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!
No comments:
Post a Comment