Ahwww, how sweet! I guess it's that time of the year  ...

Well, we've settled in once again and are 'sort-of happy' with our new spot.

It's roomy and shady and quiet, but when it rains ... it turns out we're in another low spot.... and yes, it did rain! A lot! Again!

Can you believe it?! I'm so done with this rain!

Fortunately, we 'only' got a few inches and it drained pretty fast but Houston, on the other hand, flooded completely this time!

Again, properties were lost and people drowned ... this is a horrible year for weather so far!

At our park, people are slowly cleaning up their sites from the 'big one' a few weeks ago. 

Many of the regular/permanent people that have RV's parked here, had build some kind of a deck around them, and although most of the RV's were pulled out during the evacuation, many of these structures have been destroyed.

There are quite some people who have given up and are bailing out ...

                                                              

The owners of the campground, Nita and Roy, are still working on their structures, cabins and bathrooms, and after that they still have the grounds to clean up  ....

Lot's of stuff got caught up in the swamp/bayou. What a mess ...

OK, time for some fun!
We arrived back in the area just in time for the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival.

 

A tell-tale sign of the sub-tropical climate here is the fact that this strawberry festival takes place annually on the second weekend in April. There's places in other states that are still dealing with snow on the ground!
Ponchatoula is known as the "Strawberry Capital of the World". At the turn of the 20th century the local area changed its chief industry from lumber to commercial farming and the main produce was the strawberry.

So, despite the recent floods, this little town set up to party! 
We went early, warned by locals that the crowds and roads were going to be crazy later in the day, and walked the fair grounds.
We watched a game of egg-throwing. This one even involved the 'Strawberry King' himself:

Being the area's major charity funding event, churches, clubs and service organizations had set up shop on the festival grounds to raise money.
This year, some of the profits were going to the victims of the floods.



Unfortunately, this means that everything is waaay over-prized! 

It didn't hold us back from buying a strawberry/chocolate funnel cake though. We had our mind set on 'something strawberry' for coffee, so we went for it. 

Unfortunately it was a disappointment. Although I liked the funnel cake, I really didn't care for the canned (!) gooey strawberry stuff on top. Bleh! You'd think they use fresh strawberries at a strawberry festival?!

Let me see, what else did we do?
Oh, well, we played golf, of course! We checked off three (!) courses of our 'Golf Crescent City' card!
The first one was Oak Harbor in Slidell, about an hour to the east of us.

It was a rather grey day, but without wind, and the temperatures were perfect.




This links-type course is very nice, although water comes into play on 12 holes (sigh), and it's nicely maintained.
We had a good time and a pretty good round also, for a change!

We played the next course  a couple of days later, since James finished one job and had to wait a day to start the next.

This one was in La Place, about 45 minutes south-west of us.

Another beautiful course, although, as a reminder of the latest floods, a few of the fairways and cart-paths still had some water on it ...

I especially liked this course since there were 'pink' tees, which were placed waaaay forward, so even a short hitter like me could be on the green in regulation!

James had a lot of 'fun' in the sand-traps ....

And last weekend we went back to Slidell to play another course there, the Pinewood Country Club. 

 

The thick trees that line some of the narrow fairways can make for tricky shots and many of the greens are small and fast.
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and the course was pretty much full, which unfortunately made for very slow play ...

Other than that, I've got not much else to rapport, other than a few shots of our campground's resident Peacocks ...

Yes, you're a stud!

Because of spring, the two males are constantly calling out (have you ever hear a Peacock scream? It's LOUD!) and occasionally there's some fighting!

Merl' thinks they're too big to be bothered looking at them, and of course he can't hear them anyway ...
He has a new favorite sleeping space ... an old box, under the front of the RV. 
If you have a cat you know how this goes; you buy them an expensive fluffy bed and than they choose a cardboard box ...

Oh, I almost forgot, (and guess who else?), it was my birthday yesterday!
James 'surprised' me on this day with coming home early and taking me golfing, when I discovered he had Kim, the golf-pro re-grip my clubs, besides also getting me some new balls. 
Which in itself was very nice, but also really hilarious, because he'd totally forgotten it was my birthday, didn't congratulate me, it was just pure coincidence he did all this.
I didn't say anything, waited it out, and it took until 4pm, after some careful hints, that he saw the light!


Any-who, as a present to myself, I'd gotten me some new (golf) shoes too!

These are so cool! They're Dawgs, 'the world's lightest' golf shoes, and look basically like a sort of Crocs with spikes. 
Now, I know not everybody wants to be seen in Crocs, but I happen to love them, and I like these a lot. Super-light and airy!

We went out to dinner at a neighborhood cafe, just around the corner from the campground.

James was very happy with his mega-pile of fried onion-rings ...

And I was very happy to discover they had fresh boiled Crawfish that on the menu for the day!

A lot of work, but yumm!