After our first hike with its questionable ending, we are settled into Palmetto Island State Park. This is our first Louisiana state park, and we definitely give it a thumbs up. Opened in 2010, this is a very new public park when compared to the many national and state parks we have experienced. Because it is so new, we are enjoying a long camp site that is wide enough to deploy the slides that modern RVs have. Good job, Louisiana!
On our last afternoon here, we decided to kayak part of the Vermilion River that flows through our state park. They have a nice spot to put in kayaks and canoes, with plenty of parking. Good job, Louisiana!
The banks of the river are lined with the signature palmettos here at Palmetto Island State Park.
They are also lined with a few alligators. It's always a bit of a thrill to be in an inflatable boat and so close to such big animals with such sharp teeth.
At times, the river widens into a couple different lakes. That's when we found this sizable gator.
Unlike the docile alligators at the last state park, these guys are not nearly as used to visitors. Instead of lying on the shore for hours, this one slid into the water when we passed by. We must say that we prefer watching alligators on the shore, rather than wondering where they are while sharing the water with us.
This guy was also moving around as we floated by.
At the last lake in our journey, we found this big gator sunning himself. He greeted us with a open-mouth-smile.
For some reason, that big "smile" didn't feel all that friendly. We gave him a wide berth as we circled the lake and paddled back to our car.
On our way home we paddled by several other interesting sights. Denisa liked this little turtle, precariously balanced on the top of a log two feet above the water. It would have been interesting to see how he got up there.
From a distance, we saw this bright pink bump on a tree trunk by the river. That bubble-gum pink wad looked like someone had discarded their gum on that tree. But when we rowed closer, we saw it was actually made of hundreds of eggs. We later googled "bright pink eggs on a tree" and found out that they were deposited by a fresh-water apple snail. We'll count that as another of God's wonders.
Our last wildlife sighting was on the bank as we were putting the boat away. It's a blurry picture, but this is our second sighting of the wild hogs that are digging up big sections of the state park.
We have really enjoyed our stay here at our first Louisiana state park. Another of our favorite features are the comfort stations. It includes nice toilet and shower facilities. But we really like that it also includes free washers and dryers.
Yes, we have a washer and dryer inside our motor home, but they are small in capacity and it takes a long time to dry a load of towels. We really appreciated the ability to catch up on big loads of laundry during our stay in a state park. We think that's a first for us! Really good job, Louisiana!
Unlike the Texas state parks that are full for the weekends, there were plenty of camp sites on Friday and Saturday nights at Louisiana's Palmetto Island State Park. It's great to be enjoying Cajun country on a weekend, with lots of activities going on. Note: As usual, we are behind in getting our travel blog published. This was right before all the Covid-19 cancellations.
We started at the farmer's market in Del Combre on Saturday morning. It was a little nippy at the market right on the water, but it was a great place to find some local treats accompanied by local Cajun music. What a fun way to start the day!
We then headed down the road to New Iberia, because we read it was the first day of their Azalea festival. We followed the provided map, but decided that this cool morning meant the flowers were still in the bud. No pictures of glorious flowers, because we really didn't see many glorious flowers. But driving around town, we did find a soup-cook-off. We soon learned that visitors are supposed to taste as many soups as possible so they can make an educated vote for the best one. A few bowls of spicy cajun soup warmed us right up! We cast our two votes for the asparagus and shrimp soup and the creamy shrimp gumbo as our favorites.
Driving around New Iberia, we saw lots of cars parked at Shadows-on-the-Teche, a historic house that was once part of a sugar cane plantation.
Today the gardens are filled with booths of local artists, so we wandered the grounds on this beautiful day. We were glad to see that some of the local artists use sweet treats as their media, and we bought several pieces of tasty art.
Right next door is a public sculpture park, that was picturesque.
We could look out over Bayou Teche from that red sculpture chair or from Mark's long-chained garden swing. This river winds for 230 miles across southern Louisiana, including its course through the town of New Iberia.
We struck out with the azaleas today, but that doesn't mean that Denisa won't take pictures of the local flowers. We found this bright spiky bloom on a local tree,
and this bright yellow water iris in the sculpture garden. Whoo! It feels better to know that we weren't skunked with pretty spring flora here in Cajun country.
With all our unplanned stops today, we were late arriving to our planned stop. We read that the Volunteer Fire Department was having a Wild Fish, Fur, and Feather cook-off (no, we had no idea what that meant either), so we headed toward the tiny town of Herman next. We would soon find that locals had spent the day cooking up their favorite recipes that used either wild fish, wild mammal, or wild bird in them. We arrived at the worst possible time, as the tasting was finished. So we didn't get to try the duck tacos, the bacon-wrapped-back-strap, the crawfish gumbo, or any of the other entries. We were too late for the food, and too early for the line-up of cajun music that started in the evening. So after our long day of touring, we headed back to the state park.
