St. Bernard State Park, New Orleans, LA
Ned and I had enough of the party scene and couldn't wait to get back to nature. Gary & Linda went on a swamp tour (thanks Matt, Rachel & Jessie, what a sweet Christmas present to your folks) while Ned and I headed for the Barataria Preserve.
We took a 4 mile hike through the Preserve, which was mostly on a boardwalk raised above the swamp and marsh.
To get there we had to go all away around downtown New Orleans, which would take about an hour. That pesky Mississippi River was between us and the Preserve. As luck would have it there is a ferry boat crossing about 5 miles from the campground. Sounds like a plan to me!
We were in awe of the captain's maneuviring skills naviagating the powerful downstream current.
This pic is of a huge tanker going by the ferry dock. Still can't get used to the hub-bub of the hundreds of tankers and barges in the delta.
It was a gorgeous hike through this National Park, but dang was it hot and humid! We walked for a couple of hours and the big payoff was a lookout over the Marsh Area. On the hike we saw a gator, but I was more impressed (scared to death) of the humongous spiders hanging from overhead branches onto the trail. Yikes!
This area is named after Jean LaFitte. Mmm, so not impressed. His claim to fame was "he led 1000 men of different nationalities into one of the largest, although illicit business enterprises of its day. With 99 vessels LaFitte and his band of Baratarians supplied slaves and luxury goods to the wealthy planters along the Mississippi and to the residents of New Orleans."
This map puts into perspective where this Preserve is in respect to New Orleans
Basically, there's not a whole heck of a lot between here and the Coast.
By mid-afternoon we met up with Gary and Linda in the Garden District and took a cemetery tour of New Orleans' most famous cemetery. My big takeaway - don't believe the story that the reason the crypts are above ground is because of the water table. It's all about resource management, i.e reclycing the same space over and over to bury as many people as possible.
After the cemetery tour we took a bike ride through the Garden District up and down all the bumpy streets looking at all the historic homes. And because I still hadn't ridden enough I cajoled everyone into doing some more biking around Audubon Park. What a gorgeous park with a paved path just for cyclists!
After dinner Linda and Gary headed out for another night of dancing on Frenchmen's Street. We cried uncle and headed for the campground.
As I doze off to sleep I'm going to try and not think about all those ginormous creepy spiders and the alligators we saw on our hike. (Notice how every little itch or brush against your leg just gets you twitching? Yeah, me too).
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