Magnus in the Swamp, Day 5

Monday Dec 8

Not much to say about the last day at Palmetto Island. It was a do-little day on purpose. We drove around and checked out out the Vermillion River and the boat launch there, plus the canoe launches. There are a lot of facilities at this park, all with brand new or recently refurbished restrooms in pristine condition. Is this a Louisiana thing, or just something special about this park?

But no birds, and sadly, no alligators. We saw a Pileated Woodpecker and a few vultures. And that’s about it. Molly scared a couple of deer away from the pond on our morning’s walk. She enjoyed that. 

After the heavy rain of the night before, the ground was remarkably un-saturated. I guess it’s used to the rain. But the weather turned quite chilly (50s) and sunny, so it felt warmer that you expected…until it wasn’t.

Molly got a longish afternoon walk, with three armadillos to chase. On the third one she took me off balance and I had to stutter down a slope for a few steps. No falls, though.

On a side note, just an aside—not a major big deal—I absolutely hate the motorhome shower. A few of the showers that I’ve taken in there were bearable, maybe even OK. But all the rest have been misery bordering on disastrous. Even with the space heater it never gets above tepid in the air temperature, and the water control on the shower is touchy at best; at worst, you turn it a fraction of a millimeter too far and the hot water shuts off entirely. So you go from boiling hot to ice cold, then wait two minutes and go back to boiling hot. My hair never gets really clean but I don’t have the option of cutting it off short like I want to.  Sigh. Not perfection, alas.

For dinner we went to the River Front restaurant (last time it was Dupay). It wasn’t as satisfying, although my food was excellent and the salad came with the meal.  It was a fresh little salad, albeit little, and I had fried catfish topped with etaufee and white rice. It came with one side which were some really good sweet potato fries.  Ed got the fried shrimp/crawfish etaufee entrée and his portions were meagre. But he had ordered an appetizer portion of onion rings which were pretty good, and he chose cabbage with tasso as his side and gave it to me.  The cabbage was great but the tasso seemed like a dried out piece of tasteless meat. Is that normal?  Dunno.  Still we both liked the Dupay place better.

Last night. Hope I survive.