Gator Hunting

We know we're close to home when we can go hunting for alligators. No, no, not with a gun - with a flashlight! All you have to do is take a walk along a waterway and shine your flashlight over the water. When you see a red dot, or two, or four...you found a gator(s)! Their eyes reflect red in the beam of light. We went gator hunting in Huntsville and 'caught' one. We tried again last night in the bayous of Weezeeana (we just love how the locals pronounce the name of their state).

Marksville, LA - Chicot State Park

One day we drove over to Chicot State Park. We had wanted to stay there, but knew there would be too many trees. Information we found stated that the trail circling Lake Chicot was good for mountain biking so we thought we'd check it out. We started at the South Landing Trailhead near the Main Entrance. We headed north initially, but found the trail to be too technical for being so rusty. We agreed to head south and give up if we started to hit the same type of steep/rocky/rooty hills. Thankfully it was more of a beginner/intermediate trail to the south because it was so pretty in this beech/magnolia forest. And when the trail dipped down near the lake you dropped into a bayou filled with cedar trees. In this photo, Andy had just gotten jammed in a small gully.

But what took my breath away was when I came down and around this one bend and saw this quarter-mile long boardwalk spanning over a section of the bayou. This is where we had to stop and enjoy a snack before turning back home.

Back at the car we met a fellow mountain biker who told us that of the 20-mile long trail, the 4-5 miles just north of this trailhead were the most technical.

It seems like we're rushing all the time. We didn't get to explore any other areas of the park because it was well past our lunchtime and I didn't think to pack a lunch. We did take about 45 minutes and walked around the Louisiana State Arboretum before heading out of the area. This is another place I would've loved to have spent more time in. It was just outside Chicot SP, was heavily forested with several miles of trails looping throughout. It would've been very relaxing...if we weren't SO hungry!

Marksville, LA

We've been in Marksville now since Friday. Making it five nights for us. As you can see I've been trying to make up for lost time! We've struggled with our internet access...well, maybe 'struggle' isn't the right word. My naivete with this new technology just extends or exaggerates any problem we have. We've blamed our "satellite degradation" on weather in Maryland, but caved in today and called them to see if that was true. It wasn't. We were having a different problem. Nothing a little firmware update couldn't fix (in 15 minutes). Now I'm kicking myself for wasting all this time with in/out internet. Oh, well, we live and learn.

Funny enough, we're staying here at the Paragon Casino RV Park & Resort...and we haven't even been to the casino! And we're leaving in the morning. We've been busy...cleaning the RV, washing and waxing both the RV and the car, and I had to re-string one of the day/night shades in the RV. All of this takes quite a bit of time so it feels great to get it all done.

We've met a few locals during this stay, and most seem genuinely surprised that we've stopped in Louisiana. One gentleman asked Andy why we stopped to visit the area, and Andy's response? "It's in our way." Ok, so maybe that didn't win any friends! Just another classic-Andy comment....

St Francisville and the Ferry

Downtown St Francisville is historic with most of the homes restored and occupied by either residents or businesses. This makes it very homey. And the entire city is considered a bird sanctuary. We had also tried to visit Cat Island NWR during our stay, but found that a "low water bridge" really isn't a bridge at all. It's a crossing at "low water". It wasn't low water when we arrived at the "bridge", so we had to turn back. Even when our forays into the unknown turn out to be a bust, we usually see something new or just have a nice drive to nowhere.

We also decided to check out the ferry we were going to have to take when leaving town. This ferry crosses the mighty Mississippi. Not only does it have to battle the strong currents, but it has to dodge mammoth barges. It runs every half hour. Giving it just 15 minutes to load up, cross the river, and unload before doing it again.

After taking a look at the ferry, we decided to drive separate the next day. It could fit a 51' vehicle, but we decided to make it easier on ourselves in case it was crowded.

St Francisville, LA - Rosedown Plantation

After leaving Clark Creek, we went to Rosedown Plantation. We figured that we are in plantation country here in Louisiana, so we should visit the plantations. Rosedown was larger than Oakley House (where Audubon worked). It had closer to 450 slaves. This plantation was quite beautiful and held many of the original pieces of furniture from the family who had lived there. What I love about many of these old plantation homes are the huge oak trees that line the drive to the front entrance of the home.

It makes me think of the old movies with the ladies in their big skirts, fanning themselves in the southern heat.
Rosedown also has formal and informal gardens surrounding the house. The weather was downright beautiful today and we just strolled around and around the paths looking for new ones to walk along. The gardens were filled with camellias, hydrangeas, rose bushes, and crepe myrtles.

