Well, not a great sleep last night with the trains again. Amelia was up and at 'em and working on her chest/dungeon game. Ollie's tooth finally fell out! hurray!! Jonathan made pancakes and we tidied up the rig for traveling again.
Departed at 10am and got onto Hwy 10 east for Slidell, LA. Sunny blue skies and temperature of 18c. It was about a 35min drive back across the long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain and we arrived in Slidell at Dr. Wagner's Honey Island Swamp Tours. Captain Hunter was our guide for the swamp boat tour. Super nice guy with funny and well timed jokes. They let us on first with the kiddos so they could be at the front of the boat. There were a few other older couples on the boat with us, one lovely couple from the UK that we chatted with quite a bit.
We saw SO MANY GATORS! and lots of raccoons, and turtles too. A bit weird at first, but the guide would throw a marshmallow out into the water and the racoons would come running when they heard the boat... conditioned that boats full of people mean sweet treats. Gators also would swim over for a marshmallow. It was super cool to see them up close as we glided (and sometimes booted!!) through the murky waters of the Pearl River.
Meems fell in love with a little turtle in the office. She's determined to have turtles, snakes and frogs as pets when we get home.
After an awesome swamp tour, we left around 2:15pm and got back onto Hwy 10 headed for Baton Rouge. Nearing Lafayette (about 1/2 hour before), we crossed Henderson Swamp - filled with lots of broken bald cypress trees. Looked spooky.
We needed to pull over for a snack and some playtime, so chose Lafayette as our stop. We happened to drive right by the Louisiana State University where Jonathan's cousin, John Tenta, went to school! Pretty neat. Stopped at Girard Park for a play, our baseball throw practice and some batting game fun. The playground was neat, waterpark was fun, and the exercise equipment also a good time. A very nice community park, with a couple basketball courts in full use by the locals. After getting some exercise and a good run around, we went back to the rig for some chips and salsa and apple snacks, and Jonathan put a movie on his phone and got the kids set up in the upper bunk for the next portion of the long drive.
Drove through the university portion of the town... cool buildings with neat brickwork. Looked like a nice place to study and live. We continued out of town and stopped in at the Circle K for diesel. There was a sliver of a moon and the yellow/mango coloured sunset was quite stunning on the drive west.
We had looked up on I-Overlander on free spots to spend the night and found two casinos close together in Lake Charles. We pulled up to the Golden Nugget Casino around 8pm in the dark. A fancy casino and hotel. Ollie and Jonathan walked over and peeked inside the fancy lobby. Around 9:20pm across the parking lot there were fireworks happening! Ollie stood on the roof to watch, and the rest of us watched from the parking lot. Very fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment