it’s still pretty much a mess. He sure wasn’t kidding. Mile after mile after mile are sections of bulldozed piles of debris, waiting for sorting and disposal. Mile after mile are signs of buildings that no longer exist, from restaurants to office buildings to strip malls.
There are signs of recovery – building supply places are open, the debris is getting cleared, and there are a number of restaurants and grocery stores scattered along the route. It’s clear however that it was nearly totally devastated. We’ll take photos as we pass through and post them for you.
Gators on the Geaux
Chelsea and Jo Ann are out today in Moss Bluff, Sulphur, and Lake Charles, seeing as many last minute gators as they can. I got a phone report a while ago; they’ve seen six so far, and are now headed into Lake Charles for more. With some diligent work, they’ve whittled a total of 112 gators on the original lists down to less than a dozen that are unaccounted for.
Last week we got to an elementary school in Bell City about 7:30 a.m. to get a photo of another gator, just as students were arriving for school. I waited in the truck for Jo Ann and Chelsea, and it was the funniest thing ever to watch the two of them crossing the street with the crossing guard, surrounded by young school kids.
Today Chelsea reported that at the Lake Charles Citgo refinery they had to watch a 7-minute safety film and turn over their driver’s licenses so security could check them out. They had to have passes to enter the plant, and they had to swipe their security passes through each section they had to cross. For a few moments they thought they’d have to fill out forms to get access, on top of everything else. All this was to get access to where the Gator on the Geaux was displayed.
We managed to see one gator in Vinton on Saturday in the Texas Pelican Complex casino (Donny threatened to make us ride in the bed of the pickup when we got back in the car because we smelled so strongly of cigarette smoke), and we found out about another gator that has gone missing from Delta Downs, a race track and casino.
Hopefully we’ll be able to post the final album in a day or two – Chelsea will have to download and caption all the gators from the last few days. We’ll let you know when the album is up. We’ve sure had fun with it!
Update:
We’re leaving early tomorrow morning after seven heavenly weeks here. We have SO enjoyed being here! We love Jo Ann and Donny – they are both so funny and so easy-going and so full of life – we are really going to miss them. The food has been awesome, whether it’s Jo Ann’s home cooked meals, or whether it’s a restaurant she’s taken us to (and of course the L’Auberge du Lac on Mother’s Day with Ruby and JA).
We’ve loved sleeping in real beds and having a temperature controlled environment (we’ll be missing it the first afternoon out on the road!). We love the birds around here, the view of the marshes from the front room, and the view of the sunset over the pond next door.
We have had some of the best bike riding on the trip so far, and we’ll sorely miss the birding here, never mind the gorgeous terrain and low-traffic roads. We’ve really enjoyed everyone we’ve met, and we love the typical Cajun friendliness. We hope we are able to carry that kindness and friendliness with us on the rest of our trip!
We’re in the final throes of chain cleaning and food packing and laundry, so I need to quit for now. We’ve gotten a place to stay in Galveston already, with a cycle tourist; we’re delighted about that.
We don’t know yet whether we’ll have Internet access the next few, and we don’t know what our exact daily schedule will be, but I’m sure we’ll be able to post by Friday.
Until then…signing off from Oak Grove LA