Palmetto Island State Park, Abbeville, LA

It was a long day of driving yesterday...not because it was very many miles, but because the roads were absolutely terrible. They were the worst we've seen on this trip. Geez. When we finally got parked, I went around and carefully opened all the cabinets to avoid any surprises. The thing is, you can't avoid having things fall out of the cupboards after such a rough ride. However, you can avoid the unpleasantness of having them fall out when you aren't expecting it.

So I would have said it was a boring drive, but it wasn't. We saw quite a bit of interesting stuff along the way and after we got here. Fairly soon after we got underway, we went up and over this big bridge.

From what we've seen, bridge names are marked in Louisiana, but not the waterways they cross. Since they're forcing me to guess, I'm guessing this is the mighty Mississippi. It's an educated guess...I looked at the map.

From there, we just tried to avoid falling into the deepest cracks and potholes. As we drew closer to our final destination, we began seeing flooded fields. Initially, we thought they were flooded from the rains, but then we realized that they were sort of dammed up all around, as if they were flooded intentionally.

The were all around us, on both sides of the road.

Eventually, we were close enough to the park to see our old friends, the bald cypress trees and the palmettos.

We drove through the gates to the park and checked in. While there, we asked about the flooded fields. The park ranger told us they were crawfish ponds, which made sense. We'd seen a market selling blue crabs and crawfish. (We call them "crawdads" in Oregon.) In warmer weather, rice is grown in the same fields.

We have a nice level campsite here, and we pretty much have the place to ourselves. There is wildlife all around and it sounds surprisingly similar to a jungle. This morning I'll try to get out and make an audio/video of it so you can hear it.

We got Smitty out for a walk right away. He didn't really get any good walks in New Orleans. When the woofies weren't bothering him, the wind and rain was.

After that, we had some lunch and took our naps. The kitties were all whipped up about something outside. Eventually, they aroused us sufficiently to take a look. Lo and behold, there were a pair of armadillos nosing around outside.

They were digging in the deep leaf cover looking for grubs and worms, presumably. We aren't really sure what armadillos have on their menus.

It was hard to get a good picture of their little faces because they were buried in the leaves most of the time.

We kept trying, and they kept hanging around, seemingly oblivious to our presence.

As it grew darker, it was harder to get them in focus as my shutter speed slowed down to accommodate the lower light levels.

Finally, I turned on the flash and caught this one. Unless I'm able to get a better picture during the three days we're here, this one will go into my Sketchbook.

My one word for this One Word Wonder: "Armored."

We have no plans here aside from hiking and relaxing. As I mentioned in my previous post, we're killing time so that we can arrive at the Texas Quilt Museum on the days when it's opened.

One of the landing gear on the front end of the trailer has broken. As we were leaving the RV park in New Orleans, we realized something was dragging. We strapped it up to go down the road, but it will need to be replaced. This will be the third time Mike has replaced the landing gear on this RV. For now, we're using jack stands and a "bottle jack" to unhitch the trailer. It's pretty much a major hassle. The part will reach us at a future destination, and then we'll probably stay at a place in Amarillo where the sites are paved. Mike doesn't want to be crawling around on his knees in a gravel site while he fixes it. It's the first mechanical failure of the trip, and so we're feeling pretty lucky...even if our luck did give out on us temporarily.

Now here's something: it's hard to say Amarillo when you've been watching armadillos. Try it for yourself. Say armadillo five times, then trying saying Amarillo. Let me know how you do with that.