Day 45 (A Travel day) ( ...and my Birthday!) Milton, FL - Jacksonville, FL 349.7 miles, New Total = 9.176.9 miles
Left Milton @ just after 7AM and headed East on I10.  This was scheduled to be an Interstate Day as we had to cover roughly 350 miles and we wanted to arrive in a decent hour of the afternoon to make contact with my cousin Charlie.  Our plan was to stop at a Cracker Barrel close to Tallahassee.  It was really crowded there at 9:45 AM.  Nobody must have a job  in that city!  Had my favorite, Eggs-in-a-basket, sausage patties & hash-brown casserole. Back on the road again in cruise control we motored on.  I think we only took (2) pictures all day.  Driving through a tree lined asphalt/concrete tunnel doesn't inspire much photographic creativity!

With no stop for lunch we arrived at the campground just after 2:30 PM.  We were in the process of setting up our water & electric when I heard that unmistakable voice of Charlie! He had anticipated our arrival and got to the campground right after us.  We finished setting up, sat around and swapped stories & insults for a while and then Charlie drove us all to his house in his truck. His brother-in-law D.J. and his girlfriend were there when we arrived. After an hour or so of all of us sharing more stories and getting to know each other, we all went to Olive Garden for a great dinner.  At the end of the evening Charlie threw me the keys to his truck and said to come back in the morning when we were ready.  Charlie has a 2011 Ford F150 extra cab with all the bells & whistles. We made it back to the campground OK, but couldn't find our way to our site as their where just too darn many one way streets.  Finally we found the security guard and he explained the layout of the park and we found our way home! I guess that's what happens when you turn 70!

Day 44 ( A Travel Day) Denham Springs, LA - Milton, FL  260.3 miles, New Total = 8827.2 miles

Today our travels would take us through (2) new states and into a third.  We left Louisiana behind as we crossed the Pearl River.  To avoid Interstate coma we decided to travel on Rte 90 through Mississippi and Alabama as much as possible.  This took us as close to the shore as possible. In fact in Mississippi we drove along the open beach for 10-15 miles where most of the homes are on stilts to protect them from storms.

....even the Lighthouse was on stilts!

Before lunch we stopped at Davis Bayou Visitor Center of The Gulf Islands National Seashore in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. This National Park was established in 1971 to protect the wildlife, barrier islands, salt marshes, historic structures and archeological sites along the Gulf of Mexico. We spent an hour or so listening to the history of the islands including the story of Fort Massachusetts on Ships Island which was started in 1859 and not completed due to the ending of the Civil War.

As we approached Biloxi there were casinos galore.

Alabama had even less shoreline than Mississippi.  We traveled through Mobile, a good sized city,

and just before we crossed the bridge into Florida, we saw the SS Alabama Battleship.










Our trip ended early in Milton where Dave's brother Bryant lived.  Later that afternoon we went out to the Texas Roadhouse for Dinner and ended the evening with stories of the "Smith Brothers" youth in Franklin, ME.

Day 43 (A Sightseeing day @ Cajun Encounters Swamp Tours) 176.3 miles, New Total = 8,566.9 miles

As I spoke of yesterday, we traded a day on Bourbon Street for a 2 hour trip into the swamp.  Our reservation was for 12 Noon and the ride was about 80 miles from our campground to Slidell, LA, which is at the East end of Lake Ponchatrain.  It was soon obvious that the noontime trip was the most popular as 2 small full tour buses showed up.  We soon found out each boat held 22 people and we would soon fill 3 boats.  Jan's last minute trip to the Ladies Room turned into an opportunity as we ended up in the end seats in the front of the boat.

 The 2 hour tour was broken into 2 segments.  First a trip down one of the tributaries of the Pearl  River to see some alligators, and the second hour was a trip deep into the Honey Island Swamp.

