finding my way

The way I like to travel is when I see a road that is interesting I take it, even if it's not in the intended direction. Like a latter day Yogi Berra coming to a fork in the road, over the years I have done this, a lot. But, I have had my greatest successes while traveling alone without having to answer to anyone. When traveling with others there is always an agenda and wailing voices that plea, “are we THERE yet?” Janet though is different. When I get to that proverbial fork in the road that just begs me to make a left, although making a right is really the correct way, Janet smiles coyly, whips out her array of maps and says, ‘Okay.’ Dang, she has even suggested side-trips while out here in Louisiana. She calls them “Greg’s way.”

Sigh.

Throughout our travels in Louisiana, traversing the southern half of the state, we have deviated from the agenda and have gone out exploring on plenty of these roads that don’t even SHOW UP on the official Louisiana state map. It has led us to a myriad of delightful experiences. From the tumult of New Orleans we’ve traveled through the high water serenity of bayous in the Atchafalaya basin and found isolated windswept vistas of the Gulf. We’ve been enchanted by songbirds and hypnotized by the clang of penny slots on a riverboat casino. Without our brave forays into the much smaller roads we would have missed out on a cool refreshing beer at Red’s Levee Saloon. The act of traveling is often more rewarding than the destination and this wonderfully diverse state affirmed in me the joy of traveling along a road just to see what was around the next bend.

Yesterday, a trip that was supposed to be a quick jaunt into the Lacassine Wildlife Refuge, the last leg of our trip along the Creole Nature Trail, turned out to be an all-day affair. We intended to take a swing out to the refuge and hurtle back down the country roads to our hotel in the Charpentier district of Lake Charles to swim in the pool and eat an early dinner before our long drive today. We went out into the fierce, bright sunlight of Southwest Louisiana and drove along the prairies outside of Lake Charles. We passed field after field of rice. Each time we paused to ogle an interesting sight, like a dilapidated barn or listing home, the heat and humidity pressed against us like a drunkard. We drive without the air conditioning on with an eye to the gas mileage and because it’s not quite as big a shock when we exit the car to snap a picture or peer out onto some vista. This may sound ludicrous and we do sweat, but we are used to it, and the beers afterward taste especially refreshing.

Our first stop in the Lacassine Refuge was the pool, but it is certainly not for swimming. It is 16,000 acres of freshwater marsh at the convergence of the Central and Mississippi flyways of migratory birds and a major landing spot for all these tired and hungry birds on their own instinctive travel agendas. Created by a series of low levees by the government, the pool is also home to a large variety of birds. Despite the brutal midday heat we took our time, slowly driving down the chalky dust road to birdwatch. (Ricky would have been SO proud of us.)

Our greatest sighting was a Roseate Spoonbill. We gasped at the beautiful pink feather of this oddly beaked bird as it gracefully flew away. Evidently the Lacassine pool is home to a rare nesting rookery for the Roseate Spoonbill.
We also saw a Common Moorhen prance across lily-pads the side of plates at a country buffet. Each time the colorfully-faced Moorhen hopped to another pad it squawked. Refusing to fly it would hop and leap and step gingerly pad to pad, squawking merrily as it hunted for morsels of food.

Because the Lacassine Refuge is a freshwater pool the plant life is different than in the salt marshes. There are water lilies sprouting hearty flowers that turn the landscape in every direction white or yellow. The yellow lilies have a seed pod that appears when the flower blooms looking like a shower head, which then dries and holds the seeds in a little cup waiting to be tipped into the water. I’m bringing home one of the seed pods. I crept down to the water’s edge and plucked one that was growing near to the shore.

I would not have been so brave though had I known what was in the water aside from gators. Later on when we got out of the car near some fishermen to walk along the road which was being repaired and was closed to car traffic, we shuddered at the sight of a massive fish that broke the surface of the water. A passing fisherman explained the roiling water was from an Alligator Gar. There was a stuffed Gar hanging on a wall at Prejean’s and it was big and ugly! It is particularly vicious looking; its body is like a gator with fins, but its snout is narrow and well…ugly. The fisherman, wearing a tight fitting baseball cap and a tight fitting t-shirt seemed unconcerned about this ugly critter’s proximity. He was catching perch. We thanked him, but he just mumbled something about Gar not being good eating, unless you made some kind of Gar ball, and then without another word turned and cast in the water.

