Saturday, May 3, 2014

Wed. April, 9, 2014-K- Abbeville, LA


We have moved a lot since the last post, and the map above shows where we camped and how we got to each place-after Conecuh CG in the last post, we moved to Isaac Creek CG, Alabama (Army Corps of Engineers-it's the next stop in Alabama but has no name displayed on the map), then to Cypress Landing, Mississippi (DeSoto National Forest), where we spent a week totally alone in the deep woods, by a beautiful, small river, then on to Palmetto Island, Louisiana (State Park) and up to Abbeville RV Park (Municipal). Bogalusa and St Francisville, LA, are towns I had to add in to make the map display the route that we drove. Hopefully we will get something posted about those places someday, as they each had their own funky stuff going on. Such as Cypress Landing, where I scared up an Armadillo at one o'clock in the morning heading to the outhouse, which was some distance from where we were camped. The Mississippi woods is the darkest place on the planet at that time of night-I can swear to it! Anyway:

We have been in Louisiana for about a week now.  This is our 3rd visit to Abbeville.  It is a wonderful town and it is in the heart of Cajun country.  The food and music are incredible. No veggies here, just meat and seafood.  TK would love it.

Our first stop was Palmetto Island State Park, south of town about 8 miles.  It is a new park that has only been open for a few years.  Which seems unusual that they are building new ones when other parts of the country are barely able to maintain what they have due to cutbacks.  We had stumbled on it and checked it out before it was open, back in 2010.

Nice place and very quiet.  Almost 100 sites and not a soul in there, not even on the weekend.  Not sure if the season hasn't started, but I hope it is working for them.  The bonus for us was it had FREE laundry in the bath houses! Yippee.

We certainly had our share of tornado warnings while we were there.  We have learned that we need to be proactive when it comes to the weather, as we can't have anything happen to the camper, it being the ONLY roof we have over our heads.  So when we heard that is was going to be 3 or 4 days of "stuff", we found a parking area that was fairly tree free and that would be "our go" to spot if things got stupid.  It wouldn't be protect anything if we had hail, but at least a tree wouldn't fall on us! (And we had a place to take shelter in a tornado in the bathhouse). As a matter of fact, we did pack once and sit in the parking area for a couple hours!

The bird life in the CG was incredible.  I wish I was more up on different calls, as I heard things I had never heard before.  We also had an armadillo that drove Gus crazy every afternoon while we would be playing cards and practicing our organizational skills.



There is no shortage of things to do in this area.  It seems like every weekend there is some sort of food and music driven festival.  I think they feel they need to have an excuse to eat food and listen to music and dance the day away!  This past weekend we went to a Boudin festival in Scott.  Boudin is a staple around here.  It is seasoned pork or beef mixed with rice and put in sausage casing.  Every convenience store, grocery or meat market sell these by the link.  There is great competition as to whom has the best.  They aren't overly spicy, but they leave just a bit of a glow in your mouth.  I enjoy the smoked ones the best and at this festival one vendor had wrapped the boudin in an egg roll wrapper with some pepper jack cheese and deep fried it. Was it delicious especially washed down with some beer! T doubled up on his Lipitor that night.

We did a great kayak here.  It started right near the campground.  It was a series of ponds that were connected by a canal out to the Vermilion river.  Right where we put in were 3 alligators, but they just casually drift off in a different direction when they see you coming. 









Tom saw this snake on the bank.  I think it was a garter snake.


So I decided to stay in the center of the canal.  It wasn't too much after that he saw another one and this one he thought was a cottonmouth.  No picture though, as he was too close to it, but we both got creeped out!





                                                 
                                                   A gator enjoying the afternoon sun.




Out on the Vermilion River the Cyprus trees were huge!  They were really leafing out.  We kayaked around an island.  Not much river traffic.  The river has quite a bit of barge activity on it.  We had just got off the river and back into the canal when we heard one heading upriver.


When we got back to where we had put in, we saw 2 wild pigs.  A woman we talked to who was fishing on one of the ponds told us a couple years ago they had a terrible problem with them and had to close the CG for a week to take care of it.  Apparently they were all throughout the camping area and had become a huge nuisance. Not a critter you want to have attack you-they are very dangerous if you can't protect yourself. Since this was the first pond and where we had to take out, we kept an eye on them while we loaded the Kayaks back up.

After a few days here, we moved up to Abbeville RV Park, a place we have stayed at in the past, and know the managers at, Gene and Cindy. And no wild pigs, at least the four-legged kind!