Let the good times roll!

Laissez les bon temps roulez! The motto of New Orleans, and I think we should adopt it. As long as those good times stop at 9 pm or so, and start up again early.

We stopped hitting the headwind when we crossed into the Mississippi hill country. When we got to Louisiana, there was more rivers and swamps and less hills. We stayed at a park south of Baton Rouge, where I got the chance to try my first "po-boy" sandwich (a sub with seafood - very good!).

Since everything is closed on Thanksgiving, we spent that day paddling the bayou the park was situated on. We learned something very interesting at the nature centre of the park: that "stump" that hubby is holding on to isn't some rotted out stump like we always thought when we saw pictures of a cypress swamp. It is actually part of a bald cypress tree's root system: a tree's knees, we were told. Of course, these "knees" were everywhere. Especially on the trails. I finally found someplace with no rocks to trip over, and they put knees in my way.


The next place we stopped was just outside of New Orleans.

On our first walk around the area, we found a fish market with fresh crabs, shrimp and other delights. Needless to say, we brought some back for lunch. And this bounty only cost us $7.50!



Food is just too good to describe here. We spent a day in New Orleans in the French Quarter, and waddled home stuffed! We tried "gator bites" - both fried and blackened pieces of aligator, plus gumbo, crawfish, hushpuppies, and finished it off with fresh french beignets at the coffee and donut place.

The French Quarter was alive with people. Mostly tourists, but there were also buskers, musicians, dancers - both on the sidewalks and sometimes right on the streets. This performance artist stayed in this position for at least the 15 minutes it took us to walk past him and take pictures. And everytime I looked back, he was still there! The boutiques had Mardi Gras masks, art, and lots of cajun spices to buy.

Other kind of wildlife lived within our campgrounds. We were surprised to see this little fella rooting around just behind our trailer. Armadillos move quickly, and dig in the dirt with their nose and feet. It didn't seem afraid of us, but just kept going. We also saw several great egrets, pure white and the size of a blue heron, and smaller snowy egrets.

No aligators, yet. That's probably for our next hike.

W