Not the Best Time

We stayed four more days around New Orleans, on the southeast side of the city at St. Bernard State Park. Matey was enthralled by the armadillos, which as you can see were pretty fearless.

Yesterday we drove on south along a lot of causeways…

to here, Grand Isle State Park. Unfortunately, the only critters here are mosquitoes, and there are so many of them I suspect they have driven the other creatures out.

Some of those causeways were so rough that this cupboard door came open. It’s hidden by the main slide, so I didn’t know it had come open until I put the slide out and had to stop at the crunching noise to remove the broken door.

A new one is on order and the old one is now glued and taped, but there was no way to straighten the bent handle. Fortunately the slide was not hurt.

On the way down we stopped at a Dodge dealer because Bud keeps finding fluid seeping from the transmission housing and when we went to check the level it didn’t register on the dip stick. But the dip stick was a replacement due to a safety recall. The original came loose on some trucks and let fluid splash onto the turbocharger where it ignited. This replacement was stamped “not for use to check oil”. Huh? The service guy at our dealership told Bud on the phone that it seemed logical that we should add fluid until it came up to the dipstick. Glad we checked at another dealership. They brought out an actual calibrated dipstick, which was at least 14” longer than ours. The fluid level was fine. Evidently there is a second replacement that clips in and is useful for reading the fluid level. In the three weeks our dealer had the truck to fix the transmission leak they didn’t think to give us the newer replacement.

This morning to escape the mosquitoes we took Matey walking on the beach in town. It’s a nice wide beach.

But the view is somewhat spoiled by the oil platforms dotting the horizon.

This isn’t the crystal sand of the Florida panhandle. This sand is awash with the silt that has built this delta.

We went to buy some seafood, but the seafood company still seems to be reeling from hurricane Ida which hit here in 2021. It’s the larger building in the background but wasn’t open and may not be doing retail sales at all now.

There were still a few houses around that hadn’t been repaired.

This was an interesting place to come and they are trying to come back, but we are glad we decided to only stay one day.