Little cat feet...

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
-Carl Sandburg-

I hear it in the deep heart's core

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. (W.B. Yeats)

After our stay in Gulf Island State Park, we moved on to Baton Rouge, where we spent 4 days, visiting a couple of restored plantation homes, taking a boat tour of the Atchafalaya Swamp, the largest swamp/wetland in the US, and catching up with laundry.  Obviously, the former three were the highlights of these days.  :)    Now we are settled in at a beautiful Corps of Engineers Campground called Sandy Creek, near Jasper, TX.  We plan to stay here for several days, since it is one of the most beautiful and peaceful campsites we have ever experienced in our travels, and the weather is looking promising as well.  The photo above is the view from our camper; neighboring sites are at a distance similar to our neighbors at the cottage - remarkable campground!    Lots of photos coming up in this post, so buckle your seat belts and here we go.

B&C Seafood Market and Cajun Deli:    Before heading into the Laura Plantation, we had lunch at this little restaurant near the plantation.  I had my first alligator burger (tastes like combined ground turkey and ground beef), and John had the gumbo.  This place clearly has a sense of humor, as well as good, simple local food.

Painting on wall outside the restaurant

Framed photo across from our booth in the restaurant, representing an alligator po'boy sandwich :)

Except for the gumbo and the boiled crawfish, everything else on the menu was deep-fried, which appeared to horrify a couple of Japanese tourists sitting across from us who were clearly struggling trying to find something they considered edible; one of the gentlemen kept saying to the waitress, "I cannot eat fried - is anything not fried? I could not help but think of the reactions of some people in the States who are disgusted at the thought of eating raw fish, which these Japanese would have so welcomed.  Clearly, taste in foods is a matter of experience, expectation, and culture.   I'm glad we enjoy a broad range of foods and are always open to trying something new.

Laura Plantation:

Laura Plantation, a lovely restored plantation home represents the rich Creole culture in the Baton Rouge area, and is simpler than what most of us envision when thinking of the term "plantation", but is so colorful and interesting.  Several outbuildings are still waiting for restoration, but the main house has been completed.  Unfortunately it's one of the few places we've visited that allowed no photographs to be taken inside the building.  Our tour guide was a young man with a great sense of humor who knew how to engage his tour group - that always makes for a more enjoyable tour.

The front of the plantation house

Restored slave quarters at "Laura Plantation"

John with is new friend Laura, decked out in her Mardi Gras finery

Atchafalaya Swamp Tour:
We were able to make arrangements for a boat tour of part of the Atchafalaya Swamp with a father/son guide team that use aluminum boats with outboard engines rather than the noisy airboats most other tours use.  It was not until we entered the swamp and were able to observe and hear the birds as well as being able to hear the narrative provided by our guides, that we realized how well we had chosen.  We could hear airboats in the distance even though we could not see them; I doubt much wildlife stays in the area as one of those comes roaring through.  Our guides (The Atchefelaya Experience) were not only knowledgeable but ardent conservationists who clearly loved this swamp and do their utmost to both raise awareness of its beauty and encourage and support clean-up activities here. It was beautiful the day we visited, but it was clear to see that it would be breathtaking 3-4 weeks later.  We will be back another year for another tour later in the spring, to see the trees in leaf and the flowers in  bloom, and even more wildlife active.

Four and twenty cormorants, sitting in a tree….

White Heron

Our guide said about these beautiful ducks: "Those are good eatin!"

The cypress have unique shapes

Cyprus hung heavily with spanish moss

They drove us deep into an area of these large cypress (3-4 feet in diameter) and then cut the motors so we could just absorb the sounds and sights of this remarkable place.

Oak Alley Plantation:
Oak Alley Plantation is stunning in many ways, not the least of which is the live oak alley leading to the front door, and a smaller - and also beautiful one - leading to the rear entrance.  This is also a Creole plantation, but built in a different style, more typical of what we northerners envision when thinking of southern plantation mansions.  It has been lovingly restored to the period of it's heyday after having suffered great indignities and partial destruction of the interior during and after the Civil War.  It's interesting to note that while many think of "southern belles" as fragile and pampered women who spent all their time looking beautiful and fainting at the least provocation, in fact both the plantations we visited were run by several generations of the women of the family; it seems that Creole women were not only seen as competent businesswomen, but were encouraged to be so.  Who knew?!  I'm glad that I do now know that and can see "southern belles" as intelligent and powerful women in their own right.  Oak Alley Plantation has well-informed guides dressed in period costume who share interesting and less-known facts about the house and the area, as well as the Civil War era and the preceding time.  Interesting factoid: although the house itself is now a tourist attraction, the remainder of the land is still a working sugar plantation.

These live oaks are 300 years old now, and could last another 300!

Dining room; note the swinging fan above the table, which would have been pulled back and forth by a young slave child all through the hours-long meals.

Wouldn't we all like to have this bedroom as ours, and that as the breakfast tray delivered by "the help"?

Each old live oak tree is literally it's own ecosystem, hosting lichen, ferns, and many forms of wildlife.  On a more whimsical note,  can't you just picture an elf popping out of that hole in the massive roots?

Sandy Creek Corps of Engineers Campground, Steinhagen Lake, TX:
The Army Corps of Engineers (COE) build dams to control river flows, build lake reservoirs, and produce hydroelectric power; as part of their charter they also create public access to those lakes by building boat ramps and camp grounds, which for the most part are exceptionally well-maintained and not as well known, so less heavily used than some other federal lands and national forests and campgrounds.    Our camping site at Sandy Creek is one of the largest and prettiest we have ever experienced,  so we've decided to spend a week of "down-time" here, just relaxing and enjoying nature and each other's company.  No intriguing tourist attractions in the area to distract us from just walking, biking, reading, and enjoying the lovely weather, with temperatures in the 70's Farenheit; 20's Celcius.

