How about this weather?

It has been a topic at my house about how mild this summer has been for those of us who are regular “Louisianians.”

You get the point. We usually have a long run of “nearly 100 degree” temperatures during the summer, but this year it is hard to remember much of any high-90ish weather.

We seemed to just be around the lower 90s during the worst of this summer, and now we’ve been experiencing weather in the 80s—even the lower 80s—for several weeks. Come on now. You know that is really good for September around here.

Don’t know how or why we got this lucky, but I’m sure everyone will take it. Maybe it’s Gods way of giving us a little break since we got to endure plenty of hurricane trouble this year.

So as they say in the church: “Praise the Lord!”

 Had a visit earlier this week at the Cajun Pride Swamp Tour, situated just past Interstate 10 on old Highway 51.

No, I didn’t take the tour since owner Chris Smits was hard at work trying to get the canals cleared of the trees brought down by those wonderful new friends we all have now—Gustav and Ike.

Chris was telling me that he expected to have things cleaned up, and as of today, you can begin booking your trips and parties at the Cajun Pride Swamp Tour since they should now be open for business again.

If you haven’t ever taken the tour, I hear it is something that you really shouldn’t pass up, even if you are a local.

Just walking around at the welcome center, you get an interesting number of hints about what you will run into when you take the tour with Chris and his staff.

Jenny Rome, his sales manager for many years, said they are now shaping the tour for any number of new things, such as birthday parties for kids, or business outings for the “bigger kids.” They even began a night-time haunted tour that has really got to be a kick.

Now that really does sound like a lot of fun if you have some out-of-town visitors coming here.

So give them a call at 504-467-0758 to check the schedule and book the tour.

Hope you make sure and read today’s edition of River Current, included in today’s paper, since we did something a little different with a section we called “Extraordinary Stories of the River Parishes.”

We wanted to do something fun with our River Current, which is a quarterly magazine we produce, since we’ve all had enough serious business going on with the recent storms.

As our reporting staff got to work trying to find “extraordinary stories” in the region, we ran into more than we could use. And personally, this reporter had a good time writing about some of these things.

You’ll find my stories in the section, covering  Jean Lafitte the Pirate ‘s legacy involving his buried treasure around the River Parishes, an interesting story about the hurricane of 1915 that hit the River Parishes, and plenty of other great stories from the rest of our staff.

So pick up the copy and make sure to give it a look. I think you’ll find it a lot of fun, not to mention entertaining and informative, to see the stories we have there.

Kevin Chiri is Publisher of L’Observateur and can be reached at (985) 652-9545 or at kchiri@bellsouth.net