The End of the Mississippi!

The original plan was to head straight from the Achafalaya Swamp to Venice, Louisiana, the end of the Mississippi River and do some fishing with shrimper Mike Waddle. Well, then the Arctic Vortex came along and ruined all that, and we ended up having to stay in New Orleans a couple nights.

Everyone was real excited about the fact that it was below freezing in New Orleans. Here's an ice tree in somebody's yard.

This is Mike Waddle and his wonderful wife Lily. She cooked us a lovely dinner that night. Mike's very concerned with the effect of the gulf oil spill on the shrimp. He showed us pictures of mutated, deformed shrimp that he says are basically all you saw after the spill. He doesn't even eat seafood caught in gulf anymore, even his own shrimp. 

 When we finally made it to Venice, as luck would have it, it was STILL too cold and windy to do any shrimping, and the next day wouldn't work either. We did set up a beautiful flag installation by the boats at sunset, though.

Christopher Staudinger making a tobacco offering to the river

We were real sorry to have to pack up and leave all our friends in New Orleans, but the river was sweepin us on to more adventures back upstream.

MONSTER JAM!!!