After cruising a short distance from the dock we turned on the gas and took a high speed (about 35 MPH) cruise down river and into a smaller side channel.  We were quickly confronted with small fish (10-12") jumping out of the water randomly around the boat.  I thought they were catching something airborne, but the guide, Captain Mike, told us they were striped mullet. They are basically bottom feeders and spend a lot of time in the mud and they race to the surface and jump into the air (1-2') to flush the mud from their gills.  Unfortunately I wasn't fast enough with my camera, and not smart enough to use the video mode to catch any shots of them. But it was entertaining.  It took only a few minutes of cruising (at a very slow speed) before we spotted our first gator.

It wasn't too large (3-4') but we were just as excited as if it were 10.  Captain Mike tried to lure him closer to the boat by throwing marshmallows into the water.  He didn't seem interested, but very quickly a second approached us from the rear and proved to be quite hungry and ate 3 or 4.  We spent about 1/2 hour cruising up this channel and saw no less than a dozen and maybe close to 2 dozen gators, in the water and basking on the shore along the route.  The largest was probably about 6 or 7 feet.

A trip up another channel continued this adventure with almost as many sightings. Unexpectedly we also saw some remnants of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina (piles of dock debris and overturned boats).

Down this new channel we baited the gators with pieces of hotdog on a stick as they approached the boat ad Captain Mike was able to get 2 of them to jump out of the water almost 3 feet to retrieve the hotdog or marshmallow  This was very cool!

Sightings continued as we retraced our steps out of this channel and we then motored ( at high speed again) back toward the dock to begin our second part of the tour.

Day 43 Cont'd (Part 2 of our Swamp Cruise)
Like the start of the first part of the Tour, we began with a high speed jaunt for about 5-10 minutes upriver and then we slowed and slowly slid into Maple Slough a little (just barely wide enough for the boat) side channel with overhanging branches and undergrowth.

Captain Mike had to work to keep us  off the brush and not get slapped by outstretched branches.  He explained some of the Flora and insects (like the 3" garden spider we saw) This was an old Cypress swamp that had been harvested about 100 years ago, and they had left a channel winding through the stumps.  They had also replanted much of the forest at that time, but there was much evidence of the original stumps, as Cypress almost never rots.

We quickly  saw some marshmallows floating and this time we knew what that meant and we quickly scanned for gators and almost always found one sunning himself or lurking along the weeds of the banks.

We wound through this swamp until we met a another boat returning from their trip into the swamp. No one could believe we could both fit by each other but the two Captains accomplished it without even touching.

On our return to the main river, we came upon "Big Al".  He was a 10' Alligator in all his glory.  He came out from the bank to greet us and refused a few marshmallows, but was a little more interested in hot dog pieces,  He wasn't about to jump for them like the smaller gators.
Our return to the dock was again only after a high speed run back down the river, and all in all everyone agreed that this was a very enjoyable day and much better than shopping or sightseeing in New Orleans.  I guess that's just the kind of folks we are!

Day 42 ( A Short Travel Day) Lafayette, LA - Denham Springs, LA (Baton Rouge) 74.3 miles, New Total miles = 8,390.6 miles
Our schedule was planned to be short today as we were moving to a campground near New Orleans.
I thought I wanted to see New Orleans for its festive atmosphere.  Our first choice was fully booked so we ended up at a KOA just outside of Baton Rouge.  This is only about 130 miles from Lafayette so only about 2 hours driving.

Given the lack of urgency in our schedule, we kind of hung around our campground and enjoyed the atmosphere and the pond.

Our campsite in Lafayette, LA

 As we were looking across we spotted what looked like an Anhinga back home (I'm not sure if that is right down here) sitting on a branch near the edge of the water.  I got my camera, took a picture, but before I could take a second picture, 6 more popped up out of the water around  the branch.

There was (1)

....and then there were (7)

Again the route was basically an Interstate.  When we began reading the descriptions of attractions in the area, we found references to Antebellum Mansions and Swamp Tours, etc..  This made me think about whether going to downtown New Orleans was really all that important to me.  I wasn't looking forward to Cajun food, and Dave and I kind of liked the idea of a Swamp Tour.  That's tomorrow, so let me get back to today.

