YOLO at Rutherford Beach, LA Feb 2022

 We finally reached Rutherford Beach, Louisiana in the late afternoon, after dealing with the ferry crossing near Port Arthur.  This is another beach parking community and we loved it here.  Karen's face in the sea creature cutout, a leftover from the previous park that has been resurrected.

The entire place was wiped off the face of the Earth by Hurricane Laura in August of 2020.  With 150 mph winds and a 10-foot tidal surge when it made landfall near Cameron, Laura demolished everything in its path, and this town never recovered.  We still saw wrecked cars and trucks out in the middle of the marshes, unable to be recovered.  

The RV campgrounds were filled with the workers from Texas who were building the natural gas exporting facility that just came online; its first export left the week before we got here.  Now even the RV parks are looking deserted, the workers returning to Texas; there is nothing here to rebuild this area now.

There are several PortaJohns here and trash bins that get cleared weekly.  One of the vanlifers here also found a working water pipe and another put a tap/petcock on it so we could all have clean water, too.  Free water, free toilets, free trash removal, free beach parking, free oysters, free crabs.....no wonder some of these folks are spending months here.  What used to be a popular waterfront community park is now the domain of vanlifers, campers and trailers, with the local hooligans who still come out to spin donuts in the sand.

YOLO backed up to the Gulf, Jason kicking back behind the van.  The big green school bus belonged to a family with three kids, ages 3-10 with them.  They were extremely nice and I found out later they had seven other grown children!  They've been here for months.  They think to leave but keep coming back because they like it so much.

Oysters on the rocks of the breakwater at Rutherford Beach during low tide.  Yes, you can eat these oysters and several folks here did so.

Blowing snow?  Nope, just different colors of sand leaving pretty patterns on the shore.

Chuck, Jason and Jay heading to our crabbing spot on Valentine's Day.  Chuck had been shown this 'secret' crabbing hole and he offered to take us crabbing there.  He provided the chicken legs and string for the bait and showed us how to troll the crabs in slowly and net them.

I'm retrieving the chicken leg, but the crab let go this time.  Jay is helping me by netting the ones that get close enough to grab with the net.  Jay built out a school bus, popped the top and added an extension to make it big enough for his entire family.  It was huge.

A female blue crab tangled in the net.  Eric had loaned us his truck and the net, too, as long as we caught some crabs for him.  Females have the bright red claws.  We threw the females over the into the water on the other side so we wouldn't catch them again.  Those claws are deadly sharp and they drew blood on me and Jason and Jay.  Only Chuck remained bloodless this day.  

Jason tried to push the logjam of sticks away from the lock so we wouldn't get our strings caught in them.  He wasn't entirely successful, but we still got tons of crabs.

Chuck was like a machine!  Toss in the chicken leg and pull out a crab.  And his were mostly the males we could keep.  His honey hole produced this day!  We're planning to feed all the folks on the beach tonight.  Crab Fest!

We crabbed for hours, catching hundreds.  There is no limit on these and you don't need a license to catch them.  We missed lunch completely, so by the time we got back to the beach we were all starving.  We knew it would be a while before could get the fire going, get the big cooking pot boiling and put the crabs in to boil.  It would take several batches to cook all the crabs we caught.  In the meantime, Zalena had made her family some split pea soup and offered some to Jason and me to tide us over.  It was delicious and we went back to the green bus for seconds.

The kids had fun playing with the crabs, getting them to grab onto the sticks.  You can see the mighty claw of this one wants to pinch something.

A big male blue crab.

Chuck sorting through the two buckets of crabs we caught (mostly he caught).  He wants to finish building out his bus, sell it and move to Suriname with his dog, Hades, to hunt gold.  We were the only folks he'd met that had ever been there, but he didn't want to heed our warnings.  Good luck, Chuck.

The cooking pot is heating up.  We had lots of crabs to cook! We figured we caught 120+ to feed us and threw back the smaller ones and females.

Eric (in the brown shirt) had loaned us his truck.  His three kids, plus Jay's five kids, plus eight adults made quite the throng to feed.  It was cold and dark by the time we finally got to eat, but nobody willing to work at eating crabs went hungry. 

 The aftermath the next morning behind Chuck's bus.  We still had a partial trayful left uneaten, with a pile of discarded shells tossed in the sand.  And Chuck had part of a bucket of them that were still live and uncooked.  He put them in a submerged cistern to try to keep them alive until he could cook them later, but I think he eventually let most of them go.  Crabs are the only meal where I'm hungrier after I've eaten than when I started!  They're so much work to eat.  I wouldn't even pick the meat out of the leftovers.

A beach plant growing in a star shape farther down the beach.

Every day, we saw burns taking place, with huge plumes of smoke blowing across the landscape.  They burn the tall dry grass to encourage new growth and discourage unwanted animals (we saw lots of crocs along the waterways).  The myriad of channels of water here near the shore ensure none of the fires get out of control.

The kids found a turtle one day and were trying to scrub its shell clean and remove the green growth on it.  A lady camping in her trailer came by and scolded them, telling them they shouldn't be doing that and they should put the turtle back where they found it.  The turtle didn't seem to care either way....

Two other campers were going to see the cemetery that was badly disturbed by the hurricane here in Cameron a few years ago.  Jason and I had noticed them on our way here and invited ourselves to go along to explore.  Jason is checking out the broken vaults and headstones.

Crypts were filled with water and headstones were scattered about by the hurricane.  Someone had removed any bodies or skeletons; we never saw any bones.  

The devastation with upturned graves was a bit unsettling, even after all this time.

It was kind of a spooky spectacle, but someone has methodically been working to restore order to this mayhem.

Restored graves all have a 4-inch thick slab of grey granite atop them.  Hopefully, that will be heavy enough to withstand any future hurricanes.

Seems strange to see new mound of earth in this context.

After four nights here, the longest we've stayed anyplace on the road, we finally tore ourselves away.  Chuck was going to take us to his oyster-gathering place and we were going to make oyster stew.  The family in the green bus had driven to Port Arthur the day before and did some shopping for us, so I had half and half to make a batch of stew for us, too.  Jason, however, decided it was time to head on, so we used the half and half I'd bought for our coffee instead.  Rutherford Beach is a place I'd surely return to if we have the chance.