Louisiana Gulf Coast March 13

Tuesday, March 13

Woke for some sunrise pictures this morning and walked a little on the beach.  Got chilly last night and is 48 degrees at 7:40AM.

 The coffee maker wouldn’t complete its cycle this AM, so we just had some oatmeal and hit the road.  We are following route 82 which goes along the southern coast of Louisiana, which is surprisingly long (397 miles of coast!). Also known as

Near the town of Cameron there is a ferry across the Calcasiu River/Ship Channel.  We only have about a ten minute wait and cross with five or six other vehicles.  The actual crossing only takes 4-5 minutes.  During that time three dolphins cross in front of us, heading for the Gulf! Think Flipper.

There used to be many ferries in the area, but most have been replaced with drawbridges, of which we see many.  A few open bookwise, but most lift directly up. I'll show you one later...

 There are lots of boats at Cameron, including many shrimp boats and we see  frequent signs for people selling “fresh from the boat”  "never frozen" shrimp and crabs.

After a little while we come to a sign for Rutherford Beach and take a small detour to check it out, as it is another place that we could have boondocked.  It is a short drive and less populated, so would probably be a better place to stop should we come this way again.  There are four or five rv's there now.

We continue along 82.  There are houses periodically, almost all of which are built either on stilts (wooden or concrete or brick) or on a high rise of ground. Greg notes that there are some lots with foundations only where people did not re-build.

They called this one the Cajun High-rise.  We even see a few that have installed elevators.

Next we see a turn for Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge and decide to have a look.  It is a large refuge with just one major road.  It is open for fishing and crabbing and such and nicely maintained with several docks and a lookout tower.  Mostly grassy and open wetlands with many birds.  Talk with a local gentleman fishing for gar and a few others are crabbing.

Fun watching the birds hunting and doing their bird things.

 As we are leaving, we are waved over by a friendly game warden doing a check.  We read the rules as we entered and since we are “ancients”, we didn’t have to pay a fee.

After another half hour or so we reach civilization again and we head a bit inland to Abbeville, where we fuel up on monster shrimp po’boys at a little unassuming place called BC Seafood & Po Boys.  (They are so large, that we end up having them again for dinner. ) Yum!

 

We pass by several crawfish farms.  The small orange dots are the handles on bell-shaped wire traps.

We are in Cajun and Creole country now where the accents are delightful. A sign for the Konriko  Rice Mill and Company Store  in New Iberia catches our eye.  There we see a short film about Acadiana and then are given a tour of the oldest operating Rice Mill in the US.  

Most of what we see is historical, but interesting, excluding the many cats that provide pest control. (We are asked not to pet them as they are working.) I may be the only one who didn’t know that brown rice and white rice come from the same crop with brown rice retaining the bran.  Also learned that Louisiana rice is planted by plane these days, and many of the rice areas double as crawfish ponds so that 2 crops are produced.  The store  had samples and sells varieties of rice, along with rice crackers, local sauces and pre-packaged goodies. 

Most of the rice is grown about 40 miles to the northwest and indeed, you can see some of the fields when traveling across I-10.   Sugar cane is more popular in the area we are in now and there are several old sugar cane plantations near here as well as processing plants.

Next we head to Thibodaux, where we’ll spend the night at Walmart.  The nearby State Park we had thought of visiting is still closed for repairs after flooding. First we visit St. John’s Episcopal Church, one of the oldest Episcopal churches in the Mississippi Valley, organized in 1834.  They have a historical cemetery which includes veterans from the Civil War, War of 1812, World Wars I and II as well as the Spanish American War.  Other notables were plantation owners and politicians.  Here, as throughout Southern Louisiana, many of the tombs are above ground.

 It was quite pretty, with long clear windows rather than stained glass.  Unfortunately we just missed the caretaker, so weren't able to go inside the church.  But the cemetery was interesting.

LOUISIANA & TEXAS MARCH 2018

Monday March 12, 2018

FINALLY we are getting some decent weather and heading out in the Trek for a quick one week trip.
Greg has wanted to do a Louisiana Swamp Tour, so that's our destination, along with some good food, interesting culture, birds and other critters, etc.  So Laissez les bon temps rouler!

We begin with a visit to Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary at High Island, Texas.  Today is perfect weather, beginning around 50 with highs only near 70, and a breeze to keep those pesky mosquitoes at bay!  Yes, I know my poor relatives in Massachusetts are digging out from ANOTHER snowstorm, but it looks like Spring has finally Sprung here!

 The major attraction at Smith Oaks is a rookery, where egrets, cormarants, and roseate spoonbills are hard at work building nests for their soon-to-arrive offspring.  Most of the spoonbills are quite colorful with a nice orange blast under their pink wing and tail feathers.

