Louisiana Man Finds Message in Bottle Along State Coastline

(Lake Charles, Louisiana) - A man in South Louisiana saw a piece of wood he wanted in the water, and what he found in addition to the wood was a message in a bottle.

KALB reports. "That Dale Hoffpauir was out making deliveries in Cameron Parish when he says as he passed through Holly Beach and Johnson Bayou, he noticed a piece of driftwood."

While he didn't immediately stop to retrieve the wood from the shore, he later returned after his deliveries, and it was then that he spotted a bottle in the water.

Houffpauir said he could see that there was something in the bottle, but after cleaning it, he simply put it in his truck and elected to open it once he returned home.

Inside the bottle found off the coast of Cameron Parish were two papers. One had a drawing of a bat, while the other piece of paper had a handwritten letter by the Hardy family.

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The letter in the bottle noted that the family was heading home after spending 12 months abroad, sailing from the U.K. to the Balearic Islands.

Houffpauir told KALB-TV that the letter indicated that it was tossed into the water in Portugal and that the Hardy family provided an email address in the letter so that when it was discovered, the person who found the bottle would have a way to contact them.

When the South Louisiana man attempted to email the family, the provided email address was no longer active.

The man who found the bottle with the message in it did not stop there. Houffpauir, who is not active on social media, says he asked a friend to help him locate the Hardy family via social media, and that's when his friend went to Twitter.

Amazingly, they were able to locate the Hardy family, and now Hoffpauir says they've built a relationship as if they had known each other for years.

If you're wondering how long ago the bottle with the letters had been in the water, the report says for 10 years. Now, the Houffpauir family hopes to return the letters to the Hardy family in the form of a surprise.