I wasn’t sure if I should title the blog post what I did, “The Deep South,” or if I should have titled it – “Lots of Cool Wildlife!” Our trip to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was very cool because not only did we see some new things, we saw tons of wildlife, some of which I have never seen in the actual ‘wild’ before. Usually, when I post about our trips I starts from the first day and tell about the days in order, but I am going to mix this post up a bit, and tell about our last day first because it is the day we saw the most wildlife. Our first and last day were spent in and near New Orleans. On our last day we did a Swamp Tour at Honey Island. The tour was in a motorized boat with benches facing sideways so we could look out the side. It mostly took place on a big river and of course the swampy areas around the river. It was the highlight of our trip because we learned a lot about Louisiana and like I said saw a ton of wildlife including alligators, huge blue heron (which we were told were meaner than bald eagles), an owl, snake in a tree, raccoons (they are much cuter when they are not living in your roof), various other birds, and turtles. One of the blue herons were flying with it’s huge wing span, but I didn’t have the camera out in time. It would have been a really cool picture if I could have captured it. I did get some cool pictures of the large alligator, and a video of him snatching the hotdog off the stick.
The day before was our beach day! We went to Dauphin Island, Alabama. Out of all the beaches we have been to in 2013 this was our warmest beach day, and the water was not cold. In fact, I wish I had a boogey board so I could ride the waves like I use to in Hawaii!! :-) Actually, Payson didn’t really want to go in the ocean unless we were holding him, and even then he was whiney. When we went to the Bay side of the island he had a lot more fun. I think the waves from the ocean side scared him a little bit. The bay side is also where we saw fish jumping our of the water, lots of crawfish, some big jellyfish, AND wild stingrays. I have swam with stingrays, but have never seen one in the actual ocean water. The two we saw were small little guys, but I was able to kind of get a picture of one of them. (The picture of the stingray is the first picture in this batch).
The day before our beach day, Sunday, we went on a free nature board walk over a swamp after church. It was a unique Sunday walk, but really neat because we were the only ones there. The swamp was very cool. The swamp is where we saw the first wildlife creatures besides birds of our trip- unless you count the interestingly dressed human beings on Bourbon Street in New Orleans!!! At the swamp we saw lots of lizards, tons of dragonflies, and our first wild alligator! We also walked by some garbage cans on the boardwalk and every time we passed one, Payson would point it out and say, “garbage!” (He is learning new words everyday! It’s so fun!)!!
Our first day was in down town New Orleans! Like I mentioned before, we didn’t see wildlife this day, unless, you count the interesting people we saw!! ha ha New Orleans is a cool city, but I don’t really care to go back. It is a party city, and it is not even Marty Gras season right now. The tabernacle was cool, and I read that it is the oldest tabernacle in America. Some of the houses in New Orleans were pretty neat, too, but even now you could see damage from Hurricane Katrina, and at church during Testimony meeting some of the members talked about it all these years later.
Now, you can’t go to the Deep South and not enjoy the FOOD!! Josh made a list of everything we needed to eat while we were down there! We had crawfish etufae (I have no idea how to spell that), gumbo, jumbolaya (pretty sure I spelled that one wrong, too), bread pudding, prailines, shrimp and grits, crab legs, beignets, and more! Our night in Mississippi we stayed at a Casino, and even though we are not gamblers, we got players’ cards because we each got a free buffet meal for signing up for the cards. I actually got two free buffets because I got a free one for my birthday month, so we ate dinner and breakfast at the buffet. We happen to eat dinner on crab night, so we got all those crab legs for free! The casino was pretty cool! We went swimming in the morning before we headed to the beach. The pool had a flat, shallow part for little guys like Payson. Plus, the water was pretty warm so it was easy to get Josh all the way in the water!! he he
One place we ate lunch at was in Dauphin Island. It was a cool beach restaurant, and we were the only ones dining outside on the deck so we let Payson run around. We ordered crawfish and artichoke pasta and had the best bread pudding I have ever had; it had pecans on the top, and was a perfect consistency! (I should have taken a picture)! Anyway, the last meal we ate was our lunch before the airport. We didn’t want to eat in the restaurant because there was a wait and we had to go to the airport. We ended up eating our lunch in the back of our rental car! Did I mention we had a truck for our rental car? We got a free upgrade, so we couldn’t resist the truck!!
Our trip down south was fun, but the way home was not!! We had two flights because we had a layover in Dallas. Payson was so tired on our first flight that he cried for what seemed like forever. He finally fell asleep toward the end of the flight, which was good because we were in the airport airplane parking lot for about 30 minutes before they found a place for the plane to come up to the building so we could get off. This delay caused the second flight to be delayed. A lot of the passengers from our flight were going onto Chicago like us. We immediately boarded the next plane without getting to go to the bathroom. Then we waited for awhile on the plane before they told us to get off because we had no pilots. I guess there was pilots, but since they were waiting for the New Orleans flight to get in the pilots were called to go somewhere else. We hung out in the airport for awhile before they found someone to fly us home! We finally got home, and now back to work for Josh, and back to a different kind of work for me and Pay!!
