New Orleans Day Four, Venice

When I travel somewhere I like to explore the surrounding area and NOLA is no different – I’ll get all I want of the tourist area with just a couple of days – blasphemy I know to not spend every minute soaking in the ambiance of the French Quarter, etal. While watching the oil spill news coverage, I noticed the broadcast was often from Venice, La and when I checked the map I thought it looked like a unique place. It’s located at the lower end of the little strip of La. jutting out into the Gulf of Mexico with the Mississippi river running down the middle of it. I can’t help wondering how many thousands or millions of years this has taken and how much of my gardens topsoil is there.

And since the weather called for more rain, we decided it would be a good day to mark this off the list. It was a nice leisurely drive of about 75 miles each way over flat mostly 4 four lane road – I’m sure going to appreciate the mountains after a week of dead flat with the only hills around being the levees. We went on Sunday and were not surprised to find the marina full of shrimp boats, but we were surprised that most of them weren’t going out at all but rather sitting in harbor and collecting a check from BP – I’m sure there’s much more to the story we didn’t get.

We ate at a nice little restaurant at the marina called Crawgators and like most things around the area is new since Katrina.


This is some of the local bayou transportation - there must have been 10 airboats parked here.


This is the view from the deck as we ate - the tall booms are from the shrimp boats.



I had a shrimp po boy, Bev had a shrimp sandwich (same as the po boy only smaller) and we shared some delicious homemade onion rings. The sandwiches were good, but the most noticible thing was the taste of the shrimp - fresh and shrimpy vs the preservative flavor we get here. I could grow to love shrimp if they all tasted like this. The surprising thing at the restaurant was, in spite of the name, they served neither crawfish nor gator.

Just down from the turn off to the marina we came upon this sign and while it’s not the southern most point in La, it is the southern most road point – the end of the road so to speak.


I've always loved to see big ships and we got to see many at anchor along the river.



But the highlight was this fellow. As we drove up on the levee to take a couple of shots I noticed he wasn't at anchor but was headed up river. He seemed to be riding high which surprised me as I would have thought everything headed toward NOLA would be laden. We watched him completely pass by and I was thrilled.


While sitting there on the levee, I kept trying to decide which was higher - the land on the left or the river on the right and I swear it appears to be the river, but can't tell for sure. Since it's too close to call, I know I wouldn't live there.



For dinner that evening, we were still full from lunch so it was some to-go boxes we'd accumulated from previous meals.

Up to now, I've just read and enjoyed your comments, but I have plenty of time to respond, so beginning today, I'll try to respond to each comment - so check back in.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

Larry