I heart Plaquemines Parish

Yesterday I went to Plaquemines Parish. It was for work, not fun. Anyway, driving through the parish, signs of the destruction Katrina brought are still very visible. The area we went to yesterday was more of a rural area that didn't have much of anything, but I think it might have been like that before the storm. For those of you not familiar with Louisiana Geography, Plaquemines parish sticks out into the Gulf of Mexico. One side is the Gulf, another is a body of water called Breton Sound. It is pretty much split in two by the Mississippi River. Yesterday was a really beautiful day. Here's a place where we stopped for a little break.

My favorite part about going there is the people. The locals are very nice and friendly. The worst part of the trip yesterday was that we drove through St. Bernard to get to Plaquemines. St. Bernard still has so many scares from Katrina. Many buildings are still just shells of their former selves. One of the guys I was riding with used to live there, he showed us the field where his neighborhood used to be. He said he had ten feet of water in his house. He said at least he had a two story house, because their wedding pictures and stuff like that were not lost. I don't like to think about it, but I guess it's just a part of living in this area.

We ate at a restaurant called Lil G's Kajun Restaurant in Belle Chasse. It is a seafood restaurant, I had a fried crawfish po-boy, which was good. The restaurant has many taxidermy animals on the walls. I have pictures of two of the ones I thought were interesting. Sorry if the pictures aren't so good, the camera on my phone doesn't do all that well in low light situations.








This afternoon I went to a crawfish boil at my in-law's house. Patrick, his sister, his dad and his Aunt went crawfishing in the Bonnet Carre Spillway yesterday morning. They caught five sacks of crawfish, so we had a really nice boil with a bunch of people from the neighborhood.

When I was leaving, I stopped and talked to one of their neighbors, who happens to be the realtor that sold us our house. He said that times are tough for Realtors these days. Even I have noticed that there are way too many for sale signs around the city. I guess there are a bunch of factors as to why so many houses are for sale. It seems like the most common is that a lot of people just don't want to have to deal with living in a place so susceptible to Hurricanes or maybe they just don't want to be reminded of the destruction every time they drive down the street.

I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. I've played with the notion. I've looked at other cities where I could just put all of this behind me and try to make this seem like a bad nightmare, but then if I moved away, I really don't think it would feel like home. I just like the people of the New Orleans area too much to leave. And the food is pretty good too. I hope that things improve and the city of New Orleans rises out of the ashes, becoming a great American City again. Only time will tell. Sorry if that was sad, tomorrow's post should be more upbeat.