Elmers Island and Stories from Grand Isle

There's a commercial on the television right now and its basically says that the Gulf Coast is back from the disaster  caused by British Petroleum's oil spill. The gist of the commercial is that things are all fine now along the Gulf Coast and you should return there for your vacations. By all means do go back but don't expect the same Grand Isle that you saw before, or at least don't look to close....
We are on a vacation, and I know this sounds strange as most think we are on a permanent vacation, as we have parked our house and headed to our daughters house. She is a new nurse and is working in a hospital in St Petersburg, Florida. So anyway we left Rockport and drove to Grand Isle to see our Cajun relatives and friends.

As usual the people were greeted us with the Grand Isle warmth that we are accustomed to and of course my sister Connie fed us with a weeks worth of food in two days. Oyster po'boys and pork tenderloins and cookies and candy all left me with a feeling that I might explode.
To work off some calories we drove to Elmers Island and took a walk along the beach hoping to see some birds and beachcomb and basically just check things out. It was a nice day, a little cool with a north wind, but a  nice day none the less and so we enjoyed a long walk.

My brother in law brought me a clump of sand, broke it open, and you could see the tar and smell the stink of money,(oil).  A little further I had Renita stand next to a mass of hardened oil/tar and Connie told us of a place just down the beach where the ground was saturated with so much oil that you could see it by digging down a bit.

There seemed to be a scarcity of birds. The shells, while plentiful, were all darkened and not the usual bright shades of red we expect along the Gulf Coast beaches. Connie told us of a crabber who put out a string of one hundred and forty pots and only caught four dozen, not enough to pay for the fuel and so there are no crabs for sale. The shrimping has been bad and one shrimper caught a black tiger shrimp, another disaster for the gulf coast's shrimping industry,(Some one imported the huge shrimp and had a commercial farm on one of the Caribbean Islands, Of course a hurricane happened by and now the huge shrimp are taking over  from the native species).

While fish are still being caught, the red fish runs have not reappeared or at least the ones that I fished. Gary's fishing has been nonexistent. He is taking place in an experiment where they are studying men from Grand Isle, looking for long term health problems associated with the oil spill. How nice to be part of a long term study from a disaster.
We still enjoyed our walk and we still love Grand Isle. Hopefully, time will eventually heal the wounds and the place will come back, along with the tourists that the camp owners so desperately need, as long as there are no future oil spills. Perhaps it was said best in a book written long ago, this place could have been a national park. Clear skys.