4-7-14 A Ride Around the Block in Louisiana

Friends that know us well, know of our love of "rides around the block" and looking for "blank spots on the map", and going there to see just how blank the area really is! In Westcliffe, we have an around the block ride that's @ 20 to 25 miles, and takes 2 & 1/2 hours. We have taken our neighbor (whose name shall remain nameless to protect his privacy-that okay there "longpants"?) around on it twice, once while he drove, and he still can't do it solo!

On Monday, April 7th, we combined both approaches and took a drive over a road we had driven on when we came into Abbeville from Texas in 2010. Rt. 82 originates near  Port Arthur, Texas, which is where we left from in 2010 and headed east to Cameron, Louisiana and on to Abbeville. We always wanted to go back and explore the country along that lonely road, which we did on this drive. As the saying goes, "It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there"!

That southwest corner of Louisiana, an area about 100 miles long and 50 miles deep, is all marshland-there is no shore, and no beaches. It's also full of lakes, both large and small, and is a lot like a map of northern Canada, with few roads and lots of lonely country. People do live there, in the few places high enough to be out of the water, but recent hurricanes in the last 10 years have destroyed a lot of property, and many people have left, not bothering to rebuild. Quite a few places are/were weekend getaways and hunting/fishing camps. Other than the 2 state highways that traverse it (82 and 27), every side road dead ends, either at a pier, an oil installation or at a locked gate. There are also a bunch of wildlife refuges-some accessible by car, but most only accessible by boat. We poked around 2 of them, Rockefeller State Wildlife Refuge and Cameron Prairie NWR.

The road out of the campground (Palmetto Island State Park) ends at Rt 82, so from there to Forked Island you are still in farmland, but at that town you cross the intracoastal waterway on a very tall bridge, and down on the other side, the marsh begins and you are surrounded by marsh grass off and on for the next 60 miles.

We had spotted a road on Google Maps, Freshwater City Road, that left Rt. 82 at Pecan Island, and headed south down to the Gulf, so we did too. What a crazy drive! It was about 12 miles long, and continued on in even taller marsh grass. The pavement soon quit and we were on gravel. Don't ask me where they got it-there is none in southern LA, and no rocks you could crush to make it with either. After a bit, we came to some houses, one of which was a really funky house that had a pair of rowboat planters out front. The place was manicured to  "T", something you just don't see in these parts, and whoever was living in it was doing a beautiful job. We didn't get the greatest pictures here, as it's a little weird to be standing out on a road taking pics of someone's house. Especially in southern Louisiana-it could be detrimental to one's lead-free health.

Across and down the road from that place was...grazing CATTLE! And the pavement also restarted, after a 5 mile hiatus. 

This road did not have any curves-every turn was a right angle change in direction, and when we whipped around a corner on one of them, we got a little surprise...we weren't sure who had the right of way, but at least the boat was in the proper lane.

A couple more turns & we saw what was going on-shrimpers, and that we were at the end of the road. The picnic bench is a tiny Fish and Wildlife picnicking & fishing area. Nearby were docks for oil service companies as well as the fishermen, all on a channel that took them into the Gulf of Mexico.

The fellow in the blue coat out at the end was fishing, and hobbled all the way over to us to ask for a light-we didn't have a thing with us to light a smoke-we felt bad, as he struggled so to walk. We also have NO idea how he got there, as there was no car, and there were no houses for miles. His "tackle box" was a plastic grocery bag.

All in all, it was a great side trip-here's some other sights we saw along the way:

Glad they replaced the bridge!!!

We continued west when we got to Rt. 82, stopping somewhere alongside it to eat the lunch we brought along. There's not much of anything but marshland on the 30 miles between Freshwater City Road and the Rockefeller National Wildlife Refuge's west end, where the only road into the Refuge (Price Lake Road), heads south for 3 miles before dead-ending at a dock and an observation tower. 

We took a few pics there, but discovered the first flight of stairs was missing off the observation tower! You could get on it if you were nimble enough to jump up and grab the last stair tread and pull yourself up, but those days are long over for me! I asked K to do her wifely duty and let me stand on her shoulders, but she just laughed and tried to push me off the dock and into the alligator infested waters. Cheesh-I've lost enough hair without one of them chewing the rest off! Somehow, we forgot to get a pic of the tower on top of it all, but here's a Heron fishing off the dock. Big "L's" on our foreheads!