We were in church the next morning, a little disappointed that we didn't have a local Cajun preacher. We love to listen to these people talk, as their french-like language mixed with their southern Cajun accent sounds almost like music. After church we went to lunch at the park ranger's favorite local dive. We should have taken pictures of the gas station that was converted into Suire's Cafe. We shared a combination plate that included shrimp etouffee, shrimp gumbo and rice, potato salad, roll, and lemon cake. The only thing better than hearing a Cajun talk, is eating the food that a Cajun cooks!
We are really enjoying our time in the heart of Cajun country. We love the food, the music, and the special language that is found only here in southern Louisiana.
Note: Isn't it crazy to think that a week later, probably all of those fun activities would have been cancelled--including church?!?
After our two-night stay at Walter Umphrey park on the water, it didn't take long to get to our next state. Last night's campground was in Texas on the west side of this tall bridge. We walked to the edge of our park to get a better look at that bridge.
After we crossed that bridge this morning, we were officially welcomed to Louisiana. For our Cajun friends, that would be "Bienvenue en Louisiane."
We've decided to take the southern route across Louisiana this time. This is highway 82, and it has those dots on the map that indicates that this is a scenic byway. It's so scenic that at times we could look out our big motor home windshield and see the Gulf of Mexico right beside us.
We have a planned stop during today's travels. Mark found a parking place for the motor home, and we headed for our last walk on the beach. Four years ago we were at Holly Beach, Louisiana, amazed at the number of great sea shells we found. It was one of the highlights of 2016! So we had to stop again to see if we could still be amazed in 2020.
We did find some nice shells on this beach. It was nice to wander along Holly Beach and find some of God's wonders just waiting for us to pick them up.
While Denisa was wandering on the beach, Mark noticed ahead that a pickup was stuck in the sand. The tracks in the soft sand were long and deep. He headed that way to see if he could help.
This man had planned to go fishing, but found himself stuck instead. He had been working, and looking for a way out for over an hour. Mark went right to digging on the side that was deepest in the sand.
They had a few boards for traction, and they gained a few feet every time they dug a new path. After 15 minutes or so, he finally got enough traction to get to safe footing.
So our stop at Holly Beach ended up being a little longer than we had planned. Then we were back on Highway 82, heading straight east across the bottom edge of Louisiana. We crossed over several of these draw bridges. We're not sure how often the highway must be raised for passing boats, but we got a green light at each of our draw bridges today.
When we got to the intracoastal waterway, it was too long for a draw bridge. So we drove the motor home onto the second ferry this week, and sailed safely to the other side.
This stretch of highway is in a flood plane, and everything is built on stilts. That includes houses and stores. It also includes three-story schools like the one pictured below. We failed to get a picture, but it also includes a little white church with a steeple.
We're finding that Louisiana doesn't waste any asphalt when making roads. There is no shoulder on this road, and we've even traveled some that don't even have a white line on the outside. It seems like we've passed through the scenic sections, as all we could see for miles now was the tall sea grass on both sides.
We were glad when our views opened up to open fields. We are now in crawfish country. The fields have been flooded, and each dot out there is a crawfish trap.
This field has deeper water, but we can still clearly see the tops of the traps. We visited with a local, who explained that the wire traps under the water are baited with cut fish. The crawfish are lured in thru openings that are designed to be difficult to exit. Most farmers check the traps daily, and we found miles and miles of these flooded fields as we traveled.
We finally arrived to our destination--Palmetto Island State Park. Those fan-shaped bushes in front and behind the motor home are the park's signature palmetto plants.
We scored a double site when we made our reservation. Site #79 has a flat and spacious spot for our motor home. If you look closely, you can see that it has a separate space just for our car. This state park opened in 2010, and we could tell it was newer than most of the public parks where we have camped. The sites are level, long, and have 50 amp power.
As soon as we got the motor home parked, we headed out on the nature trail that connects the campground to the nature center. It was lovely and wide and dry, and lined with those signature palmetto plants.
It didn't take long before all those adjectives that describe a good trail, suddenly disappeared. Now the trail is no longer wide (as we were struggling to find our way through those palmetto branches) . . .
or dry (as we sloshed through the standing water and the icky mud). Yeah, this trail is no longer "lovely" either.
