Saturday - April 7 - Today was a miserable day - cold and wet. We took a drive up to
Tonight I downloaded some pictures so my blog is a bit mixed up as it has a couple of pictures from the Moody Aquarium as well as pictures from yesterday. I guess I should keep the pictures more up to date, but it is always John’s I am waiting for as his pictures are better than mine.
Friday - April 6 - Happy Good Friday and I hope all our family enjoyed their dinner at Pat’s, we’re sorry we weren’t there. I had an e-mail from Barb and she says there is snow there so we hope the driving was okay for everyone. The weather here sure beats snow, it got up to about 70 today and was sunny so we aren’t complaining. Tomorrow and Sunday are supposed to be cold - low 50’s, and wet so I guess we will also be having some rotten weather.
Today we went to Rip Van Winkle Gardens and toured the gardens and Joseph Jefferson house which was built about 1870. There weren’t a lot of flowers out yet but the gardens were still nice and there were a lot of beautiful old live oak trees. The house was very interesting and it is the first home we have toured where you could actually walk through the rooms and touch things if you wanted to. It was a beautiful home so we enjoyed the tour. We went to the café there for lunch and had a bowl of Crawfish Cardinale which was a cream soup with mushrooms, cognac and lots of crawfish - it was wonderful and quite spicy. We then split a Po Boy sandwich so tonight’s dinner will be very light!
In 1980 there was a disaster at
The name Peigneur is Cajun French for "comber", relating to someone who works with wool in the process of weaving fabric, a highly regarded skill among early Cajuns. It was an eleven foot deep freshwater lake popular with sportsmen until an unusual man-made disaster on November 21, 1980, changed the structure of the lake and surrounding land.
At that time, Diamond Crystal Salt Company operated the Jefferson Island salt mine under the lake, while a Texaco oil rig was drilling down from the surface of the lake searching for petroleum. Somehow, the drilling bit entered the mine, starting a remarkable chain of events, turning an eleven foot deep lake into the deepest lake in
It is difficult to determine exactly what happened that day, as all of the evidence was destroyed or washed away in the ensuing maelstrom. The now generally accepted explanation is that a miscalculation by Texaco regarding their location resulted in the drill puncturing the roof of the third level of the mine. This created an opening in the bottom of the lake, similar to removing the drain plug from a bathtub. The lake then drained into the hole, expanding the size of that hole as the soil and salt were washed into the mine by the rushing water, filling the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years. The whirlpool easily sucked up the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, a second drilling rig that was nearby, a tugboat, eleven barges from the canal, a barge loading dock, seventy acres of Jefferson Island and its botanical gardens, parts of greenhouses, a house trailer, trucks, tractors, a parking lot, tons of mud, trees, and who knows what else. A natural gas fire broke out where the Texaco well was being drilled.
Local media reports at the time stated that at least one fisherman had to abandon his small boat in the mud and walk back to shore, as his boat was now sitting on the lake bed, with him still sitting in it. So much water drained into those caverns that the flow of the Delcambre canal that usually empties the lake into
Remarkably, there were no injuries and no human lives lost in this dramatic event - all 55 employees down in the salt mine at the time of the accident were able to escape, some through heroic efforts by co-workers, and the staff of the drilling rig escaped the platform before it was sucked down into the new depths of the lake - though three dogs were reported killed. Days after the disaster, nine of the eleven sunken barges popped out of the whirlpool and refloated on the lake's surface.
It is important to note that the lake is not salt water as a result of water entering the salt mine. The salt water came in from the
The drilling company, Texaco and Wilson Brothers paid $32 million (USD) to Diamond
Our tour guide said two rooms of the Jefferson mansion were pulled away from the rest of the house during the disaster - can you imagine!
Friday - April 6 - Happy Good Friday and I hope all our family enjoyed their dinner at Pat’s, we’re sorry we weren’t there. I had an e-mail from Barb and she says there is snow there so we hope the driving was okay for everyone. The weather here sure beats snow, it got up to about 70 today and was sunny so we aren’t complaining. Tomorrow and Sunday are supposed to be cold - low 50’s, and wet so I guess we will also be having some rotten weather.
Today we went to Rip Van Winkle Gardens and toured the gardens and Joseph Jefferson house which was built about 1870. There weren’t a lot of flowers out yet but the gardens were still nice and there were a lot of beautiful old live oak trees. The house was very interesting and it is the first home we have toured where you could actually walk through the rooms and touch things if you wanted to. It was a beautiful home so we enjoyed the tour. We went to the café there for lunch and had a bowl of Crawfish Cardinale which was a cream soup with mushrooms, cognac and lots of crawfish - it was wonderful and quite spicy. We then split a Po Boy sandwich so tonight’s dinner will be very light!
In 1980 there was a disaster at
The name Peigneur is Cajun French for "comber", relating to someone who works with wool in the process of weaving fabric, a highly regarded skill among early Cajuns. It was an eleven foot deep freshwater lake popular with sportsmen until an unusual man-made disaster on November 21, 1980, changed the structure of the lake and surrounding land.
At that time, Diamond Crystal Salt Company operated the Jefferson Island salt mine under the lake, while a Texaco oil rig was drilling down from the surface of the lake searching for petroleum. Somehow, the drilling bit entered the mine, starting a remarkable chain of events, turning an eleven foot deep lake into the deepest lake in
It is difficult to determine exactly what happened that day, as all of the evidence was destroyed or washed away in the ensuing maelstrom. The now generally accepted explanation is that a miscalculation by Texaco regarding their location resulted in the drill puncturing the roof of the third level of the mine. This created an opening in the bottom of the lake, similar to removing the drain plug from a bathtub. The lake then drained into the hole, expanding the size of that hole as the soil and salt were washed into the mine by the rushing water, filling the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years. The whirlpool easily sucked up the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, a second drilling rig that was nearby, a tugboat, eleven barges from the canal, a barge loading dock, seventy acres of Jefferson Island and its botanical gardens, parts of greenhouses, a house trailer, trucks, tractors, a parking lot, tons of mud, trees, and who knows what else. A natural gas fire broke out where the Texaco well was being drilled.