Our route on I10 took us through Achafalaya National Wildlife Refuge.  As we drove along, we saw the sign for the visitors center and then we saw a sign saying Trucks restricted to Right Lane Only next 18 miles.  It was not obvious why.  We soon found out when we came on to a concrete elevated bridge on concrete legs over what appeared to be a river and its flood plain.

 It turned out to be an 18 mile bridge (yes continuous for 18 solid miles) (The internet says it is the 14th longest bridge in the world) over a very large swamp/river/bayou area.

Most all of the 18 miles, the feet of the bridge were in water. It was very impressive, and I can't imagine the issues that were confronted during its construction.



Our campground turned out to be next to a new Bass Pro Shops, so we stopped there to check it out as we were a bit too early to check in. So far the campground has been nice and we have made our reservations for the Swamp Tour tomorrow.  I should get some good critter pictures.

Day 41 (A Travel Day) Texarkana, TX - Lafayette, LA 300.8 miles, New Total = 8,316.5 miles
Growth (tree & shrub) along the Highway continued to increase in  size.  The land seemed to be more rural with exits leading into unpopulated areas more than towns.  Over 200 miles of our trip were on one pretty straight concrete road increasingly through wetland areas.  There were only two significant sized communities along this 200 mile stretch.  Clearly we were traveling through the rural part of this state.
We did note as we traveled South that the presence of "nodding donkeys" (oil pumps) in the pastures increased.  It's quite evident that cattle and horses aren't bothered by this machinery at all. Also  we noted a few more cotton fields as we moved further South.

Those are bales of cotton in the background

 We arrived early to a pleasant campground surrounding a small private lake.  Our sites turned out to be on the lake, and after a team discussion and online work we firmed up our reservations for the next 4 or 5 days.  This gave me a little daylight freedom to take out my ultralight fishing rod and have a few casts in the lake. It was advertised as a good Bass lake so given the hour of the day I put on a medium sized surface lure and gave it a go.  It seemed that all I was attracting were a bunch of turtles, a few ducks and a small kitten that came near to see what was going on. As i was about to quit, I tried one last cast along the shore and got a hit after about 2-3 feet into my retrieval.  I quickly landed a nice fat 14-15" Smallmouth Bass.

 After a quick picture, he was back in the lake, and he gave a great jump after swimming a few feet as if to say "and goodbye to you !".

Day 40 ( A Travel Day) Oklahoma City, OK - Texarkana, TX  miles, New Total = miles
Left the worst campsite I had stayed at during the trip. But, hey it's only one night. Headed east on I40 for about an hour before we turned South toward Eastern Texas on The Indian Nation Turnpike.  Before we made this turn we noticed a number of roadside signs denoting the boundaries of various Indian tribe reservations.  Not just 1 or 2 but at least 6 or 7.  So I asked Jan to look up on the web (on my smart phone) the number of Tribal Nations in Oklahoma. There are 38 Federally recognized Tribal nations in Oklahoma. Remembering a little of our nations history brings to mind that Oklahoma was the state/area that many of the nations tribes were relocated to when they were displaced for various reasons from their original tribal grounds (Including the Seminole from Florida).  The terrain was rolling with no steep grades and the farmland was made up of much smaller parcels than we had see in the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma.  The trees were also taller and we started to see some color reminding us of New England as some maples were mixed in with oaks and the various conifers.

Just before we stopped for lunch, ( a little late because we couldn't find any roadside rest areas) we crossed the Red River (which forms the Southern border of Oklahoma for everything but the panhandle of the state).

Before and after this we encountered much larger stretches of farmland.  This was all bottomland in the floodplain area of the river. Beautiful dark, rich soil.  The downside of this rich land was bugs!  ...and many found their demise on my windshield! This was the first day in the trip when I had to wash my windshield both in the morning and at lunch.

Also we saw 2 large wood product mills.  One of International Paper (by the smell it was a pulp mill), and Weyerhaeuser (no smell or visibility to determine the type) and many logging trucks passed us heading to the mills.