I'm a little behind (what else is new) so let's rewind again, shall we?
I'll start with Mother's Day, which was a beautiful sunny, but still fairly cool, day. Perfect for an event I had really been looking forward to; the yearly Mothers Day Crawfish Boil here at Hidden Oaks!
To be able to boil 600 (!) pounds of craw-fish they set up a custom made contraption in the morning for a huge pot and basket to be hung ...
Which were boiled in a separate, much smaller basin ...
And than of course, the stars of the show, the 30 pound bags of craw-daddies ...
Some of them got a little 'defensive' ... they pinch hard (but who wouldn't if you fight for your life?)
Salt, (hot) Cajun spices and a whole bottle of Zatarain's Shrimp and Crab Boil were added to the boiling water in the 'big' pot ...
After which the basket was lowered ...
It takes about 15 to 20 minutes and a lot of stirring to cook the little guys ...
The steam that rises from the pot burns your eyes and nose! Talking about hot and spicy!!!
We didn't wait around for the whole procedure so I don't have an actual picture of when they tipped 'our' basket, but this one that I stole from the web should come pretty close.
(Somewhere halfway they also added a few bags of ice to the boil, apparently this draws the spices better into the craw-fish).
They actually used a small trailer covered with paper to dump everything in, and moved it to the pavilion ..
Than they simply filled plastic bags with 2 pounds of craw-fish each.
The 'fixings' were laid out by Nita and Chris ...
And we all lined up for our meal ...
Unfortunately, not as many people showed up as they had hoped. According to the 'regulars' the event gets smaller each year.
A lot of it has to do with the floods of lately, people are fed up with it, are selling their sites and are looking for other (dryer) places to go ...
Still, the ones who did show had a great time and although the overall opinion was that the crayfish should have been spicier (even we, as non-southerners, agreed), and the corn was over-cooked, we ate until we were well and truly stuffed ...
We brought some home for left-overs which, taking several people's advice, I used a day later in an omelet. It was indeed delicious!
Well, lets see, I think that was all for the exiting part of the week.
The rest was pretty calm and uneventful. As usual.
I've resumed my walks around both sides, and loops, of the park and still manage to find something new every day ...
... like these beautiful Gardenias. Actually, you smell them long before you see them ...
I brought some inside the RV. Wow, you should have smelled the place!
I know understand why these southern 'Belles' in the movies always seem to faint so easily, it's 'heavenly' smell is almost overwhelming!
They're constrictors, I don't think they're very aggressive or bite but I kept my distance, just in case!
There are always Dragonflies, like this pretty Blue Dasher:
And than there was this huge wasp buzzing through the high grass.
I found out it's a Red Wasp and the iridescent blue bug on the right is a Six-spotted Tiger Beetle. Clearly without the spots, which apparently is not uncommon.
In between jobs James has been doing some more maintenance on the truck and RV.
The truck is still 'pinging' at low RPMs so after much consideration we decided to bring it to a Medium Chevy dealer in New Orleans, to have it tested while being hooked up to a specially therefor designed computer program.
We figured now was the time to do it, while we're close to a dealer who actually has experience with medium trucks and not wait until we break down somewhere along the road while driving north.
Also, James boss had a job for him in New Orleans so he was able to car-pool and drop-of and pick-up the truck with one of the other guys he works with.
As it turned out the test results came back as 'all over the map', not pointing to something really specific but definitely as 'something wrong'.
They suggested several solutions, starting with the most obvious to hopefully, eventually, solve the problem.
So, our first move has been to eliminate the fuel treatment that James has been adding to the diesel to run smoother. It might actually make the fuel 'too rich' which affects the efficiency to burn it.
We'll keep our fingers crossed! All in all, it means that we're going to stay put for a little while until we're running better.
In the meantime, he has been working on the bedroom AC that was leaking all over the bed. Wonderful!
After opening the whole thing up it seemed that he had, during a previous repair, calked the drainage holes shut. Mmmm, duhh ... apparently those holes are there for a reason !
It's one (!) of his vices. Give him a calking gun and he goes to town!
Any-who, easy solution ... re-drill holes!
And voila! No more leaking! Good job Hon!
And while he was in a calking mode (you see what I'm talking about!) he re-calked some other cracked calking among the outside 'trimmings'.