St Francisville, LA - Clark Creek

Greg, the owner of Green Acres Campground, recommended that we go hike Clark Creek Natural Area. What? Waterfalls in Louisiana? Well, actually, Clark Creek is in Pond, MS just over the state line. But either way, we were surprised to hear about waterfalls in this region. And Clark Creek boasts 50 waterfalls varying from 10-30'. Ok, not so tall, but the five we saw were unique and hiking down Clark Creek itself was beautiful. This area was surprising hilly, giving our quads the first good workout on hills. We started with Waterfall #3, then hiked down the creek itself to see two more before returning to the trail and visiting two others. The creek was quite shallow on our visit and with its big boulders and sand bars we were able to stay pretty dry. We weren't expecting challenging terrain, so didn't wear our hiking boots.

Here are just two of the waterfalls we visited:


And this was just the first of three butterflies I'd get to land on me in two days.

We could've spent a lot more time in here hiking the trails, or the creek, but we had wanted to do one more touristy thing that day. And we had to make some tough choices: the Angola Prison Museum or Rosedown Plantation or go mountain biking on Old Tunica Road???? Big decisions...

St Francisville, LA - Audubon

St Francisville was a pretty little town with lots to do in the area. Once we realized that we weren't going to get our dish working, we decided to stay and visit the sites before moving on to another destination. Late the first afternoon we went across the street from the campground to the Audubon State Historic House. John James Audubon stayed here in 1821 while he worked as a tutor for one of the plantation owner's children. While he was here he painted many of the birds that you can now find in his bird identification books. So we got a tour of our first plantation home. They had 250 slaves to help in the cotton fields. The property was heavily forested and we saw a variety of birds (or heard them) during our short visit.
Over at the barn, we got to meet Priscilla:
It's hard to tell in this photo, but Priscilla was *enormous*. But quite friendly when she gathered her energy to stand up and come say 'hi'.
And this beautiful peacock with a tail that was probably four feet long:

Wish we could've had more time to walk the nature trail on the property. It was so peaceful with all of the birds singing.

Covington, LA

When we chose Covington, we had hoped to take advantage of some of the attractions in the area, such as a visit to the Abita Beer brewery in Abita Springs, walk around historic Covington, and go for a road bike ride on the Tammany Trace. Well, we weren't able to take advantage of much. We jogged on the Trace and we walked around Covington. We liked downtonwn Covington with its characteristic buildings - some tin roofed cottages, others with fancy wrought iron railings.

Missing out on The Trace just leaves something to do on another visit. What we learned about the Trace was that there are some major road crossings to be careful of. It sounds like the most scenic area might be from Mandeville to Slidell. This cuts through Fountainbleu State Park and some bayous. We just wanted to remember this for the next time!

Covington, LA

We left Holt on Sunday morning after it stopped sleeting. We had debated about leaving in questionable weather, but felt the need to keep moving. And, again, we did not know where we were stopping for the night. We left it up to the weather gods to make that decision for us. But it would either be Mississippi or Louisiana.

It ended up being a beautiful day. The skies cleared as we headed west, so we continued through to Covington, LA. We learned that many parks closer to New Orleans are still closed or full with workers. Not that we wanted to head into New Orleans, but this affected even the towns just north of Lake Ponchartrain, too. As we drove closer to our destination we called ahead to a campground to confirm that their sites were "satellite-friendly". Considering the name was Land 'O' Pines Family Campground, we thought we should ask. Another warning for us should've been the word "family". We arrived to a parking lot with lots of kids running around and a crowded office, and pine trees towering 150'-200' high. The staff considered it "open" because they had lost so many trees in Katrina. As I said before, it's all relative. It took us 1 hour and 45 minutes and changing sites three times to find a clearing through these great trees. We used a compass to help us find holes in the canopy to the south/southwest and thought we picked good sites the first two times. At least the third site was the charm. Unfortunately this delay caused us to rush through our Easter dinner as we were hoping to have camp set up before dark.

So we were laughing that we no longer needed to check for campgrounds who had WIFI, call ahead to verify the WIFI is working, and then pray that it was consistent when we there, but now we have to check Google Earth to see if campgrounds are clear of trees and use compasses to pick out the best sites.

That's ok, its worth it. It did nothing but rain all day today and we didn't experience any problems with, what's called, Rain Fade (degradation of satellite signal). I had just sent an email to Jim, our Datastorm Installer, to tell him how happy we were with the dish, when...bump! A loud thump hit the roof right over my head...where the dish is...we scattered - did the dish topple over? No, there's still a connection (all lights were lit), then what? A tree? Close enough - a tree branch hit the roof, probably missing our dish by a foot or less. Andy had to go outside in the rain to make sure all was ok and no other dead branches were going to fall 10 stories onto our dish. So, now we ask Jim, what's the warranty on this thing?