The Creole Nature Trail

There are 43 "All-American Roads" in the United States, and the Creole Nature Trail is one of those.  Beginning at Lake Charles, this 108-mile-loop bends through the part of Louisiana that is affectionately called "The Louisiana Outback."  It starts at a new visitor center right off I-10 at Exit 20 in Sulphur, Louisiana.  There are interactive displays here, and Mark worked on his crab fishing techniques.  February isn't a good month for crabbing, but you can be sure we would have tried it if we were there during the summer.

We also learned about the music in this part of the state.  Whether Cajun or Zydeco, both forms of music feature the accordian.  This display allowed you to hold the instruments, and when your hands touch them it activates the sound track to include your instrument.

Besides the accordian, cajun music usually includes a steel guitar and a fiddle.  By Mark holding the fiddle, we hear it on the sound track.

Zydeco music includes a bass guitar and a wash board, that can also become a fashion statement.

After playing with all the toys in the Adventure Point visitor center, we started our 108-mile journey on the Creole Nature Trail.  We were guided by a GPS Ranger that we had rented for free.  It tracked our progress on the loop, giving us audio and video narrative about the things we were seeing from our car window.

Our first stop out of the car was the Intracoastal Waterway Park. The bridge behind Denisa can raise to allow taller ships to pass under. This Intracoastal waterway starts at the tip of Texas, and continues all the way to New York. It allows big barges to deliver goods from south Texas all the way up the east coast without having to travel in the open seas. At this particular park there are also 18 RV sites for anyone interested in watching ships go by.

Our next stop was to take a mile-long walk along the marsh.  But we saw this billowing cloud of smoke as we approached.

Coincidentally, about that time our GPS Ranger informed us that controlled burns were used to clear the national wildlife area we were driving through.  This is done routinely to keep the area healthy for native plants and animals.

Sure enough, we saw a ranger with a flame thrower, setting the tall vegetation on fire as we watched.

They were prepared for this fire, with area fire trucks to keep the electrical poles from catching fire.

We didn't see as much wildlife as we had hoped, but it was a cool day.  We saw lots of warning signs about alligators on our walks, but they were all hiding today.  The Creole Nature Trail also took us all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, and there were several stops available for visiting the beach.  Our first stop was at Holly Beach, an area that has been decimated by several hurricanes in the last ten years.

We love to walk on the beach, and we found the most beautiful shells that we have ever seen on a public beach in our entire lives. Mark's big hands weren't big enough to hold them all, so this was just a few of the shells that we found.

When you live in a motor home, you learn not to keep all those treasures. So we take pictures of our treasures to remember them. Denisa was working on some beach art that will surely wash away with the tide.

This is the finished picture of our very temporary collection of shells for the day.  We think Holly Beach is the best place to look for shells that we have ever been blessed to visit.

Another close-up of a hand-full of perfect shells we found today. Seeing so many perfectly formed shells reminds us that the beach is another place to wander among God's wonders.

We stopped at another beach about five miles down the coast.  So close, but the shelling was so different here.

Far fewer shells, and different varieties than we had found at Holly Beach.  We certainly have a creative God that can design so many beautiful shells!

In order to continue on our loop, we had to take a ferry around Monkey Island at the small village of Cameron.  

This little village is just a shell of its former self after being decimated by hurricanes in 2005 and again in 2008.  There is a memorial plaque at the court house that explains that in 2005, Hurricane Rita caused a storm surge that breached 30 out of the 40 cemeteries in this parish.  Over 340 caskets and their contents were torn from the ground and scattered in the marshes. 

Towards the end of the day, we saw more and more birds making their way to their roosting places for the night.  This is just a small section of the flock of snow geese that were congregating in the marsh beside the Creole Nature Trail.

But our favorite birds to watch in this area are the Roseate Spoonbills.  They are especially beautiful when they unfurl those big pink wings to fly.  The picture below is a little blurry, but was our best shot at comparing the pure white egrets to the two pink spoonbills on the wing.

We found out there was a spoonbill rookery behind the the Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge on our nature trail loop. There were as many as a dozen birds for us to watch from a distance.

As the sun was sinking, their pink color was even reflected in the water of the marsh.  This picture better shows the spoon-shaped bills that allow them to dig up juicy tidbits to eat from the bottom of the marsh.

We have discovered another of His wonders as we watched these curious birds prepare for night-fall.

We stayed on the viewing deck until sunset, watching as whole flocks of birds flew into the marsh.

It is a beautiful sunset in the Louisiana Outback when the pink setting sun matches the birds.

It was dark by the time we finished the 108-mile loop, and returned to our camping site.  We had experienced one of the best scenic roads in this beautifully scenic country we are blessed to explore.