Absence makes the heart grow fonder (or the blog grow duller)

No, I haven't been away on exotic travels. No, I haven't even really been having much fun to be honest. So ... hence my absence from the blogs of late. I've been feeling considerably uninspired. And I have to admit to having been wasting a great deal of time catching up with long lost dear friends on that newfangled thing 'facebook'.

But I've been looking at my stats and I feel a twinge of guilt that people still visit though there is no one here to offer them the hospitality of a good read and sometimes funny story of NOLA goings on.

So here are some photos of Dazza and I's trip south of N'awlins - we drove 75 miles south to the gulf hoping to stumble upon some rural gem of a town but instead found what we suspected, a drawn out Katrina disaster tour. Hardly a house was to be found. All there was were foundations with Fema trailers where small towns and villages once were. It was sad. So much so I couldn't bring my self to take photos (I have an idea that I've got for a collection of photos I'm going to post on this subject nearer the 2 year anniversary of Katrina).

The landscape was rural marsh and swamp that gradually gave itself over to more and more water. We never "arrived" at the Gulf - and the road got smaller and smaller passing oil industrial plants (and "Halliburton Road"!!!) that we eventually turned around and came home. But we first stopped in Venice (nicknamed 'the end of the world') for some fresh Gulf shrimp from a Vietnamese woman who had hundreds of chickens outside (I guess her family were likely bored with seafood!). The shrimp were huge and gorgeous and scrummy with garlic and white wine. We also stopped at a small roadside market and got HOT pickles and pepper jelly. So the trip was not wasted.