Day 3: Rubber dragon

[If anyone's curious, here's the trail map for Jean Lafitte. We cleared Plantation Trail on day 1, then Bayou Coquille Trail (and maybe the overlook?) on day 2.]

Our third day of work was a day at the beach. No, really—we went to the beach on Grande Isle, and spent the day doing cleanup. We were issued grabbers and garbage bags, then combed the tideline and the dunes for garbage. Some of it was clearly Katrina/Rita recovery—we found some large things half-buried in the dunes, like iceboxes, that wouldn't have gotten there without a boost from a hurricane. A lot was just "helping out overworked national park staff," but even that was tangentially related—the reason they're overworked is because they're still digging out from the hurricane, and the park still bears a lot of storm scars. (The fishing pier is now a grove of broken pilings, black roosts for pelicans.)

Either way, I didn't mind; it was a beautiful, breezy day, with dolphins frolicking near the shore, rainbows arching above the offshore trawlers, hermit crabs doggedly (crabbedly?) crawling inch by inch up the beach before being tossed back out to sea by the waves. I worked all the way out to the point, through dune grass and knee-deep brine, collecting plastic bags and plastic pearls, fishing lures and jugs of oil, bikini tops and cooler lids, nets and bottles and ropes and beads. eclectic_boy found a weed-choked dolphin skeleton, still wearing its rubber skin like a tattered Batman cowl, and a bunch of folks wrestled a big green Coast Guard buoy out of the dunes.

My biggest find was (at first I thought) an inflatable orange life raft, or maybe a Zodiac, hidden in the dune grass. But it kept going, twisting through the grass, burrowing beneath the sand, emerging ten feet away, wrapping around that tree over there. adfamiliares and carpenter joined in the salvage effort, and with their help, and my Leatherman, and a chain attached to the back of Mel's ATV, we dragged it onto the beach. Turns out it was an inflatable oil containment boom, fifty feet long and thicker than my thigh. What a find! I felt like Saint George, watching them tie it to the back of the pickup and haul it off.

It was probably our longest workday, and a very sandy ride home. I made crispy pizzas for dinner, with the dough that had been rising in the fridge while we worked: plain cheese, white with feta and artichoke, white with tomato and garlic, fried onion with black pepper, and the experimental burrito pizza (with ruthling's leftover burrito filling, cheddar mixed with the mozzarella, and salsa). I'm gonna have to make a burrito pizza again sometime—yum!

Here are my photos from day 3. Unfortunately, they're the last photos you'll see from this trip—still chuffed from conquering the oil boom, I hopped off the ATV for lunch without realizing my camera bag was unfastened, and my darling little 8800 tumbled out onto the sand: fump. It worked fine for the rest of the afternoon, then seized up with a painful grinding noise on the way home. We just took it up to Arlington for repairs today—it looks like my forgetfulness will cost me $160 (not to mention the missed photo opportunities, which cost less but more). That took some of the wind out of my sails, I don't mind saying.

But you still get the final free sample! ( Snip. )

[Flickr coolness: you can click the "map" link on any photo page to see a map of where it was taken (assuming it's been geotagged, which mine have). Explore a little more to see everybody's pictures taken in that area, which offers a broader perspective on the sights you've seen.]