Trip down da bayou

Yesterday I took a ride down to Grand Isle with my dad and Ms. Paulette. Yes, Paulette is her first name, but here in South Louisiana, we take language ques from our French ancestors. If the adult is "familiar" we tend to use the person's first name and stick Mr. or Ms. in front of it as a sign of respect. If the adult is "unfamiliar" and therefore formal, we'll use Mr. or Mrs./Ms. with the last name. Anyway, Ms. Paulette was my mom's best friend in high school and has been around our family for as long as I can remember. Her husband, Mr. John, and my dad spend

a lot of time fishing together and on their boats.

Although the common response to my stating that I grew up south of New Orleans is "I didn't think there was anything south of New Orleans", we went even further south yesterday. It's actually another hour to get all the way to the "true" southern section of Louisiana. Lafourche parish sticks out farther south than Terrebonne parish (which is where my hometown of Houma is located), so south Lafourche is way down there!

There's a little island that's connected to the "mainland" by a bridge. My grandparents had several camps as I was growing up, and one of them was on Grand Isle. This beach was heaven to me as a kid and it wasn't until I was a teenager and went farther down the Gulf Coast to Biloxi, MS and Pensacola, FL that I realized that "ocean" water isn't really brown and sand isn't really like dirt/mud. Look real hard at the horizon over the water in the first picture and you can make out the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. But it was Louisiana's beach and I was satisfied with it! The camp in this picture was built by my dad, Mr. John and Ms. Paulette. It's as nice as my house in Colorado, just up on stilts! Although most of Grand Isle was wiped out by hurricane Katrina, this camp, and a few other camps and homes, made it intact. Just about everyone who lives on the island (population before Katrina was about 1500-2000 people) are shrimpers, crabbers, fisherman, or oilfield workers. That population jumps up to near 20,000 during the summer and during the tarpon fishing rodeo though.

On the way back from Grand Isle, we took the "old" road that follows Bayou Lafourche all the way back to Houma. My mom and Ms. Paulette grew up along Bayou Lafourche in the towns of Mathews and Raceland. My Pyran (cajun God father), used to drive his boat to school. Drawbridges still connect the roads on either side of the bayou and shrimpboats line the waterway. The highway straddles the bayou on both sides and folks live right on the bayou. As you can see in the picture, they just park their shrimp boats out in front of their houses.

We stopped along the way and bought some crabs in Leeville to have for supper tonight. I'll save that story and those pictures for tomorrow though. Today is supposed to be in the 70s and my brother has loaned me his motorcycle again, so I'm anxious to get this day started! I'll do one more post though, before I head out!