Louisiana

We are back exploring Louisiana again! We arrived yesterday, but too late to go out into the swamp. So, today was our first day of exploration.

We decided to explore Pomme De Terre WMA. We had a hard time finding an entrance, but we finally did and hiked in on an ATV trail. As we walked we saw Palmetto in the understory and heard many buzzy sparrow and warbler calls. None of the calls matched a Bachman's of course.

We hiked away from the trail and into the forest for a first time, but did not find anything interesting, so we went back to the trail and kept going. I then noticed a Garter snake slithering away from our path, so I tried to grab it. But I missed it by an inch and it escaped.

The deeper in we went the taller the trees became, and the understory became denser. Palmetto was everywhere. We found a clearing in the understory and hiked into the forest from that point. We soon came to a marsh, and then we noticed a scaled tree. It was scaled all the way to the ground. There were large chuncks of bark on the ground around the tree. I took pictures of it, and then we went back for the trail.

Farther back on the trail the understory, and the Palmetto became even more dense. We found an area to hike into again, but found nothing. On the way back toward the trail I saw another Garter snake. This time I caught it and held it for a minute, just to look it over. But it bit me and drew a small amount of blood. So back on the trail I washed my hand off, and we moved on.

Further up on the trail we ran into another wonderful reptile, a 2 1/2 foot long alligator. I went up to it and attemped to grab the back of its neck, but it whipped around before I had a good hold. We then figured he was just big enough not to mess with, we took some pictures, and moved on.

After hiking for a long time we decided to turn around and head back to the car. But on the way back we ran in to more animals. They were all not very shy. We saw a rabbit and an Armadillo, and got some up close shots.

After getting to the car We wanted to see if we could get in to Pomme De Terre from the north. We found a trail up there, but it turns out it was private property. The Cajun owners and their "hunting club" weren't happy with us.


And tonight we had dinner with Frank Wiley. With him we got a plan for tomorrow set up. I'm waking up at 4:00 am to meet him tomorrow.