We visit all the nicest places. Here is the refinery we got to see while waiting half an hour for a car ferry to take us across a quarter-mile-wide section of the Mississippi. Photo by Roni.
Here are some interesting purple berries we saw near the visitor center at Barataria Preserve. Photo by Roni.
There are dozens of waterways like this in the southeastern portion of Louisiana. Tour companies do a brisk business taking vacationers and fishermen around the bayou country. This view is on our way to Lafitte. Photo by Roni.
Boutte's is the only restaurant for miles if you head down Highway 45 south of Barataria Preserve. Our lunch here wasn't memorable, but it was edible. Photo by Glenn.
Here is a better look at one of the many small community cemeteries we saw. Even the simplest graves are very elaborate because on the need to build them above ground. This cemetery is located about 100 yards from Boutte's restaurant in Lafitte. Photo by Glenn.
The Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain is as much a staple of the South as Albertsons is on the West Coast. Photo by Glenn.
Full from lunch, we are finally ready to begin our hike at Barataria Preserve. You will note the sign that notifies visitors of the parking lot's 5 p.m. closing time. This shot was taken about 4 p.m. and we completely lost track of the time until the park ranger came to collect us. Photo by Glenn.
Roni waits for Ben along the Bayou Coquille Trail. The trail consists of a mile-long boardwalk that takes you into the heart of the swamp. Photo by Glenn.
This frightening fellow is a Golden Orb Weaver, and we saw many of its ilk hanging from the trees along the trail. They are essentially harmless to humans, but you wouldn't want to be a flying insect snared in its web. Photo by Glenn.
A giant black grasshopper lays eggs at the edge of the trail. These guys were all over the place and are about five inches long. Photo by Glenn.
One of the stagnant ponds we saw along the Bayou Coquille Trail. Could there be gators here? Possibly, but they were well concealed beneath the water's mossy surface. Photo by Glenn.
Trees seem to pop right out of the water in the swampland. Around us are the sounds of birds and cicadas. The mosquitoes aren't as bad here as one might expect. Photo by Roni.
Ben's shirt sports a picture of an alligator. He wasn't sure how much walking he wanted to do, but once we got started he was having a ball looking for dragonflies and skinks. Photo by Glenn.
We have turned a corner and now are walking along the Kenta Canal trail. The canal is barely visible to the right, but it is a somewhat overgrown boating channel that was once used to harvest timber. Apparently you can still use it, but we didn't encounter any boaters this day. Photo by Roni.
We have found the very thing we came here for! A 3-foot gator suns itself on the bank of Kenta Canal. Some other hikers tipped us off that we would find it here. There is something about knowing there is no fence separating us from it that leaves us a bit uneasy. Photo by Roni.
Here is a better angle of our gator that shows the tail. It was recently hanging out in the canal because you can see it still has water weeds clinging to its back. Photo by Roni.
This is a better angle on the canal. We are on a bridge that crosses the junction of two channels. Kenta canal branches off to the left. Straight ahead is another canal. This is where the trail ends. Photo by Glenn.
Roni poses for a photo on the deck overlooking a field across from the canal. Photo by Glenn.
Live oaks with mossy overgrowth suspended from their branches are to be found throughout the bayou region. Photo by Glenn.
The very last stop on the trail walk is this platform that overlooks the Kenta Canal on the opposite shore. We had just enough time to snap this picture before the park ranger appeared behind us and reminded us that it was past closing time. Photo by Glenn.
Back in New Orleans on our way to the hotel we passed this artwork of the Iwo Jima flag raising. There are several public mural projects like this one around town. The D-Day Museum is just a few blocks from this building. Photo by Glenn.
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Born on the bayou
Tuesday, September 21 (Day 5) — My credo of eating our way across the Deep South may have finally caught up with me. Tonight I am too stuffed to move, and I fear I will pay the price in the morning. But it is impossible to resist the good eats we keep discovering here in Louisiana. More on that in a bit. Today was to be devoted to touring the swamplands that lie just to the southeast of New Orleans as we continued our search for the "real Louisiana" that Roni insisted we came to see.
We got a late start today. Ben had a restless night, which kept Roni awake much of the night and got me awake before 7 a.m., far earlier than any of us should have been up. I somehow managed to fall back asleep and was unaware Roni had already been up and dressed for some time before I finally awoke for good around 9:15. After showering and cleaning up around our room, we went to collect the car from the valet. We were greeted by cloudy skies and more humidity than we'd had yesterday. The Weather Channel had given us a 30 percent chance of thunder showers, but fortunately they never materialized. It felt funny being behind the wheel again after spending all of yesterday without the car. I drove. We decided it would be wise to grab some breakfast and maybe pick up some lunch to go at the same time, not knowing where our drive would take us. But where to eat? Roni wasn't in the mood for more pastries or breakfast sweets, and I wanted someplace that had convenient parking and wasn't Denny's. In New Orleans? Right. Here is where our desire to eat unusual foods got the best of us. We were searching for a café, I think, that didn't exist where we wished it did. Not wanting to head back into the French Quarter, I paralleled Highway 90 until we were out of downtown altogether and were cruising through the eastern suburbs Arabi and Chalmette. Still no decent restaurants besides Taco Bell and Wendy's. Don't people eat outside of New Orleans? We decided to keep pressing on as surely something would turn up soon.