Another 32 miles took us through Grand Chenier, one of the towns struggling to survive, with less and less structures remaining after each hurricane that comes through, and into Cameron. Along the way, we tried to take Earl Road, which, had we been successful, ran deep into the marshlands to the north, and by a couple of remote Refuges, and wound back down into the back side of Cameron. Alas, we started up Earl Road, waved at the two old guys sitting on their front porch, went 2 miles north, around a 90 degree left and ran smack into a locked, steel gate. HATE it when that happens! We got turned around and retreated back to Rt.82, waved at the two guys again, and headed west into Cameron. Which we ALSO neglected to take any pictures of!  So, here instead are some pics from 2010, coming east on Rt. 82 from Texas. Rt 82 starts and ends at Cameron, and to continue on it or get to Cameron from Texas, you have to board a free ferry across the outlet of Calcasieu Lake.

Approaching the bridge over Sabine Pass, which is the Texas-Louisiana border, from the Texas side.

View off the top of the bridge, looking south at a jacked up oil rig under repair. We had taken a drive down through there a few days before and the thing was huge. 

We also visited a non-existent Texas State Park on that same drive, that was literally blown away in a hurricane, leaving only a few stretches of asphalt, and that was it. All  the buildings were gone.

Along Rt. 82 heading to the Cameron ferry through Johnsons Bayou and Holly Beach.

Along Rt. 82 heading to the Cameron ferry

End of the road, and waiting for the boat.

Random ferry passenger from that red car next to me.

 Another random ferry passenger!

No idea what this boat was for, but it sure was impressive! And I used to think the hose reels on the airports fuel trucks were big!

A local fix-it guy....couldn't cure my hair loss though.

So from Cameron now (in 2014) we back-tracked on Rt. 82 to to Rt. 27, and headed north towards Lake Charles. The last stop was along this road out of the great marsh, at Cameron Prairie NWF. Lots to see here, with a 1/2 mile boardwalk through a section of open swamp, and a drive around a bigger section of the Refuge, with a lot of alligators around.

Couple of boardwalk pics above

You gotta wonder who's crazy enough to try and take a bite out of an alligator, much less two! So THIS what they mean by "gator bites" on the restaurant menus...

Hunting from his man blind. I wonder if he has a Labrador Retriever to bring the bodies back to him....

From there we scooted along up to Rt 14 and followed it east back to Abbeville, a spectacular 235 mile ride around the block. Would love to get hold of a boat and see some of the interior some day.

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!

Sunday March 23, 2014-K- Open Pond CG. Conecuh National Forest, NW of Florala, AL.

You'll notice a little diversion on the map, out of Florala and up Rts. 9/331. That was to a rest area to empty holding tanks, as the rest area had a dump station, and supposedly, Open Pond CG did not. Supposedly. At 7 mpg, it was an expensive side trip we didn't need to make, but short-cutting it over some pretty farm country back roads to Rt. 55 and on to the campground, made up for it We discovered they had a dump station there too. Beautiful state, Alabama-kind of like Vermont, with flatter, rolling hills and farms of all types-dairy, cattle, hay and cotton on the eastern side, along the Georgia border. The back roads are all red dirt/gravel.

This will be a quick post. We had been here in 2007 on our first trip to Florida. Just a little pond that apparently has great fishing. We remembered it for the dire warning signs posted at the bathrooms about alligators. "WARNING: Alligators present! If someone from your party or a pet is missing, contact the authorities immediately", or something to that effect. They were quite startling, and in hind-sight, pretty funny. We were looking forward to getting a picture of one for the collection, but they were gone this time. Could the Feds, in a rare moment of regulation sanity, have actually caught themselves going overboard?

The CG was quite busy as the whole month of March is spring break time for everyone in the state, not just college kids!  Since we aren't on the coast, these campgrounds are all families on vacation. Mostly local's, where mom stays here during the week and dad comes at night after work.  

