Apparently in the South it is common to get Good Friday off. Fine with me! Last month Cheryl informed me that: "You can't fish every day that you have off!" "Why not?" I replied. " There is more to life than fishing." I love my wife, but sometimes she just doesn't get it. Since moving to Memphis we have talked about visiting New Orleans, so we made it happen over the long weekend.
Cheryl knew that if she was going to stop me from fishing over a long weekend she had better have a good plan. So she made sure that she had things planned out. She knew where we could get cheap parking, she had a list of restaurants, and she had plenty of wiggle room worked into the schedule so we could keep the C-ster happy as well. Overall we had a great time.
Friday we drove South, visited the French Quarter, and had some Jambalaya. Saturday we spent most of the day in the Barataria Preserve of Jean Lafitte National Historic Park. There we saw alligators, snakes, and a whole lot of palmettos, cypress trees, and spanish moss. Sunday we went on a swamp tour where we saw a bunch more alligators, green herons, turtles, and even a bunch of gar. Then we drove home.
Next time I go to New Orleans . . . sight fishing for redfish will be on the agenda. Hopefully that will be another story for another day! I'll let the pictures tell the majority of this story.
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| Oooh! A camera! My favorite! |
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| Waiting for our late lunch in the French Quarter. We're both excited! |
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| A couple of cuties overlooking Jackson Square. |
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I'm no herpetologist, but I did some cram studying of the different snake species
before going to the Barataria Preserve. I really wanted to see a cottonmouth, but
I struck out. I did see about a dozen (what I believe are) broad banded water
snakes like this one, as well as a couple ribbon snakes. |
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| A green anole (methinks). These guys are everywhere, and they are very neat! |
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| Cheryl's first wild gator. She even spotted it herself. |
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| I wish they had nymphs this size in more trout water! |
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| Wrestle that gator! |
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| The C-ster loved the first half of the swamp tour! |
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| It's crazy what kind of nocturnal animals will come out when you feed them marshmallows! |
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| Chomp! |
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| A very mellow 2 year old gator. |
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Finally sleep caught up to the C-ster, and this is how he spent the second
half of the swamp tour. |
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| Through the window just before getting home. It feels good to be home. |
My first visit to your blog in a while. Excellent job on the snake and lizard IDs. I am a herpetologist, and you are 100% correct!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the confimation, Jay. I was really hoping to see a cottonmouth, but none of them looked right, and I figured I would know it when I saw one. About two weeks ago I was hiking by Arkabutla with Cheryl and a friend and her two toddlers and just off the path was a cottonmouth. I recognized it immediately - fat for length with an obvious spade shaped head, just like the rattlers I'm used to seeing out west. I was totally stoked - the girls with the toddlers were a bit scared! I got some pictures and we left it alone. It was neat.
DeleteIt looks like you and Kelly are getting more than your fair share of nice bass in Alabama. Keep up the good work, and if you make it over to the west side of the state and wouldn't mind a little company, let me know, I'd love to learn some tricks of the trade.