Jen’s Journal – January 11, 2020

Day 196: Crying Eagle Brewing Company, Lake Charles, LA

Partly cloudy, windy, cool.

We had terrible weather heading our way last night. Fortunately, the brunt of the weather went north of us. We had some wind and some thunderstorms during the night.

I am finding the southwest area of Louisiana to be fascinating and UNIQUE!

Last night we met a woman from Ann Arbor who lives in Lake Charles and wants to get the heck out of here and go home. I think this is a fun place to visit but maybe not to live, if you are a northerner. The food is amazing and the coast is different than the other shores we’ve been to.

South of here there is raw coast. No levees, just marshes with birds and alligators. The homes near the gulf are built higher after each hurricane.

Eventually, we are told, the homes will keep sinking until there is nothing to do but let them sink. Here are new buildings, most likely made possible by new government programs since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Rita, three weeks after Katrina, really damaged this area.

We found our way to the Creole Nature Trail. This trail goes from Lake Charles to the gulf shores. It goes through three national wildlife refuges. Since the weather was rather chilly and windy, we only walked one trail through the refuge. I think the wildlife was all hiding as we only saw a few shorebirds.

Midway through the trail, we took a ferry across the Calcasieu Ship Canal. There are dolphins swimming here, and we hear tell there is a resident PINK DOLPHIN!

The town of Cameron, beyond the ferry ride, was holding a Fur and Wildlife Festival. We must have missed the parade, because we saw loads of Mardi Gras beads laying in the street.

I guess Mardi Gras is what they are referring to when they say wildlife. We didn’t want to pay the $20 to get into the carnival area just to buy food, so we moved on.

I have to mention, besides raw coast, there is plenty of oil industry present. They are chilling and pressurizing natural gas so that it occupies a fraction of the volume it had prior, then this gas is shipped around the world, much of it going to Hiroshima. There are also several rigs visible out in the water.

During our nature drive, and kind of on a whim, I asked Tom to drive to the town of Creole and then beyond to Rutherford Beach. I thought we should see these places since we were bothering to drive this route.

By now, the sky had cleared and the winds were beginning to calm, and the gulf sea looked absolutely beautiful. There were a few other RVs parked to spend the night, and we decided to stay.