Everyone has their sites lit up like Christmas trees that they leave on all night, so the camping "experience" isn't quite the way we typically like it.  We need to get away from places on water, but that is where most of the CG's are, so until we are done with spring break, things will be a tad busy.

On the way to the CG we passed a sign on the Florida/Alabama boarder showing the way to the highest point in Florida, Britton Hill.  Well, we just had to go there!  It was just a little swell in the landscape just south of Florala, AL. We had a hard time catching our breaths from the altitude!!!

You have to go 50 miles due north from the Gulf just to gain 345 feet of elevation!

Oops-made her bald like me, and don't the girls look excited?   All 3 of the them!

Looking out over the view.  It was a really pretty area.

The trees are just thinking about putting out leaves.  In some places you could see that bit of lime-green tint that always starts getting you excited that spring is going to happen this year! 

That was kind of the high point of 5 days there (no pun intended), as we really didn't do that much. Worked on the camper, did a trail around the pond about 2 to 3 miles, tried out a catfish joint in Andalusia that had good reviews-okay but nothing we'd go back to-lots of cornbread breading with a thin layer of catfish in the middle. No chance for a grease overload! 

That's about it-sorry for a boring post that took place almost 4 weeks ago! More interesting stuff in the works....

Tues. March 18, 2014-K-Camel Lake, Apalachicola NF,  and Basin Bayou, Freeport, FL

We very much enjoyed our time at Camel Lake.  Very pretty place, but a few too many barking dogs.   We had a great campsite on the lake which I did a little paddle on.  Not too much to see.  Quite a few turtles poking their noses out of the water, a hawk (maybe a Marsh hawk?) hanging out in a tree, a couple ducks, 2 American Coots, and a swim noodle in the bushes that I rescued.

Our campsite at Camel Lake.

;

Tom pretending he can read a book.....

A VW bug that came in.  We have never seen a set-up like this in all of our years of traveling.  It was pretty cool! Keeps one out of the snakes, I guess? I wonder what happens when you forget to take it down and just drive off...believe me-some of the things we've pulled on this trip? WE could do it!

Just don't leave the ladder home! (And don't forget where you are when you wake up!)

Our site from the water.

The hawk.

One night I was getting dinner ready and had asked Tom if he could bring out a metal mixing bowl.  He asked "where do you want it"? I told him, "On a hard surface."  He follows instructions well, don't you think? Fruit salad, anyone?

We got an enormous amount of rain while we were there (almost 6”) along with tornado warnings!  Ugh, those really scare the daylights out of me, but the local folk just take them in stride.  I think they hear them all the time, so “No big deal!” they like to say. The day we left though, Tom drove out in the Tracker to see how much water was across the road. It was under water in 7 places, some a couple of hundred feet across and 10" to 12" deep. Luckily, we'd been driving in and out and knew the base was solid and gravelly, so we left without a problem. Tom said, afterwards of course, that all he could think of while driving a 14,000 pound camper through them was of Florida's infamous sinkholes! 

We did a short, 4 mile hike on a Nature Conservancy property to an overlook of the Apalachicola River. It was classic Florida ravine terrain, where spring fed seeps become sandy creeks that flow in very deep (200' to 300' deep) ravines to the river. The trail wound down into and back up out of 2 of them-great workout! The Apalachicola River is the major drainage into Apalachicola bay, which harvests about 90% of the oysters in Florida. The mix of fresh water, and rich sediment from the river and a very shallow, salt water bay it is emptying into, which keeps the salt water warm, makes the oyster beds extremely productive.  They are extremely delicious cooked in the shell directly on hot coals.

On Tuesday, March 18, 2014 we headed out. It was sort of poignant leaving as we are driving out of the eastern time zone for who knows how long, and we are finally heading west, which is always a very exciting thing for us. It always feels good to be driving. Our feet get a bit too itchy if we stay in one place for too long!

We found a really neat spot just west of Freeport, FL, called Basin Bayou.  It is has undeveloped camping on a little 2-track road about 1/2 mile in from Rte. 20. We were the only ones there for the night, and fortunately the weather behaved, as there was a huge dead tree hanging over the camper, we of course realized after we had set up. We have finally got it in our heads to check for that kind of thing, after a piece of dead tree came down through the awning in the middle of the night, at Okefenokee back in November.