We got onto Highway 47 and headed south, as this was the direction we needed to go to hit the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park & Preserve. We thought the road would be fairly quick, and it might have been had it not been for the fact that the crossing of the Mississippi River indicated on the map was not a bridge but a car ferry. As luck would have it we just missed the boat, but Roni said she'd read somewhere that it was only a 15-minute wait between crossings. More than half an hour later we were still waiting, munching on junk food snacks purchased a couple of days ago because we never did stop for breakfast and were all going into sugar shock, or something like it. We were parked at the ferry slip across from a large refinery with a partial view of the river and the tugboats at work pushing barges. I take my family to the nicest places.
The car ferry returned at last. We were perhaps eighth in line by this time as several cars ahead of us had cut out during the wait. The way it works is that you enter the ferry and drive around its middle like a horseshoe until you are almost back to where you started. They keep bringing on cars until all the space has been filled, then they raise the gates and spin the boat around for the brief journey to the opposite shore. At the destination port, the last three or four cars to board are the first ones off, then the three horseshoe-shaped lanes containing the rest of the cars file off one lane at a time. We were the first car in lane two, so we didn't have long to wait. When we debarked we followed the levee road past several posh-looking homes, curiously sandwiched in among the ramshackle houses like we had seen on our drive two days ago along the plantation route. It is funny to think that these newer houses are probably considered ritzy for these parts, but we could easily afford one if we ever chose to sell our tract house in Oakley.
After slogging along Highway 47 some more without seeing any restaurants, we finally ran across a Piccadilly cafeteria that looked to be doing brisk business despite its rundown appearance. It was around noon now and we were all famished. Inside we discovered that you can't judge a book by its cover. The place was loaded down with good-looking food, served a la carte, and there was a small line of folks waiting to have at it. Roni and I took a look at the menu to get an idea of our options and found the prices to be very reasonable for what looked to be healthy portions. As we neared the head of the line and walked past each item I was trying to decide what I wanted. A good meal would help fill my stomach and clear my head, which was feeling dizzy from lack of food. Ben was very hungry as well. So hungry, in fact, that he charged through the line and started collecting his serving tray before it was his turn. The elderly couple ahead of us were gracious and said we could cut in front of them, but that wouldn't have been fair of us, and we wanted Ben to follow the rules of etiquette. Besides, he didn't know what he wanted yet -- he wanted it all, I think. To make a long, sad story short, Roni's efforts to try to explain to him how the menu worked and to help him decide what he wanted to order only led to frustration. He became loudly argumentative and so I made the call to leave before things escalated and we disturbed the other diners. It was the right call, but it left the three of us angry with one another and worse, we still had no food.
We drove on. I felt bad that things had gotten to this point, because it might have been avoided if I had stopped for breakfast before we left New Orleans. Ben tends to be impatient and a picky eater anyhow, but asking him to wait for breakfast until lunch time was more than he should have been expected to endure. Our drive took us onto Highway 45 and to the entrance of Jean Lafitte park and a place called Barataria Preserve. The visitors center whetted our appetite to go exploring, as the park features several trails that take you deep into the bayou swamps where you can look for alligators and other wildlife. It wasn't the airboat tour we had talked about, but it had the advantage of being free versus about $80 for the tour. But I couldn't begin any hike without food, for now I was starting to space out. Roni and I talked it over and decided to continue south on Highway 45 farther into the bayou in search of food rather than backtracking. So that is what we did.
I let Roni drive for the first time on our trip. She brought us along to the fishing towns of Jean Lafitte and Lafitte. We eventually ran across a little seafood diner called Boutte's. It was getting close to 2 p.m. and anything sounded good. I ordered a bowl of turtle soup and a po'boy sausage sandwich with a big glass of sweet tea. Roni ordered the softshelled crabs, which she had been dying to try. Ben got a hamburger and fries kids meal. Too late I discovered that the food was rather pedestrian. None of it was exceptionally awful, but it wasn't better than we could have done for ourselves in the frozen dinner aisle at the grocery store. My turtle soup I think was beef soup with turtle meat thrown in. My sausage po'boy was a thin sausage patty on rubbery bread. Roni's crabs were of the battered and deep-fried variety. The lady who served us was nice and it was good to finally have a real meal, but it was nowhere worth the $35 we spent on it.