                                                       

Stilts

Grand Isle State Park, LA
We had planned to stay here for 7-9 days, enjoying the birding and the seafood.  Mother Nature and the locale had other ideas.  No doubt about it, hard to beat a fresh shrimp dinner made with shrimp purchased from the guys who were on the boat just hours earlier, even when the dinner is served on paper plates:

The shrimp dinner

The boats that provided that dinner

However, the Grand Isle, LA is a rather depressing - and in some ways, depressed - area, so not very scenic and not what we had been expecting or hoping for.

This is what we read in the promotional materials for this area and park: "A remote oasis nearly hidden within Louisiana’s expansive shoreline, Grand Isle is your passport to adventure in a state known for being a “Sportsman’s Paradise.” Renowned for its world-class fishing and birding habitat, Louisiana’s only inhabited barrier island offers unblemished views of the Gulf of Mexico, miles of beaches and boundless wildlife. Couple this with southern hospitality and mouthwatering seafood and you’ll discover why visitors have fallen in love with Grand Isle for two and a half centuries."

But they overlook that this is a major area for oil industry operations, (the map below shows the density of oil platforms and rigs in this area):

Housing is crowded and often substandard (lots of "man-camps"), the work is dangerous, treatment of workers sometimes problematic, other times horrific, and the view to the Gulf is hardly that described in the promotional literature, but rather oil rigs and noisy cargo ships in all directions.

Houses on stilts...

Piers on stilts...

Birds on stilts…

Ibis were encouraged to search for breakfast right outside our camper door following the flooding caused by two days of non-stop rain.

Camper should have been on stilts….

Gulf State Park, AL

We were fortunate to share a few days of our stay at Gulf State Park with our dear friend Sue Evans for a few days. We had hoped for some days of birding in this park that includes some of Alabama's great birding trails, since we are on the cusp here of the start of the northward bird migration.  Mother Nature, however had other plans - the weather was too bitterly cold and windy to spend the days slowly navigating hiking/birding trails.  Instead we spent one whole day at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL.

How many of you knew that Lake Michigan was where hundreds of Naval Aviators were trained and certified to fly from aircraft carriers, and that as a result the lake is littered with many training aircraft that crashed into the lake either on take-off or landing on the modified training carriers?  There is an excellent display and movie of that war effort at this museum.

Another day we visited Fort Morgan, a Civil-War-Era fortification,  for about an hour (all we could bear given the cold wind off the bay).

John and Sue at Fort Morgan.  Lots more arches.

Little crab climbing around on a fort battery wall

Good play of light in one of the old windows in the fort

There are oil rigs off the coast in every direction:

After Sue left to move on to her place in Florida, we spent a few more days exploring Gulf State Park and the surrounding area, and found it so pleasing that we put our names on their waiting list for 2015 winter camping, hoping to return here for a longer stay next year.  Lovely bike and walking trails, wonderful clean and updated facilities, and very pleasant and compatible campers - we had a number of enjoyable conversations with others staying at the park during these few days.

One of the joys of travel is hearing the travel tales of other campers. A couple in a site across from ours was driving a contraption the likes of which we had not seen anywhere before. Talking with them we discovered that they designed and created it on their own; they added a semi's sleeper cab portion to their Mercedes truck which was outfitted with a specially long and strong trailer frame behind, then added stainless steel storage units about 2 feet deep and 2 feet high along each side of that frame, on which they placed a fairly standard longer truck camper unit.  If this description reminds you of the Johnny Cash song "One Piece at a Time", you would be picturing it correctly. :)  This couple had been traveling full-time in this interesting contraption for the last 8 years, and generously shared information about best fly-fishing places they experienced in Idaho, where the rainbow and cutthroat trout they described rivaled what John has experienced in New Zealand.  Another trip to plan for another time.  So many places to visit and/or revisit….so little time.

Fort Pickens - Beauty in the Aftermath of Military Action

I feel as though I should qualify this post by saying that I am a pacifist at heart. Despite everything in its history, mankind continues to use war as a vehicle for "making things right",  so I understand the need to try to know about the history of the wars that have formed this world we live in.

This past week we have been camping in Fort Pickens Campground, Gulf Islands National Seashore along the Gulf Coast of Florida. (Please do follow the link to an abbreviated story about the history of the for in the preceding sentence.)    This morning we walked the beach of the bay to the ruins of Fort Pickens and explored what is left of the fort, and despite my abhorrence of war-related things, I was captivated by the many arches of this fortification, as the light and shadows emphasized the aged brickwork created by legions of slave labor, brick walls 4 feet thick, now crumbling around the outside edges but solid and enduring for the most part, with nature aging the brick in such stunning beauty: sections of mineral deposits and stalactites hanging from the arches, moss covering shaded corners.   I feel less guilty about enjoying the beauty of these fortification remnants knowing that no actual battles transpired here, no lives were lost to war, but lives were certainly difficult for those who built this fort, and in the years following the Civil War, lives were ruined when Geronimo and members of his band were held captive here. (Again, I encourage you to follow the link to more information about that story).

This little dude darted in from the side to photo bomb my shot, to my advantage

Do you see the face?

Civil-war era arch frames 40's barracks building

Mossy greens highlight some arches

Stalactites that hang like frosting from the arches