I had to go on a research trip for the book I'm writing so John and I headed out there this past Saturday.  I need to see many things, but my main objective was to tour a commercial shrimp boat from top to bottom.

There were a lot of shrimp boats in.  These on Bayou La Loutre made a pretty picture, I thought.  I even like the curvy road in the picture.

There were oyster boats, too, heading out to the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding waters.  I photographed this one at Shell Beach.

This is Fort Proctor, from 1856, also in Shell Beach.  It's often known locally as Fort Beauregard or Beauregard's Castle after P.G.T. Beauregard.

We also went to the Chalmette Battlefield which is where the Battle of New Orleans was fought. This was a battle during the war of 1812 although it was fought two weeks after the end of the war in 1814.  Communication was limited during that time and no one knew the treaty had already been signed. At this cemetery you'll find the graves of many soldiers from many wars. The oldest graves are for soldiers from the War of 1812.  There are graves of veterans from all wars from that point on through Vietnam.

Remember the Johnny Horton song, Battle of New Orleans? (Click here to read the lyrics.)

This hawk was at the Battleground.  I think it was confused.  This is the south .... way down south .... so why it was 21ºs when we woke up that morning?  That's just not supposed to happen!

I saw these white pelicans and I just had to stop and take some pictures of them. Of course they thought they needed to move away from me, so these are pretty much white pelican butt pictures, but I tried!

More pelican butts, but some of them were checking to see if I was following.  It's a pity the swam away from my vantage point.  They were beautiful.

Now Brown Pelicans, our state bird, don't seem to care if people are looking at them or not.