Stilts

Grand Isle State Park, LA
We had planned to stay here for 7-9 days, enjoying the birding and the seafood.  Mother Nature and the locale had other ideas.  No doubt about it, hard to beat a fresh shrimp dinner made with shrimp purchased from the guys who were on the boat just hours earlier, even when the dinner is served on paper plates:

The shrimp dinner

The boats that provided that dinner

However, the Grand Isle, LA is a rather depressing - and in some ways, depressed - area, so not very scenic and not what we had been expecting or hoping for.

This is what we read in the promotional materials for this area and park: "A remote oasis nearly hidden within Louisiana’s expansive shoreline, Grand Isle is your passport to adventure in a state known for being a “Sportsman’s Paradise.” Renowned for its world-class fishing and birding habitat, Louisiana’s only inhabited barrier island offers unblemished views of the Gulf of Mexico, miles of beaches and boundless wildlife. Couple this with southern hospitality and mouthwatering seafood and you’ll discover why visitors have fallen in love with Grand Isle for two and a half centuries."

But they overlook that this is a major area for oil industry operations, (the map below shows the density of oil platforms and rigs in this area):

Housing is crowded and often substandard (lots of "man-camps"), the work is dangerous, treatment of workers sometimes problematic, other times horrific, and the view to the Gulf is hardly that described in the promotional literature, but rather oil rigs and noisy cargo ships in all directions.

Houses on stilts...

Piers on stilts...

Birds on stilts…

Ibis were encouraged to search for breakfast right outside our camper door following the flooding caused by two days of non-stop rain.

Camper should have been on stilts….