The refuge trail was eventually blocked for construction, so we had to backtrack in the high heat and humidity around to the other side to exit. We had noticed that there was a “do not enter” sign on the way in; this was the end of the refuge trail; but this exit was not blocked. Janet, usually the rule follower in such matters, urged me on. I was more than a willing follower. We drove down the gravel road until we came to a levee that had a small road on it. We followed this low lying divider in the pool for a long while until we came to a covered platform that stood 20 feet above the water. We have been in this state for nearly two weeks and we are still amazed at the beauty and vastness of it. As swarms of blue dragonflies hovered in the air near us, apparently approving our sense of adventure we looked out onto the Lacassine wildlife refuge, at its enormity and solitude. Somehow the heat seemed less oppressive from this beautiful and breezy vantage point.

Most people just kind of flit through these places in their air conditioned cars. We are a couple of knuckleheads though and laden with day old biscuits from Prejean’s we came to a wooden bridge as we drove the opposite way. Afraid that this was still under construction, we thought the bridge would not support the weight of the car. So, we got out to feed the gators. But, the gators here are not used to humans like the ones we’ve seen at Avery Island, and our offerings were ignored by the two that happened to be in the water when we stopped. Janet hit one in the head with a biscuit and the gator quickly disappeared under the surface as if Janet killed it! From then on Janet has been calling her biscuits “Gator Bullets.”

We eventually tested the bridge after seeing construction workers driving to their work site go over it in their pick up trucks. They ignored us as we stood on the side of the road sheepishly holding our weapons.

One thing about gators… if there aren’t any birds in the water, it’s a sure bet the gators are close. All the time we traveled into this closed off section of the trail we did not see one bird. But, we saw A LOT of gators. A quick count was pegged at nearly a dozen in the half mile drive to the actual construction site where we had to turn around. The gators were everywhere we looked in the water, although we looked from the safety of the car only! At one point three were gliding down the water together. Another one snapped and thrashed at something on the far bank. I launched a bullet in their direction but the gators were on some sort of mission. Perhaps they were trying to head us off at the bridge and then drag us from our car to beat us up? Janet did conk that one gator on the head! Even though I’m fooling around here, it did seem like the gators were traveling together in a similar direction. We fled the pool, happy that we did not have to use the gator bullets on ourselves.

We drove out of the pool and down to the main part of the Lacassine Refuge where we took a chilling 200 yard hike. We parked on the side of the road near a trail marker. Just a few steps away from the road we entered a roughhewn trail that had a swamp on either side. He had doused ourselves with bug spray, so mosquitoes were not a concern, but everything else gave us the willies. The road quickly disappeared and we were alone. Our voices echoed off the still water. Cypress knees broke out above the surface of the water in places looking like the hands of drowned men. Using binoculars we watched a snake slither into a man made bird house. We felt like we were being watched, or sized up. Were we worth the aggravation? The swamp looked like it harbored all sorts of dangerous critters just beneath its surface and behind every cypress there was certainly a bear lurking or a snake was ready to drop onto our heads. We noticed that the spider webs that were everywhere along the trail were the homes of very, VERY large brown spiders and when we finally saw a dragonfly in its death throes being sucked dry by one of the spiders even our willies had the willies. Spooked, we headed for the car again.

This time we rolled up the windows and turned on the air conditioning… all the way back to Lake Charles.

Our favorite restaurant in Lake Charles, Chastain’s, was closed, this being a Sunday, so we settled for a chain Mexican restaurant for our dinner. Later that evening after a swim in the cement pond Janet and I walked through the Charpentier historic homes district of Lake Charles where our hotel is located. Charpentier is French for carpenter and some of the homes in this small area date from the late 1800’s. Evidently there were no real architects in the area when some of these homes were built and according to the official website for Lake Charles, the homes took on the individual characteristics from the carpenters who built them.
Assured we would not get tackled by a gator seeking revenge we took a leisurely stroll through the area to peer at the lighted facades and interiors of these beautiful homes.