Week 50

To make up for last week's extremely short post, this week's is ridiculously long!
On Labor Day we drove south to explore the Creole Nature Trail, also called Louisiana's Outback.  It's about 180 miles through salt water and fresh water marshes, the Gulf of Mexico, and is home to zillions of species of birds, mammals, and reptiles (most of which were far too smart to be out on a day as hot as Monday was, but it was still a great trip).  There were quite a few birds, including pelicans, just not as many as at other times of the year.  We didn't do the whole trail, but sure had fun seeing a very different side to Louisiana than we'd ever seen before.

We started in Sulpher, and passed some industrial areas before getting to the grasslands.  There is a lot of liquefied natural gas and some of Louisiana's first oil wells in this area.

Liquefied natural gas plant and oil pump jack

A little farther south, we came to Wetland Walkway--a 1 1/2 mile walking path through a marsh.  One section of the trail is called Alligator Alley, but they were staying cool out of sight.

Marsh grasses

A big bayou

Continuing south, we came to the Gulf of Mexico and lovely Holly Beach.  Near the beach are many houses, all colorful, and all built on crazy high stilts.  One must be prepared for hurricanes and flooding!

Gulf of Mexico beach

Houses on stilts

Leaving Holly Beach we drove onto a vehicle ferry which crosses the Calcasieu Ship Channel, connecting the Intercoastal Waterway to the Gulf. It was about a 10-15 minute ride.

Navigation on and shrimp boats seen from the ferry

About one third of all the seafood eaten in the US comes from Louisiana, and it was fun to see lots of shrimp boats.  LA is the number one provider of shrimp (over 100 million pounds a year), oysters, crab, crawfish, and alligator in the country.

Shrimp boats

We saw very little wildlife, but here are a couple of birds and butterflies.  Also some off-shore oil rigs way in the distance:

Might be kind of a wild life on an oil rig

In the town of Cameron the school board/library building was also built above ground level, as were most of the houses and other buildings.

A library on stilts

Heading north, we crossed the Intercoastal Waterway again, which stretches from Brownsville, TX, to New Jersey.

Intercoastal Waterway

Shortly after crossing the waterway, we came to the visitor's center--but it was closed.  However, we did see our most interesting wildlife of the day.  This ENORMOUS spider in a huge web:

Our wildlife highlight

Then it was up to Lake Charles for an early dinner and on to home.  All in all a very fun and interesting day.

Because Monday was a holiday, we went to the food bank on Tuesday.  There we learned that our favorite Rapides Parish Correctional Center prisoner did get his parole.  He'll be released at the end of January, cutting off 2 1/2 years from his sentence.  Never in our lives did we expect to be praying for a parole board to grant a prisoner parole, but that's what we've been doing.  

We spent the afternoon in Marksville, but only saw one person.  We bought some roundup and some kitchen drawer dividers and went to work at the church for a while, then we had a make-up Personal Finance class in the evening.

On Wednesday we learned from our prisoners at the Federal Prison in Oakdale that there is no parole for federal prisoners--in case you wondered.  On returning from the prison we went to the church in Alexandria to have our interview with the mission president. 

Thursday was zone conference.  It started with President Varner showing a video of Elder Christofferson speaking at the New Mission Presidents Training.  A magnificent talk about the Book of Mormon.

We had to leave shortly after that because, five months after the initial contact with the Federal Prison in Pollock, they finally scheduled our first day--on the same day as zone conference.  The prison in Oakdale is a minimum security facility and the one in Pollock is medium security.  The difference between them is stark.  Oakdale has fairly pleasant and attractive grounds, Pollock is grim.  In addition to a security ID badge, we have to have our hands and forearms stamped with invisible ink that is viewed in a blue light box before the gates will open to let us into the yard.  We meet with just one man at Pollock, who has been trying to get religious visitation since his transfer there over a year ago. Later Thursday evening we drove to Leesville to visit the institute class there.

Yesterday was a baptism for two children in the branch.  I gave the talk on the Holy Ghost.  To illustrate the utter paucity of musical talent in our ward, Elder Kerr led the singing while I pushed the buttons on the phone to make the hymns play on the blue tooth speaker we brought.  You really couldn't find two less musical folks to take care of that.  But it was a wonderful event anyway.

Tray'veon and Ramona

Even though it's September, we had three days this week with temperatures of 100 or a little higher.  With the humidity the heat index was up to 111 one day.  Kind of surprising that our hottest week in Louisiana was in September.  Again, so thankful for air conditioning!!