Back to Nature

After Bourbon Street and the stress of city life, it was nice to travel north of New Orleans to do a little hiking.  We hiked in both the Northlake Nature Center and the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge.  While it was cool, that’s OK since we didn’t have to worry about mosquitoes, snakes, or alligators.

I love a big live oak tree filled with Spanish moss.  Sometimes it almost glows.

 

 

I’m not sure of the terminology here (it's certainly not surfboarding), but there were two people along with a teacher learning to board the swamp .  I guess it’s pretty simple.  The boards are wide enough and rough enough to stand on then you use a paddle to move around.  The newbies legs were shaking a bit at first trying to keep the board stable, but no one fell in.  Looks like a gorgeous thing to do.
 

 

These are bald cypress knees (the short cones sticking up from the water around the tree).  There are two theories why they exist.  One is to provide a stable support in the swamp.  The other is to allow the tree to breathe when the swamp is flooded.  No one really knows. 

 

 

One of the parks had a camellia path.  There are a little damaged by recent cold, but still beautiful to see a few days before Christmas. The close-up is a Christmas Camellia!

 

To get there we traveled across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway which is the world’s longest overwater highway bridge.  It is 24 miles long.  A long drive but pretty cool!