The day after Mardi Gras:
The following day we had reservations for our first experience on an airboat! We went for an hour ride on a beautiful swamp with gators, ibis, turtle, nutria, great egret, bald cypress and plenty of spanish moss. Our airboat captain, Jeremy, had a lovely southern accent and gave clear interesting information about the swamp we explored. I did not want off of that boat. We learned that it was a great time of year to be out in search of gators, they are all bathing in the sun to warm up this time of year. From there we went a bit farther to New Orleans to explore for a little while. We did the obligatory walk around the french quarter, bourbon street, jackson square and st. louis cathedral. We enjoyed it more than Matthew thought we would. It's a beautiful place. We rested at an outdoor restaurant, sipped on ice cream daiquiris and listened to jazz by 5 old southern gentlemen. Our dinner plans didn't pan out as the place we were going was closed. We found a different local favorite that was booming. We gorged on fried catfish, fried soft shell crab, shrimp fried rice and a pitiful salad.
Sun bathing gator
Bald Cypress
"Big Al"
Jackson Square with St. Louis Cathedral in the distance, only shot I took in New Orleans
The next morning we ventured to Avery island, the birthplace of Tabasco sauce. We started by walking Jungle gardens, an oasis cultivated by one of the early owners of the Tabasco company. We saw more gators bathing in the sun, man-made lagoons, a big Buddha statue in a shrine built to honor it, with the surrounding lagoon, and garden to match it's mystic and Asian origins. It housed one of the most diverse collection of bamboo, bird city - the home of many egrets, and camellia plants with flowers ranging in shades of red to white. We then toured the Tabasco factory. It was amusing mostly, we saw how Tabasco is made, read about the history of the owners and how Tabasco came to being. They gave us a few samples and threw in two bottles of spicy pickled okra.. we guessed this gift was due to low sales but it is delicious!
Jungle gardens
Great Egret sanctuary
Type 2 Fun experience:
While at the laundromat in Alexandria Louisiana Matthew got suckered into giving a guy a ride. Breuster was a 50 year old who spent 19 years in prison and needed a ride just a few miles away. It was a longer ride than expected, and on the way, whilst distracting us with conversation he informed us he needed to make more than one stop. He also implied he wanted to ride with us to Texas. We told him only one stop but when we got there no one was at the house to let him in, so we drove him one more place which happened to be on our way back anyway. He was an interesting character, he made a mix of positive and primarily negative comments. He kept trying to give us things, talked about different 'hustles' to get quick money, claimed to read people well.. and we were happy to say farewell. He turned out to be mostly harmless but did rub us the wrong way.
After Mardi Gras and exploring the pungent streets of New Orleans we ended out time in Louisiana with a backpacking trip. It was along the Wild Azalea trail in the Kistachie National Forest. We were taking it easy, so we didn't plan to do the entire trail. It is a point to point trail so we did an out and back trip. We only wanted to do three days, which meant on the second day we turned around halfway through the day. Silly, I know. The weather forecast said it would be raining every day, thunderstorms. On the first day we had a light rain with only a short burst of heavy rainfall for about 2 minutes. The trail went through multiple changes between the bayou/swamp areas and higher ground which had pine trees, dogwood trees and had recently been burned. There were many beautiful spots, I'm sorry I didn't take more photos. Some of the coolest ones were in the rain anyhow. By the time we stopped to camp in the mid afternoon it stopped raining or was only a light drizzle. Our campsite was along a creek, called Loving Creek. It was right next to the trail but it looked like a used site and we didn't see anyone the whole time we were there.
The second morning we had no rain, in fact it didn't rain much that day, only small amounts of drizzle. I didn't even wear my rain coat. We came across on upside down car in this section. It was very unexpected and neat. I wondered how long it had been sitting there. We also happened to find a geocache stored in it!
The last day started off dry, most of the hike was dry with short drizzles, until the last 2-3 miles. The downpour finally came, with lightening and thunder. By this time knowing I was going back to the car I didn't even care about getting soaked. I didn't bother with a raincoat. I needed a shower anyway.
By the time we made it to the car the rain stopped, which was very convenient. We weren't sure how we were going to make the transition of being soaked, to dry clothing and getting in the car. It was all good fun. It felt good to get soaked, and it felt great to be dry again. Once we were unpacked and settled in the car it was lunch time. Our usual post backpacking reward of splitting a pie of pizza enticed us to drive out to the city. We got an extra large pizza to share, and I had no problem eating my half. I didn't even feel full afterward, we also didn't need dinner that night.
The next day graced us with sun, blue skies and heat. We laid out all the damp and drenched things to dry. Once everything was dried, by about midday and after a short run, we packed up our things and continued west.
Now we are in Texas. We spent the first few days at the Davy Crockett National Forest. We spent a down day at camp, and went to the Caddo Mounds Historic Site which is only 10 minutes away. I started a fire for the first time using flint, steel and charcloth. I got a fire starter kit from Judy and Eric Brewer for Christmas. It took me a while to start playing with it, first I had to learn to get a spark with the flint and steel, then how to hold the charcloth in place to catch the spark, THEN move it to tinder that I collected, place it in the center and blow continuously until it catches. It worked, I got really excited and have started 5 fires this way now.
First first started with flint, steel and charcloth!
We did a 10 mile hike the next day along the 4C hiking trail. We were planning on a backpacking trip but too many things went wrong for that ie controlled burns, unknown fees, starting too late. Instead we left Davy Crockett and are now sitting in a Starbucks in Huntsville as we plan our next move.
Camp Creek, along the 4C trail
One of three water moccasins we encountered, sorry it's not a great photo, wasn't getting too close
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