The egrets have been showing off their plumage too, to attract a mate.  The coloring around their eyes turns a lovely green during this time.  Many of the birds are working in pairs, carefully constructing a sturdy nest.  One bird goes to fetch sticks from the area and together they work on construction. Usually one is there to watch the nest because all types of birds are happy to cut corners on their workload by "permanently borrowing" a neighbor's supplies.

We saw a big hawk, turtles, these lounging lizards (ok, gators), frogs, fish and other birds.  Not many people either - a big plus in our books.  I don't think they officially open till next week.  If we have time, maybe we'll come back to see the chicks!  The rookery is on an island in a lake and the gators prowl around it, keeping other preditors like coyote away.

Some nice flowers beginning to bloom, too!

Because route 87 was washed out for the hundredth time by Hurricane Harvey,  they've opted NOT to rebuild a large section of it.  So we backtrack back to the small town of Winnie, where we head east, southeast through Port Arthur (home of Janis Joplin) to Sea Rim State Park.

Port Arthur is full of refineries and chemical plants  (Could that be the cause of Janis' scratchy kind of voice?)....

 and we pass over the Intracoastal waterway.

Sea Rim State Park faces the Gulf of Mexico but has some inland marsh land as well.  We take a hike on a long boardwalk there and see birds, thousands of tiny and some not-so-tiny fish, crabs and a young alligator.

 Apparently there was one gator sunbathing on the boardwalk earlier, but he's gone back in the water by the time we get there.  Only his younger brother remains nearby.  I'd show a photo, but it is just a tiny head and snout in a large expanse of water.  We drive through their smallish campground and onto the beach where we stop for another walk.

 Lots of snail shells and some other pretty ones, but most of the shells have either been drilled and drained by a preditor, or broken to bits by the surf.  Quite a few water birds, terns, gulls and an occasional pelican.  You can see some oil rigs offshore - can't imagine the horror when the last oil spill stained these shores!

Again we have to backtrack, this time to Port Arthur.  Then we go south-east on route 82 where we cross Sabine Pass and enter Louisiana.

Last stop today is Holly Beach in Louisiana, where we stop for the night by the Gulf's shushing waves.  We enjoy a nice salad with chicken and  a gorgeous swirly sunset.  The breeze keeps the bugs at bay so we see only a few mosquitos.

Good-night!

October 31, Povery Pt, LA and home to the Astros

October 31 Happy Halloween

46 degrees this morning as we complete crossing Alabama and then cross Mississippi.  We continue past Natchez and Vicksburg, both nice places that we've visited previously.  We are heading for Poverty Point, Louisiana.  After a 45-minute delay due to an accident, we enter Louisiana and turn north to Poverty Point. Through lots of corn and cotton fields.  But here the cotton has been picked and made into large bales which are wrapped in plastic and awaiting pick up.  This has obviously been picked by machine, which probably most is these days.  A few waterways, but signs of irrigation too.

Poverty Point National Monument is a World Heritage Site, named after a plantation that was developed here in the 1800's.

A little less than impressive in appearance, it is nonetheless a very interesting spot.  There is a visitors center and a few other buildings and we need to head to the "Lab" to get a ranger to open the visitors center/museum.

This monument consists of 6 earthen mounds with concentric c-shaped ridges, built about 3,500 years ago by the ancestors of modern American Indians.  It is the oldest of the mound builders sites in the US.   Built between 1700 and 1100BC, it was probably the "New York City" of its day.   The earthworks were built by moving about 15 million cubic feet of dirt, probably using woven baskets.  There is some evidence of holes that may have held poles, and many of the mounds no doubt had structures of some sort on them.  The museum has displays of many decorative items, spearheads, etc. that have been recovered here.

 Where was this information in our American History books?

Evidence of some stones, copper, shells and other items indicate that these people had a wide trade network including Mexico and many neighboring states.

Mound A, the largest, was 710' in length, 660' wide and 72' above the land surface.  It has an unusual shape which some think is a bird in flight.  We walk to the top and wonder about people who walked these same grounds (minus the stairway :)) thousands of years ago!   Excavation and study continues.

After leaving Poverty Point, we discuss the rest of the trip, and decide we could head for home and make it in time to see what might be the last game of the World Series.  It will be a long haul, but we should get home just about game time - 8:00 tonight.  We hit Texas about 4:30 and make our way south and west through some rain here and there.  God bless Greg and his love of driving!

We get home in the 2nd inning and the Astros can't pull it off.  Ah well, we will be better able to stay up and enjoy the deciding game 7 tomorrow!  Yeah Astros!!