Welcome to Louisiana…Please Don’t Feed the Alligators!

My last couple of days in Texas were interesting. I had the chance to paddle board in the bay, then walk the beach and swim in the gulf, then have a rude awakening at 1 a.m. when the winds picked up and my van was rockin’ to the music! I checked to make sure my paddle board hadn’t blown away, then dozed off, woke up, dozed off…it was wild. The wind continued the next day and I stayed inside the van reading and writing until it died down enough to go out for a short walk. That next night it was still windy, but a little less so and I slept pretty well. In the morning I hit the road headed for Lafayette.

I stopped in Beaumont for a photo of the largest working fire hydrant in the world, a breakfast sandwich and coffee. I hadn’t planned very well so didn’t have a sense of the town’s layout. It seemed like a real sleepy place, but it deserved a little more time than I had to give.

I met up with Helene (and her dog Karma), a new friend and traveling companion I’d met at Mustang State Park, at the Acadiana State Park Campground in Lafayette. She and I were headed in the same direction until we got to Mobile so when we met up in Galveston we made some rough plans for working our way there. New Year’s Eve was our first full day in Lafayette and we drove the four miles into town to see what was happening. As has become my habit, I watched for murals and saw quite a few. We went by the first church built in Lafayette – the Cathedral of St. John, the grounds of which sported an enormous 500 year old oak tree. We also saw the oldest Black church, Trinity Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1870 and currently led by the first woman pastor, Maggie C. Banks. Also downtown is a moving 9-11 memorial. It featured beams and other materials from the towers’ debris surrounded by a five-sided bench representing the pentagon. We stopped in at the San Souci Fine Craft Gallery which contained a range of arts made by about 100 artists from Louisiana. The shop was filled with eye candy and I found a pretty vase for my sister’s birthday present.

I’m vegetarian and Helene’s diet is gluten and dairy-free; she was able to find a restaurant, Five Mile, that met both our needs. I had a banh mi made with a veggie patty…it was huge and tasty! The lavender cookie and orange-poppyseed muffin I got were also delicious (and eaten later).

We had been warned by the campground staff, Jared, that there would be a lot of fireworks that night, and he wasn’t kidding. Actually, as I write this on New Year’s night I’m hearing even more! We celebrated new year’s with a campfire, a nice bottle of wine, and a new-to-me tradition: we ate twelve grapes representing each hour of a day and each month of the year intended to bring us well-being in the new year. We took turns naming something for each month that we hoped for. I kicked it off with prosperity in January; Helene followed with love wherever we found it in February, then good luck – St. Patty’s Day – in March, No fools in April, the beauty of flowers in May, and Juneteenth in June. In July we hope for living up to the promise of this country on our 250th anniversary and in August, for _appreciating the sun. September brings labor day and the strengthening of working people, followed by October and keeping the demons away, November’s gratitude and December filled with the promise of increasingly bright days as we move away from the winter solstice.

On New Year’s Day we hiked four miles throughout the park along with quite a few other people starting the new year right. I did some work on the van, did some trip planning and went on another short hike. We’d be leaving in the morning taking different routes to our next campground, Bayou Segnette, a little southwest of New Orleans.

On January 2nd we left Lafayette and I headed for Baton Rouge. Before I arrived there I stopped at the Atchafalaya Visitor Center and learned that at one million acres it is the largest river swamp in the U.S. – learn more at this website https://www.atchafalaya.org/atchafalaya-basin. I was anxious to keep moving so I didn’t explore the area, but I did decide that I would take a swamp boat tour while at Bayou Segnette State Park.

In Baton Rouge I wanted to check out the state capitol, the tallest in the country. It was definitely tall. I also took a look at the 175 year old former capitol building, now a national historic landmark and gorgeous as seen on the internet. I missed the boat by not going inside…again, I was antsy to get to my destination. I regret that and will try to remember this next time I’m rushing past something that warrants more time.

I took the Great River Road south, but was disappointed in how little there was to see…or more accurately, the challenge of finding the gems along the way. I got to the campground, set up my van, made a reservation for my swamp boat tour tomorrow and took a couple of walks with Helene and Karma before it got dark.

The swamp boat tour was great. We see several alligators either sunning themselves or gliding through the water. Most of them are in near-hibernation mode – a dormant mode called brumation – and according to our guide, their body shuts down so they can’t eat. That was comforting…I decided to stop worrying about being attacked by one. The other fun fact is that they aren’t aggressive, much like the other animals I’ve had the chance to encounter. We also saw deer, turtles, great blue herons, egrets, and other birds. The next day I went to the Jean Lafitte Natural Historical Park and Preserve, where I saw a gator snoozing close enough to the trail I was on that I could have petted it. I didn’t.

I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the swamps and marshes that were unfamiliar to me. Seeing a body of water with trees scattered throughout and the boundary between land and water blurred was otherworldly. The visitor center at the preserve was terrific. One fact that stuck with me is that 33 football fields of land are lost every day due to a variety of factors such as the efforts to control the water with dams and such. Interestingly, climate change wasn’t named as one of the factors, not directly anyway.

My next destination was Biloxi and I planned on driving over the 24 mile Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. As I do pretty much every time my phone tells me I’ve entered a new state I responded out loud with “Hello Mississippi” as I crossed the state line. This leg of my journey took a long time because I took the scenic route – driving along the coast with the white sandy beaches dazzling in the sun was lovely. Helene had arrived 90 minutes or so before I got there but we had time to cover about half of the 22 sites on a walking tour, which we would finish the next day.

We were staying at a Harvest Host spot, the Cypress Taphouse in Ocean Springs (right next door to Biloxi) and we expected it to be closed but we lucked out – they were open and serving espresso martinis! Not only that but the woman who runs karaoke on Wednesday nights was there and happy to fire up the program so we could sing the night way. There were only four patrons and only two of us sang, but it was a blast!

The next day Helene, Karma and I drove back to Biloxi to finish our walking tour. We also stopped in at the Mardi Gras museum and saw some great murals.

We had lunch in Ocean Springs and then headed to the Twelve Oaks trail…the oaks were huge and the many large branches on each one seemed to express action and personality. Then it was on to our Harvest Host for the night – Shed’s BBQ and Blues. No blues but we had dinner, played backgammon and called it a night. This was about the funkiest place I’ve seen on this trip. The property had six or seven different businesses, including an RV Park run by a woman who has pet ducks that sleep in her rig. There were lots of old coin operated rides that we use to see outside the grocery store, mini-vehicles strewn about in a random pattern and a sand pit with more toys. It was weird but entertaining. They also had signs posted all over with “Shedhed Philosophy,” such as Don’t assume malice for what stupidity can explain.

The next day we were headed for Mobile although we had different activities planned – I was going to the Clotilda Exhibit at the Africatown Heritage House (I’ve got another post I’m working on about this exhibit) and Helene was planning to see the USS Alabama. We ended up camping together at Blakely Historic State Park and then she continued her journey along the coast, destination Florida and I headed north to Hattiesburg, MS. It was really nice to have a traveling buddy and we said goodbye with “until next time.” I may swing through St. Paul when I head back west next summer and pick up a AAA baseball game with her and unfortunately, joining the effort to getting ICE out of the state may still be necessary.