Local media reports at the time stated that at least one fisherman had to abandon his small boat in the mud and walk back to shore, as his boat was now sitting on the lake bed, with him still sitting in it. So much water drained into those caverns that the flow of the Delcambre canal that usually empties the lake into
Remarkably, there were no injuries and no human lives lost in this dramatic event - all 55 employees down in the salt mine at the time of the accident were able to escape, some through heroic efforts by co-workers, and the staff of the drilling rig escaped the platform before it was sucked down into the new depths of the lake - though three dogs were reported killed. Days after the disaster, nine of the eleven sunken barges popped out of the whirlpool and refloated on the lake's surface.
It is important to note that the lake is not salt water as a result of water entering the salt mine. The salt water came in from the
The drilling company, Texaco and Wilson Brothers paid $32 million (USD) to Diamond
Our tour guide said two rooms of the
When we got home there was happy hour over at Betty’s so we grabbed a beer and went over and enjoyed meeting some of the people who are here.
Thursday - April 5 - Today was a beautiful day, sunny and cool this morning but it got up to about 69 this afternoon which was very pleasant after all the hot, humid weather we’ve had.
We drove down to
When we got back I went over and asked Betty where a good place to go for a crawfish dinner would be and she recommended Cajun Claw if we wanted boiled crawfish. When we got there we were told it would be about a 45 minute wait so we made a reservation for 7 then went to Wal Mart. When we got back we got a table right away then the fun began, what do you order, the waitress said they came in either 3lb or 5lb orders. We ordered 3 lbs and a Pistolette, which is a deep fried bread stuffed with crawfish, onion, etc and a sauce and was it very good. We had to wait a while for our crawfish and noticed everyone else had ordered either the 3 or 5 lbs each and here we are going to split 3 lbs., wow, are we going to go hungry? The waitress brought us each a dish of mayo and on the table were all kinds of condiments - ketchup, Tabasco, a garlic hot sauce, Worcestershire, etc. and you mix what you want with the mayo for dipping the crawfish. We finally got our crawfish and what a huge tub of them there was and they were very large, we were both full when we finished and really enjoyed them.
When we were finished eating a man at the table behind us asked where we were from, so I asked if it was that obvious that we hadn’t done this before. He said no, we had done very well but he had heard the waitress ask where we were from (but not our answer) and noticed she had shown us how to break them apart (much like a lobster). Anyways we had a nice chat with them, they come to Cajun Claw once a week from Lafayette, which is about a half hour drive as they say it is the best crawfish around (and they all ordered the 5lb serving!). They told us the crawfish season is almost over and the ponds we saw are used to grow rice for part of the year then crawfish. When we were leaving I asked the waitress what the restaurant does when the crawfish season is over and she said they close from June to February, so not much of a season.
The woman behind us suggested we try the Cajun desert which was the same fried bread as the Pistolette but stuffed with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce. I couldn’t resist so we split one and it was delicious. As you can see we enjoyed our Cajun crawfish.
Wednesday - April 4 - Today was a wet day, we had a lot of rain while driving this morning. We had some rain between the park and the ferry, then it stopped while we were on the ferry then started again shortly after we got off the ferry and it really rained hard for a while. Fortunately by early afternoon we ran out of it but never saw the sun. Right after we crossed on the ferry the temperature dropped down to the low 60’s and at one point it was in the 50’s but by the time we stopped it was back to 63. Haven’t had it this cool in a long time!!
We drove to
Tuesday - April 3 - Today was another hot, humid day with not much sun. We didn’t do too much, did some laundry and then we went to a seafood store and bought some shrimp. I was sitting here this morning and saw a shrimp boat go by and thought that maybe some shrimp for dinner would be good so that is what we had.
I wish I was like my friend Janet and loved the humidity, however, I do not like it and find it just drains me so it is very hard to get too ambitious when it is this hot and humid. Thankfully there is a good breeze, otherwise it would be really brutal.
Monday - April 2 - Today was a funny day for weather, it was quit foggy all day but late this afternoon it cleared off in town and was actually sunny and hot but as soon as we started to head back home we ran into the fog again. I guess we are lucky that it isn’t rain!!
Today we thought we would go to
After that we found where the ferry is that we have to take to get over to the road to
We then went to the historic district (The Strand) and there were a couple of things we wanted to do but we couldn’t find any parking so we left and headed home. We found a Krogers so stopped and got a couple of things then stopped at Wal Mart and got the rest of our groceries. When we got back we stopped at the office and paid for another night so we are now here until Wednesday.
Sunday - April 1 - Today was a nice day, it was cloudy while we were driving but the sun came out this afternoon and it turned into a beautiful day. We drove to
There is a lot of flooding here, apparently they got about 4-12” of rain yesterday and a lot of the campsites are under water. We got a nice dry one so are happy and hopefully there won’t be a lot of rain in the next couple of days. The truck and trailer were filthy when we got here so John gave them a quick wash. We went for a walk along the beach and then I read for a while. Tomorrow we will go exploring, it looks like there is lots to see and do in this area.
Bonus, there is also free wi-fi here so I am happy!!
