Retiring from Military where to live in South Louisiana?

[NocEm]

Hello all,

Long time lurker first time poster. I am currently just shy over 20 years service active duty Air Force and will be retiring in the next couple of years.

We spent almost 10 years at Barksdale in Bossier, and while that area is nice, we really fell in love with South Louisiana. We spent a lot of time in the Lake Charles Big Lake Area (Cameron, Hackberry, Prien) but also visited and loved areas like Lafitte, LaPlace, Metarie, Mandeville and Madisonville. As you can tell we much preferred the out lying/smaller areas over big towns/cities.

We will be extremly flexible and obviously will go where the work is. Wife is in
financial/insurance business and I am a E-8(will retire as E-9) Petroleum Specialist with a Leadership/Organzational Managment BA degree and will more than likely be looking to hire on with an Oil Company in some form or fashion, but consider myself pretty marketable in a number of different enterprises.

We will have have school age children by then (High School/Jr High and elementary) so obviosly education quality is a factor. Additionally, with 2 professional incomes and a military pension we will be fairly financially comfortable.

The baseline that we are looking for is as follows.

- South Louisiana Small town/Outskirts preferred (willing to commute)
- Good Schools
- Good People/culture
- Close to good fishing/hunting(definetly entertaining living on the water, but will be on the hunt for land)

Please feel free to let me know if I have missed anything.

I want to thank anyone who puts in there two cents in advance and am genuinly looking foward to here some opinions.

Neil