REACHED HOME SAFELY.

We left Lake Minden north of Sacramento yesterday and arrived in Murphys at about 1:30. I walked the lake the night before without my camera and missed some great shots of two big catfish surfacing, mouths open, holding above water long enough for a photo. Dang. I should always carry my camera, I know that. So, I told Jim, we had to walk the lake again before we left in the early morning-with camera. Reflections on a “glass” surface.


Clear and beautiful.


The fish were feeding, and jumping and biting, but just try to get a photo.


A fish would surface, grab an insect and be under before you could snap the photo. I have multiple pictures of gray shadows in the water.


It is a pretty place, and peaceful here. Jim gets exhausted driving with one eye impaired. He has to concentrate so hard that we move very slowly. So, it was a lovely last night on the road.


I got home to my usual pounds of mail and then made the mistake of looking at the news.  What mediocrity we call news. Everyone is incriminating Obama because he saluted the flag with a cup of coffee in his hand. There are life and death issues to deal with and the news focuses on a cup of coffee?


Did the “newspapers” ever make a fuss about Bush saluting with his dog?  What crap passes for news. I used to give Jim a bad time about getting rid of his news feeds. I don’t any more. It is mostly garbage and good luck trying to tell the truth from the lies. Lies have become standard and accepted. Money to both parties is like a river, while very little work gets done by the people we elect TO SERVE US. What shame that we have entrusted our fate to legislators that  govern from where their largest donations come from. Corporate interests.

VERMILLION VILLE OF LAFAYETTE, LA.

There are two Cajun Villages nearby but the Vermillion Ville, a Cajun/Creole Heritage and Folklife Park has a Saturday afternoon jam, every Saturday. Greats like August Broussard, Ray Landrey and others I don’t know their names take time to help young students learn their great music. August is tutoring Darrien, above. We ran into them when we entered the park.

The park has about 12 buildings along the river in a beautiful park setting that show the Cajun/Creole way of life on a self-guided tour. Cajun houses tend to be small. People spent most of their time outside.

Most of them have stairs leading up to an attic.

The wattle and twig built fireplace heated the house and provided a place to cook.

In hot sweltering Louisiana, a family may have an outside kitchen, with their garden by the door.

A docent demonstrated cooking in a fireplace with a black pot.

The finished dish, grits and grenelles, I think is the name of the dish. It is beef and vegetables in a roux served with yellow corn grits. No tomatoes. She mentioned that most Cajun recipes do not use tomatoes except for a court bouillon.

At the school-house, where a sign on the blackboard reads, “I will not speak French in the classroom or on school grounds.”  A fiddler entertained us and a big contingent of French speakers from Canada, some were unfamiliar with the punishment and edict that tried to force Acadians (Cajuns) to speak only English. He was a humorous old gent named Merlin Fontenot, two months away age 90.
The Vermillion Ville Park is beautiful and we visited about 12 buildings. While Cajun families lived in small house right on the bayou, more affluent Creoles had fancier houses and furnishings.

Regardless of whether they were Creole or Cajun, furnishings were most often home-made like this beautiful cradle.

Trundle beds with mosquito netting for Louisiana summer nights.

And this rather amazing home-made device. A fan you could operate from bed until your arm fell off, or you fell asleep.

A piece of fancier furniture.

It didin’t matter how fancy you lived, when it was cold, you wore a heavy long cloak.

And you still had to light the candles everyday. (Above converted to electric lamps.)

You still had to pull yourself across the bayou with a hand pulled ferry.

There was church on Sunday, work, family and music. Fish in the bayou and herbs in the garden. The park tells its story and we enjoyed it very much.

In the church, a docent was making rosaries from “natural beads.”  Joabs tears. The seeds are picked green, they already have a hole to string them. They need no coloring or preservative.

The finished product.

There is a good French restaurant on the grounds and before going to the jam, I enjoyed a last bowl of gumbo before heading for home.

These two young boys and other older players were learning from the greats. It was fantastic, but we’ve had signal problems on and off all morning. We drive to Baton Rouge today, so I’ll finish blogging the jam tomorrow. I got some good video as well.

ROCKPORT HARBOR, BEACH AND ART.

We had heard about the only "blue beach" in Texas and we went to see it. It is chained off from vehicles, and doesn't look like that is going to change anytime soon.

It is a pretty beach. I guess I was expecting some kind of blue sand or something. It turns out the blue is for a blue diamond rating given beaches by a coalition of beaches organization, assisted by each state or country in keeping with the US  Environmental Protection Agency standards.  This one is considered the cleanest beach in Texas. Clean means safe bacteria levels and kept free of debris and so on.

Across from it is this pretty saltwater lagoon.

And, nearby is a pretty harbor.

One area has the fancy sailing boats and yachts.

The other side has working boats, the fishing fleet and small individual boats.

I liked the small fishing boats best. They seem to have more character.

They have a beauty of their own.

Here's MARGIE cozying up to the bait shop.

A hardworking boat, with a patch or two, but still working. Needs a little TLC.

The whole harbor seems like a work of art to me. I guess if you live here and see it every day, it may not look special. The Rockport Maritime Museum is nearby as is the Community Arts Center. Jim went to the Museum and I chose the art center and drove to a couple of galleries on Broadway. Broadway, the main street, is short and sweet with a host of galleries and kitschy shops. And, a good restaurant, La Luna. At least, in answer to my question, "where would you go to lunch...?  But, I knew we wouldn't be going anywhere in town for lunch this day because the American Legion serves oysters from 2:00 pm. on Sundays, until they run out.

At the Community Art Center, this was my favorite piece. I could just see that bird dancing in the shallows and showing off her feathers. Here they allow you to vote for a favorite and the artist that wins the People's choice, gets to show in their merit gallery. Everything is for sale here.

I like fabric art and this one wasn't great, but I took a picture because of the little motor home in the corner. You don't see many motor homes in art work. It was entitled See America, and that is what Jim and I are doing.

I love the many dune pictures I've seen in the galleries, representing spring and summer when the dunes are at their most beautiful.

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Then this fish, kind of a decorator item. I tend to take pictures of fish facing right because my friend, Dave Olsen is convinced that all fish are portrayed facing left in art.

Hey, Dave, here is another.

In another gallery was this cute little beaded critter. This is for Sharon who is a beading nut. There were at least a dozen different critters in this place on Broadway and several more galleries I had to miss. We are only here for a day and everything opens late on Sundays, and the oysters are ready at 2:00.
We got there before they ran out, but it was a long wait in line. A dozen oysters on the half shell for $5.

I found out you can eat a lot of oysters if you don't have anything else for dinner. A dozen fried or baked $5.50.  Such a deal. I wanted to go back for the baked, but we got there about 2:30 and by the time I decided to try the baked, they were out of oysters. Yummy! People look at us kind of funny when we take pictures of our food but we kept company with a couple from Illinois and they understood perfectly.