We kept thinking it was going to get better, and that the nature center must be just around the next curve. But instead, we ended up having to retrace our muddy footsteps all the way back to the road. For some reason, Mark kept taking pictures of Denisa, slogging through the mud.
It wasn't a great welcome to our new campground. But we are liking it here anyway. Welcome to Louisiana!
When we came to the end of our third night at Brazos Bend State Park, we realized we hadn't moved the car or left the park since we arrived. Looking back on it, we probably should have stayed a fourth night. We knew the weather forecasters called for a rainy windy day. But we thought the storms would be over by noon. So we planned to leave right at our 12:00 check-out time so the storms could clear out in front of us. But the storm system stalled, and we found ourselves driving through the 4th largest city in the United States during a rain storm!
Add in construction and narrowed lanes, and going through Houston wasn't a drive for the faint-hearted!
It was still raining when we arrived at our next destination--Walter Umphrey Campground--just south of Port Arthur, Texas. This campground overlooking the water used to be a state park. But after it was crippled by hurricane damage, the county took it over. We're sure missing our good state park rate, but we stayed because it was a great location for us to see some new territory. When we drove over the tall bridge adjacent to the park, we got an unusual aerial view of our campground. We're situated on a little finger of land at the intersection of Sabine Lake and Sabine Pass.
Surrounded by water on three sides, we have interesting views out our motor home windshield. We can see a big oil refinery that lights up like a Christmas tree at night.
Sabine Pass is a channel that cuts through to the Gulf of Mexico, allowing these huge freighters to get this far inland to the refineries that surround us.
After a rainy night, we headed out to explore our new home the next morning. To get back to the Gulf, we had to drive under fuel lines and beside refineries in a very industrial route.
Then we went on a bridge over the intracoastal waterway. We could tell that this is a much-traveled waterway, with barges and tug boats as far as we could see.
Our destination is twenty miles away, a Texas state park that we haven't visited before. We are heading to Sea Rim State Park on this cloudy morning. Off the beaten path, there's only one long road in and out of this remote beach.
As soon as we started walking the beach, we saw that this state park has the best selection of sea shells we have ever seen.
Besides plentiful shells, this beach also has interesting waves of different colors of sand. Looking down the beach made an interesting picture.
With so many swirly shells and perfect curly-q shells, Denisa couldn't help but pick up too many. Later we looked up more scientific names for these swirly shells--like whelks, conch, and moon snails. They came in all sizes, but the perfectly shaped tiny shells were beautiful evidence that we have wandered into another of God's wonders. We took this picture of some of those tiny wonders that fit inside another shell.
When we emptied that heavy sack of shells onto the beach, it was certainly the most shells we've ever collected on one beach. But it was also the most unique collection of shells.
What will Denisa do with that mound of shells?
She will use them in a tribute to the beach. So she went to work to spell out a giant "Sea Rim" in appreciation of this great state park.
Here's a close-up of some of the letters. On most beaches, it would be amazing to find one of these shells. But to have whole letters formed from them? That's just wonderful fun!
This is our last Texas state park of the season, and it was a great one! Good-bye to our favorite state park system for another year!
We drove back down that lonely twenty miles of pavement that brought us to the state park. We made a couple stops at a wildlife refuge, and a Texas ornitholigical way-side. That's what the sign outside posted, but we know that's just fancy talk for a birding site. We didn't take a single picture, so we obviously didn't see many ornithological specimens. Our last stop of the day was a Texas historical site.
The fort is no longer standing, but this park marks the sight of the Battle of Sabine Pass. During the Civil War, the Union navy recognized the importance of this waterway. They sent a fleet of boats up this narrow channel to take control of the fort and the pass. But Confederate soldiers with very good aim stopped the Union soldiers from completing their mission. Today, Sabine Pass is still an important transportation hub, as we watched one large ship after another cross in front of us. This is Hellas Explorer, a Greek ship, that is plying these Texas waters. It is setting low in the water with a load of oil it just picked up.
We could tell that this ship was coming in empty, as it was riding high in the water. This oil tanker is 183 meters (600 feet) long. That's two football fields in length! Team Adventurer is the ship's name, and she is coming up the Sabine Pass to pick up a load of oil.
We couldn't help but have questions about the massive metal apparatus that kept showing up in our pictures.
It was hard to comprehend how big this crane system really is. We assume it is used for loading heavy cargo onto ships, and we could see how big it is when compared to the ships that passed right beside it.
We enjoyed our day along the rim of the Gulf of Mexico, especially our time at Sea Rim State Park. This is our last day in Texas, and we were blessed with another great day of wandering!
