January 11-13, 2014 Palmetto Island State Park, Louisiana

Rainy day in the park today.

 

Red berries, Spanish moss, and palmettos. A red cardinal. This boat on the Vermillion river is some kind of work boat.

We kayaked to the backside of this dam a few days ago (on a sunny day) John looked over the dam, which then had about a 5 feet below the top of the dam, John wanted to go back today and drop the dam, so we looked at it, and the tide is in today. No such luck. Here is the canoe trail we kayaked on, raining today.

Bald cypress. John hiking in the rain. We hiked 5.33 miles according to his GPS.

 

Sue hiding behind a palmetto leaf. They are huge. The Our Lade of the Bayous Church in Abbeville.

We headed to just west of New Orleans to Bayou Segnette State Park. Our route was the gold line. This part of Louisiana coast looks like lace with rivers, bayous, lakes, marshes and swamps. A good part of the drive was through the southern end of the Atchafalaya swamp, and  the delta of the Atchafalaya  and Mississippi rivers. The road was on a bridge above the swamp, or cypress bottomland and water. Along the road are bald cypress. They are conifers, but they loose their needles in the winter. The photo is the view from the road, and the view out my side window looking down into the swamp. And then sugar cane fields.

  

The swamp was interspersed with rivers and bayous. There is a lot of boats and ships from the gulf in these waterways. We thought the boat in the bottom of the photo is a houseboat. The bus at Bayou Segnette.