To the Edge of the Earth and Back

Our first weekend back from the storm, we decided to go on a swamp tour and find some alligators. We had to drive a little ways to get out to the real Cajun country, but as soon as we saw these little guys coming out to say hi, we knew we must be in the right place.

Then out came our captain, and we were on our way. He's lovely, right? But he had an awesome accent and had been working out on the swamp for a long time, so he made a really good guide.

Once we got out there, it only took a couple minutes before we spotted our first gator. The captain would throw marshmallows out to lure them up to the boat, and then we they got close he would use the stick so they would come right to us!

 Most of the gators we saw were medium-sized, about 5-6 feet long, and they were very friendly.

 As you can see, Adam was getting pretty into it.

These aren't great pictures, but the captain got some of the gators to jump for the marshmallows, and they could really get out of the water. If you look at all three of these together, it's kind of like a flip book lol.

As part of the swamp tour we also went out to a traditional Cajun village, which is only reachable by boat. As you can see, it was very, uh...nice.

Because of the hurricane, the water was still pretty high and a lot of the houses were still flooded, and this house had water that covered their porch enough to let the river otters in.

After seeing how fun it would be to live out here, this is the house we've started building. Haha, yeah right.

They don't really call these houses though, because most people have a normal house somewhere, else, and then a "camp" out on the swamp where they can do fishing and crabbing and hunting. A lot of people make these camp houses themselves, and try not to invest too much in them because they are frequently ruined. Go figure, huh? During big hurricanes like Katrina, houses this low get completely flooded, like up to the roof.

After the tour, we were going to go explore a national park that has some walkways in the swamp, but it was still closed because of the high water, so we decided to take a little drive to the edge of the earth.

Alright so maybe it wasn't really the edge, but it was as far as we could get! It took a couple hours, but was totally worth it to see this lovely beach! Okay, so maybe it was a terrible, yucky beach with only oil platforms in view, but it was still a fun drive. We saw lots of these tiny little crabs, and a pelican, which is the state bird ( I know you wanted to know that).

But the drive out really was cool, we drove all across that part of Louisiana that looks like a bunch of dots on a map. In real life, it looks like this. A bunch of green dots on the water. Imagine that.

We also passed a lot of these lift bridges, and got stuck waiting for this one to raise to let a boat through.

There were tons of stilt houses too! Especially once we got out past the levees. Most of them kind of looked like mobile homes on 2 x 4s, and we even saw one completely knocked off the stilts and lying sideways in the water. I didn't get a picture, but the power is still out in a lot of these areas, and we saw a couple fan boats that had been rigged with bucket lifts to fix the power lines, so that was pretty cool.

Anyway, we had a fun weekend drive and now we know what it looks like at the end of the road!