Saturday, February 20 - Bayou or Swamp?

Today we made reservations to take a swamp tour.

A little background, on the way to LA we saw several trailers pulling swamp air boats

I expressed to Jesse how much fun I thought that would be and that I would love to go on a tour while here. He said okay.

He asked Betty about what tour she would recommend and also went to H & L’s RV-Dreams site (remembering they went on a tour while they were here) and he found Champagne Swamp Tour.

We were set to go today at noon. We left the park about 10:45 because it was about 50 minutes from us at Lake Martin.

Now image my disappointment and surprise when a regular boat pulled up and Jesse said here we go.

Now I must tell you that I was not disappointed with our guide Bryan or the tour when finished. No It wasn’t an air boat, but I enjoyed the trip so very much.

We saw alligators.

In this picture Bryan just grabbed the gator by the mouth and pulled him into the boat for a better look. He also took on board this baby which was about 7 months old. Jesse held it and he also let it bite at his finger.

Birds

Turtles

Nutria, is a large semi-aquatic rodent. Nutria are smaller than a beaver but larger than a muskrat, it has a round, slightly haired tail. The forelegs are small compared with its body size. The forepaws, have five toes; four are clawed and the fifth is reduced in size to groom and to excavate roots, rhizomes, and burrows, and are used in feeding. The hind legs are large compared with the forelegs; consequently, when moving on land, the nutria's chest drags on the ground and its back appears hunched. Nutria are capable of swimming long distances underwater. When pursed while underwater, nutria can see and will take evasive action to avoid capture.

We also saw snakes but no good pictures of them.

The word bayou originated from the term bayuk, the Louisiana French word for "small stream" By definition, a bayou is a watercourse, usually the offshoot of a river or lake in a lowland area. It is a sluggish or stagnant creek, frequently flowing through swamp terrain. The term is used mainly when referring to areas in the delta region (the area near the mouth) of the Mississippi River. In comparison, a swamp is low-lying, marshy wetland, and is usually forested and seasonally flooded.

Here are a few more pictures of the swamp. There were 16 people that were on the boat with us. The boat was very stable at all times. The seats were really comfortable and they swiveled all the way around to get a 360 view. All this was for $20 per person. Very much worth it!

After we got back to Betty’s she told us about a place to buy some fresh shrimp for $3.50 a pound. She called them and they had some left so off we went. They are flash frozen individually and with the heads on. When I got them home I just cut off the heads and put them in a bag and then in the freezer, we will make about 4 meals from them and you can’t beat that for $17.50.

It was a great day. We ended it with cocktails on the patio and decided to say here a few more nights.

Friday, February 19 – Tabasco Tour and Crawfish

 

We took our time getting ready to leave this morning not knowing for sure what we were going to do. Here are some pictures of where we are parked.

 

The patio area

Jesse loved this converted trailer and 1965 truck. We met the people who live in this last night but Jesse was not able to talk with him much.

  

We decided to go to the Tabasco Tour located Avery Island. We paid our fee of $1.00 total. Edmund McIlhenny was given seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers that came from Mexico or Central America. And he first planted them on Avery Island, Louisiana, over 130 years ago. Today, just as then, when the peppers reach the perfect shade of deep red and are at their juiciest, they are carefully picked by hand. (Young peppers are green, then turn yellow, orange, and, finally, deep red as they age.) When in doubt, pickers can gauge the color by comparing it to a small wooden dowel, “le petit bâton rouge,” painted the preferred hue red.

In 1965, McIlhenny Company ran out of room on the Island and starting growing additional peppers in Latin America. (All the seeds are still grown on Avery Island before being sent to Latin America, where they are planted and grow into peppers.) When those peppers are harvested, they’re shipped back to Avery Island for the next step in the process.

Then the peppers are mashed and mixed with a small amount of Avery Island salt, extracted from the salt mines that lie beneath the Island. The pepper mash is placed in white oak barrels, and the wooden tops of the barrels are then covered with more Avery Island salt, which acts as a natural barrier to protect the barrels’ contents. The mash is allowed to ferment and then age for up to three years in the McIlhenny warehouse.

The mash is inspected by a member of the McIlhenny family. When approved, the fully-aged mash is then blended with high quality distilled vinegar. Numerous stirrings and about four weeks later, the pepper skins, pulp and seeds are strained out using 3 different-sized screens. Then the “finished” sauce is bottled by modern methods, labeled in 22 languages and dialects, and prepared for shipment to over 160 countries and territories around the world.

E.A. McIlhenny, or "Mr. Ned" as he was affectionately known, founded a bird colony in the 1890s — later called Bird City — after plume hunters slaughtered egrets by the thousands for feathers to make fashionable ladies' hats. Mr. Ned gathered up eight young egrets, raised them in captivity on the Island, and released them in the fall to migrate across the Gulf of Mexico. The following spring the birds returned to the Island with others of their species - a migration that continues to this day, as thousands of snowy white egrets and other water birds return to Bird City each spring. This vast, protected rookery owes its existence to Mr. Ned.

Driving back to the RV park we saw these chickens that I thought were really strange. I guess they live in these “V” shaped “homes”.

For dinner we went out with some other couples from the park to Cajun Claw.

Jesse actually order 3 1/2 pounds of spicy crawfish and he ate the whole thing, I ordered grilled shrimp.

He said they were not spicy, I tried one from someone who ordered medium spice. I thought they were pretty tasteless and a little tough. The whole experience was lots of fun and we were glad we went.

It was a full day and we were glad to get home and relax for the evening.

Thursday, February 18 – Travel to Louisiana

 

Today we were in no hurry to get moving early today so we took our time getting packed up.

We still pulled out of our site at 8:40am.

 

This was a bridge just outside of Houston that Jesse thought was good looking. It remaindered me of Mitch and Margaret because we call them M&M and the two big supports looked like two M’s.

Our 1st stop was at McDonalds for a quick breakfast sandwich then headed NE to I-10. We went into a new state for us as we passed into Louisiana.

We now have 22 states on our map.

We saw what we thought were rice fields along the road and they were. I have cropped a part of the 1st picture to show a close up of what Jesse thought were drains, but they are actually crawfish traps.

We arrived at Betty’s RV just around 1:30 after traveling 225 miles.

Betty got us checked in and invited us to cocktails at 4:30 then a potluck dinner at 6:00pm.

Jesse backs us into our spot just perfectly and we have full 50amp hookups.

After getting everything set up I had to think fast to come up with a dish to share. I decided on pasta salad.

There were about 25-30 people that attended the cocktail hour and just under 20 who stayed for potluck. It was a very nice evening and we look forward to more.