Grand Isle LA

One of the things I wanted to do on our recent pre-Mardi Gras trip to New Orleans was to head even farther down to see the Louisiana south coast.  

I wanted to do this for few reasons.  First, I wanted to see something about America I knew very little about.  Last winter when Cindy and I cruised out of New Orleans for Mexico, I was surprised to find that it took ten hours of sailing to clear the Mississippi River and make it into the Gulf of Mexico, and both times the cruise ship came through that way it was dark.  Doesn’t seem like there should be that much Louisiana left, if you know what I mean.  

Second, I wanted to see for myself what the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill looked like.  News folk reported from fishing towns like Venice and Grand Isle, Louisiana last spring when all hell broke loose down there.  Some waded around in thick sludge that coated beaches and wetlands and impacted wildlife.  I thought it was worth a look to see how the cleanup was going.  

And third -- last but not least -- I was hoping to find a Cajun restaurant where I could spend a little money to support the local economy.  One of the concerns following the Deepwater Horizon was that livelihoods would be shattered by loss of tourism.  My hope was to help at least one restaurant out that Sunday afternoon.

Well, I can tell you it takes two+ hours of driving to make the beaches south of NOLA.  Still depends, of course.  One has to decide which side of the mighty Mississip’ one wants to see.  The last venue across our nation’s largest waterway is the Greater New Orleans/St. Pontchartrain Expressway Bridge to Algiers in downtown New Orleans.  We decided on the west side and off we went.

After taking a couple of interstate highways to clear urban New Orleans, we found ourselves winding down a two-lane state highway in country that looked a whole lot like Ohio:  small towns with the occasional WalMart.  Looked pretty agricultural, too, with signs referring to Louisiana strawberries and local vegetables.

About 45 minutes out on LA 1, we drove parallel to a bayou with a drawbridge in what seemed every town.  Lots of fishing boats were moored along the waterway, most big enough for big water.  

The towns ran out when we hit the wetlands.  Flat, lovely wetlands.  But we were still 25 miles out from Grand Isle.  That, I can tell you, is one heck of a lot of water.  I had a better understanding of what the Weather Channel reporters meant when they said that Louisiana wetlands can absorb huge storm surges from hurricanes making landfall.  There is a whole lot of wetland down there.  Still,  2,000 square miles of wetland has been lost.  Lost wetlands = hurricane trouble for below-sea-level neighborhoods in New Orleans.  

Farther down LA 1 we came across the new Leeville Toll Bridge, a monstrosity of an elevated roadway built post-Katrina that promises to keep the road open to flood-prone Grand Isle.  Wow.  Such an engineering marvel.  Odd, too, there were no toll takers on the toll bridge.  Instead, drivers needed to stop at a toll kiosk located in local establishments to buy a ticket.  We paid $5 for two passes.  [For more on the bridge, see 
http://www.wdsu.com/r/19983797/detail.html ]

Once in Grand Isle, as impressed as we were with sand and water, we were disappointed with the town.  First, there were very few restaurants and most of them were closed.  We thought we would have our pick of many.  Not so.  Lots of great looking elevated homes, that’s for sure, with lots of phone numbers and invitations to rent for a week.  

There just weren’t many folk around.  It looked like a ghost town to me.  I wondered right away if we were seeing a concrete result of Deepwater Horizon.  We saw a few fisherfolk out in the wetlands, some not far from oil company helicopter facilities where workers were choppered out to the rigs.  Very few other people, though.  When we got to the state park beach at the end of the road, ours was the only car in the parking lot.  Another one came by before we left, but that was it.  

The beach was closed, too, due to heavy equipment cleaning sand where operators were working on a Sunday.  We were able to walk out on the long fishing pier at the park.  (See photo.)  The sand looked inviting and air smelled great (translation:  no oily smell).  We didn’t see anything to be concerned about, but we wondered about what was in the sand just off shore.  We saw a dozen or oil platforms from the pier, and a couple fishing boats out in the Gulf.  Lovely place, I can tell you that.   

Still, we wondered how Grand Isle was really impacted by the oil spill.  Did everybody leave in the off-season?  And why no more fishing boats out?  I mean, the fish don’t know that much about winter in the Gulf of Mexico.  Just go fish a little deeper. 

We finally stopped for lunch at a gas station/marina/fishing shop that claimed to have great Po‘boys (Midwesterners:  think sub sandwich).  Sandwiches were indeed, very good.  

So was the conversation we had with staff.  When we told the grill lady why we came down, she said, ‘Don’t believe what you hear on the news.  That oil spill did major damage to the way of life down here.  People are really hurting.’  

The other employee at the cash register said his job used to be working on a fishing charter.  This is the only work he could get.  

I suppose that just about says it all.  

Today’s elder idea:  I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security.  Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad.  Otherwise, what is there to defend? 

Robert Redford

actor and environmental activist

1985

Image:  From the Grand Isle State Park pier (Tom Schaefer)