We explored the fishing towns some more after lunch. I took pictures of a small above-ground cemetery near the restaurant. There are lots of newer custom homes here, a fair number still boarded up in the wake of Hurricane Ivan. Lots of construction is going one. It makes me glad we got to visit it now, because in a couple of decades this area will look markedly different. It is the gentrification of the Louisiana bayou. There may be more forest here than back home, but take away that and substitute the Sacramento River for the Mississippi and you'd have Bethel Island, or Rio Vista.
We returned to Barataria Preserve around 4 p.m. to walk the Bayou Coquille Trail and the Marsh Overlook Trail, a total of 0.9 miles through heavy swampland forest. This was truly the highlight of our day. We parked in the parking lot at the trailhead and ventured into the dense overgrowth along a boardwalk, fending off mosquitoes and regretting that we had worn shorts and forgotten to bring the Off spray that Roni had packed but left in a suitcase back at the hotel. We passed giant golden orb spiders hanging from webs above us. We encountered a giant black grasshopper laying eggs at the side of the trail. There were the cries of distant birds, and all around us the sounds of crickets and cicadas. We passed some other walkers who told of seeing snakes and maybe a couple of small alligators farther along the way. We quickly finished off a card of photos and Roni dove in on the second card. Ben was interested in the dragonflies that landed on us and hummed around us. We paused at bench overlooking a field of hyacinths and took in the view when suddenly things started pelting my head. I looked up to see a squirrel chomping on nuts and dropping their remains to the ground below.
We walked quietly in places, scanning the murky, moss-covered water for possible alligators. We saw a few fish and frogs swimming just below the surface. Roni photographed rainbow-colored skinks sunning themselves on the boardwalk and on fences. At last, a young couple who had ventured ahead of us returned from their hike with news of an alligator sighting just up the trail. We had to press on. We had reached the Marsh Overlook Trail by now, which skirts something called the Lower Kenta Canal. At last Roni saw what the other hikers had told us about -- a medium-sized gator perhaps three feet long resting along the bank less than a foot from the trail. It was the first time I had ever seen a live alligator outside of the zoo, and this was a little closer than I really wanted to get. I joked to Ben that he was just a fake made out of concrete. But at that moment the gator moved its head and we all knew it was real. Roni took many photos. They are a little difficult to see, but then the gator was still well concealed by remnants of the swamp it had just crawled out of. Had we not been looking we might have missed it. I got my picture taken near to it, so I'm happy. It was getting a bit spooked by our presence, so we left it in peace.
No sooner had we reached the end of the trail than we heard a voice behind us. We wheeled around to see a female park patrol officer standing there and asking if it was our car that was parked in the lot at the trailhead. We were so wrapped up in our gator hunt that we completely forgot about the time, and about the 5 p.m. curfew beyond which cars are not allowed in or out of the lot. She could have written us a ticket for failing to abide by the rule, but she took pity on us and instead gave us an escort back to the entrance. Yet another Clark Griswold moment on this vacation. I learned a lot more about the park from talking with the ranger than I did just observing on the walk out. At least now I was armed with questions to ask her. At the gate we thanked her for not ticketing us and prepared to leave, right as another California couple approached to ask if the park was still open. Whereas we felt hopelessly underdressed in our shorts, this guy was dressed to the nines in a business suit. His wife wore a dress. I'm sure the ranger loves us whacky Californian tourists. But she sounded like she may have been a California native herself, so perhaps she understood.
By the time we returned to the hotel lunch was working on me. I was tired from the long hike and uncomfortably full despite having eaten a few hours earlier. I napped until close to 7:30. Finally Roni said she wanted to get dinner before it got to be any later, so we went to a place down the street called the VooDoo BBQ. I was way too full for a big dinner, so instead I ordered a side dish of corn pudding, bread pudding with a cinnamon sauce, and a frozen alcoholic drink called Mojo Mayhem. Roni had hot sausage with potato salad and sweet tea. It was all very good, but I literally had no room for it all. The bread pudding could have served four people it was so huge. I ate at least three quarters of it. Ben made it through his dinner of potato salad and corn pudding, then ordered a huge slice of chocolate cake with raspberry sauce that he barely ate. My drink was excellent, but the alcohol got to me quickly and the cold chilled my stomach such that I had to stop drinking it for a minute to avoid an adverse reaction. I was thankful the walk back to the hotel was short, because my legs and feet felt like lead.
I am wrapping this up at 2 a.m. and I still feel bloated. Pleasantly bloated, but bloated all the same. This is our last night in the Maison St. Charles. Tomorrow we enjoy some last sights in New Orleans before we hit the road for Mississippi.
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