Thirty-Five Hours in Louisiana

While Corrie was working in Guatemala building houses, I somehow got two days off in a row, and decided to visit Tony in Louisiana. It was the kind of trip that only we could put together.

I left directly after work, around 1:30 in the morning, still wearing my scrubs. I got pulled over at 3:30 by a THP and given an "Official Warning" about my intermittently working license plate light (no fine; pretty cool). I made it to Tony's before seven and immediately crashed (still wearing my scrubs).

We both sorta woke up around noon, and found some cool nature stuff to occupy us for the day. There is quite an array of bird sanctuaries, nature trails, official preserves and the like that surprises someone researching the topic on a lappy. Even more so if you have experience driving and walking around the area, since it doesn't really strike you as that beautiful or interesting.

A wetland ecosystem--swampy marsh--may be an incredible hotbed of critters and such, but there aren't any trees or mountains, and barely anyplace to walk. But, aha, but once you get out into it, on that rare spot where you can walk, well, your tune might change.

Out on that lonely spit of packed-down gravel on loam, the wind a constant element, the rustling reedy grass adds to the singing cicadas and you become part of it.

Tony and I left the path for a moment (we couldn't believe it was as short as it turned out to be) and walked a tiny distance to a "beach". The body of water that the Blue Goose nature trail exists on is called a lake, at at the spot I'm describing, tiny waves were lapping up onto a pile of oyster-shells that constituted the beginning of dry-land. It was all pretty crazy.

We had a few beers that night, pushed Tony's car to an honest mechanic down the street, went on a walk of the town, and both of us woke up the next morning mysteriously covered in mud...well, not exactly, but it sounds funnier that way.

We ate breakfast at a diner in Lake Charles, watched a movie, and I headed home.

If anyone has the ability or memory, see what Steve Harvey says about "white people have wonderful weekends"