Gators, Gators, and More Gators

Some of the things we have liked best (and sometimes least) about Louisiana are the outdoors and wildlife. I joke with some of the people I work with that they don't even need a zoo here because all they have to do is walk outside. Just in our little pond behind our apt we have frogs, turtles, 10 different types of birds, fish, and nutria (which is a rat/beaver thing that came from South America to take over the south for those that didn't know). We decided to make another trip to the bayou to look for alligators, and whatever else we could find.

Just south of New Orleans lies the Barataria Wildlife Preserve inside the Jean Lafitte Preserve. The preserve is made up of tons of rivers, canals, and bayou.

There is tons of Spanish moss dangling from most of the trees. It makes it a little eerie but really pretty. I wouldn't want to be stuck there at night! Also, It was nice because most of the trails were raised so we could walk right over the water and get really close to the wildlife.

This guy was hanging right over the trail. He was probably 3 inches long. I am still having nightmares from that.

We got to see quite a few alligators on our walk. Most of them were right off the trail. It made me wish I had a bag of marshmallows.

We also saw a few turtles, salamanders, and this little guy. I am determined to catch one of these before I leave. They are so cute.

We saw this guy just as we left the preserve. It is awesome how many alligators there are here. If I wasn't so scared of getting my arm ripped off, I would try and take one of them home too.

I'm goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

Adam is working kind of a weird schedule where he gets every other Friday off, so last weekend we decided to visit the zoo. It was honestly one of the best zoos we have ever been too. Most of the animals were in open enclosures without glass, so we could see all the animals really well. Plus, they were so close to us!

They also had a petting zoo, and we got a kick watching little kids run away from the goats.

My favorite exhibit was the orangutans. They had this little baby one that was so cute! I could've just sat there and watched it for hours.

Adam loved the turtles. The enclosures are set up so most of them had water between us and the animals, and I'm pretty sure Adam was more interested in finding turtles in the water than looking at the animals in the exhibit.

In order to get his attention, I decided to try on a little disguise. I think it worked!

They had a bunch of gators, but it's a lot more fun to see them in the wild. They get so fat at the zoo!

We mostly loved this zoo because the animals were so active. We totally watched these two go at each other and it was crazy. I thought the poor wildebeest in there was going to have a heart attack.

On Saturday, we took a little trip to Pensacola Beach. After seeing what the Louisiana shore looks like, we thought it might be nice to go to a real beach.

Adam had never been swimming in the ocean before, and he loved it! It was a gorgeous beach with white sand and really clear water. We even saw a jellyfish!

It was also really nice because the water was shallow, so we could go pretty far out and still reach. Actually, we had a hard time even finding water deep enough to reach Adam's shoulders!

Also, I thought I'd add this picture on for you baby bump watchers. This is me at 29 weeks!

NOLA

We started off our first day in New Orleans with a stop at Cafe du Monde. Apparently it is THE place to get beignets, and we were very pleased. We will definitely be getting some more of those before we leave.

After breakfast we took a little tour of the French Quarter. I really love the architecture there and all the buildings are so cute! There a lots of cute colors and they all have sweet balconies.

If the city wasn't so dirty, I would totally consider living in one of these apartments.

After wandering around, we went over to the French Market which is so fun to walk through. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, but it's basically a bunch of vendors selling venetian masks, gator heads, and other local souvenir-type stuff.

One of our first weekends here was Decadence, which is some sort of gay pride festival. Anyway, they put these all over the sidewalks and I thought they were hilarious so I just had to put it on here.

After our little tour of the French Quarter, we walked over to the aquarium to meet some friends. We had a hard time finding somewhere to sit because there were lots of nice guys like this taking up the benches.

They have a sweet package where you can go to the aquarium, zoo, insectarium, and imax for only $19 which is a killer deal, so after the aquarium we went over the imax and finally saw the new Batman movie (and loved it of course!). We were pretty tired by the time we got home from our busy day, but we had a lot of fun exploring the city!

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!

Catching up with the Ainges

Well, it seems like we slacked a little bit on the blogging while Adam and I were home for the summer. Mostly we just went to school and worked, but now we've left for our next adventure, so it seems that we have some catching up to do. First of all, for those who don't know still, we are expecting a baby boy on December 9th. We're having a little bit of a hard time picking out a name, but we are so excited for him to get here! Unfortunately, because of the prego situation, I won't be able to stay with Adam the whole time he's doing his internship, but given the current going-ons in New Orleans, I might be happy to leave early!

We left last Wednesday to come out, and moved in on Saturday as scheduled, but on Sunday we were told to evacuate because of Hurricane Isaac, so we packed up and now we're back in Texas. Turns out, being stranded in a hotel is worse than driving across the country. This drive was definitely a little less exciting than the one to Mass. The first day we mostly drove through Indian Reservations, which wasn't too much to see, but was kind of interesting. They have so much empty land that they don't seem to be doing anything with. Most of the residential areas were small mobile-home communities in the middle of nowhere, without any farms or livestock or anything around them, just empty desert. We also saw quite a few guys just walking down the side of the road half-dressed. Then we went to Four Corners, which is on the Navajo land, and was not exactly what I expected. The monument is surrounded by shopping booths where Navajos were selling jewelry and, you guessed it, Navajo Tacos.

The next day we drove to Oklahoma City. The route basically follows the old Route 66, so every time we pulled over somewhere we saw really cute old motels, diners and gas stations. We also saw a lot of run-down, closed-up buildings and billboards that had started to decay and fall apart. It was actually kind of sad to see all the businesses that no longer existed because of the new freeway, but it was really fun to see the ones that are still thriving. One of those is Pops, which is like a little diner/gift store. It's famous for the variety of bottled soda they offer, most of which I had never even heard of before, so of course we got some. Like my Mitt soda?

 We made a couple random stops on the way out just so we could get out of the car and walk around. This was at some historical old town just outside of Dallas. Adam really made himself at home.

We took another two days to get to our apartment in Kenner, LA. Once we left OK, the humidity really hit us. I've never really been somewhere so humid before. Even last semester on the East coast and even D.C. were nothing compared to the South. It just slaps you in the face every time you step outside. And the bugs, ugh. I don't know what kind they are, but we saw tons of these little guys mating everywhere! We'd pull over and they'd land all over the car. 

Driving through Louisiana was crazy. We were just driving on a normal road, with trees all over, and then, all of a sudden, we were in the middle of a swamp! And, we saw our first wild alligator! Too bad he was dead on the side of the highway.  Guess we still need to go on a swamp tour to see some live ones. We also saw quite a few smaller lizards, which made Adam really excited. They just crawl around outside our apartment, and we even spotted one in the chapel. Guess even lizards go to church in Louisiana. Our ward seems really nice, and we have a good mix of other students and locals with cool accents. It looks like a fun place to live, and we can't wait to leave Texas to get back there.