Louisiana - Day 11 - Bayous and parishes

Lake Fausse Pointe State Park, St. Martinville
Tuesday, 11 February 2020

today's route

Along the bayous
I saw a whole flock of egrets that seemed to be grazing on the Bayou Segnette levee when I was leaving the campground.

The weather report included fog warnings this morning, so I left the campground earlier than I'd intended because I was afraid I'd have to drive more slowly than usual.

I passed through St. Charles Parish - "Where There's More To Life."

I entered St. John "The Baptist" Parish (as it's stated on the highway sign).  The parish is named after the church in Edgard that was built by German immigrants who populated the coast in the mid-1700s, and I passed by the church and the historical marker along the road.  I didn't know at the time it was where the parish name came from but I did know it was architecturally stunning, especially for such a small town.  This internet photo is a little fuzzy but maybe you'll get the idea.

Edgard, incidentally, is the parish seat despite being an unincorporated community.  I guess they're a little casual about these things down here.  Edgard is also the location of the Whitney Plantation, which I'd missed seeing the other day and now had come  back to for a tour.

I'd made a 10:00 tour reservation, and Google said a normal driver could get there from last night's campground in 46 minutes.  Well, that's likely at least an hour's drive for me, and I thought the fog might make it even longer, so I left the campground earlier than I'd intended.  But I did make it in just over an hour, which was a relief.  And I had enough time to walk the dogs and fix them a couple of Kongs with peanut butter to keep them occupied while I was on the 1½ hour tour.

Whitney Plantation
I'm going to do a separate post on my tour there, because there was a lot of information about life on a sugar cane plantation for the enslaved people who worked here.  But if you want a Wikipedia overview of the plantation, here's the link.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Whitney-Plantation

Continuing through the parishes and bayous
I only drove 140 miles today, which would be nothing much on a flat straight highway, but it took me hours on these roads.  I passed through pieces of multiple parishes and crossed and drove beside multiple bayous along the way.  This part of Louisiana seems like it's more than a quarter water.

I passed through St. James Parish and Lafourche Parish, passing fields and canals and small towns along the way.  I entered Terrebonne Parish - "Louisiana's Bayou Country."  The parish seat is Houma (pronounced HOME-ah), that I'd wanted to visit just because of its name.  But the side trip would make the afternoon drive much longer than I had time for, so I passed it up this time.

I saw a sign saying I was entering the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area.  This link is the best brief description I could find about this area.   https://www.louisianatravel.com/atchafalaya-national-heritage-area  If you want more, that link includes a link to the main heritage area website, which I found too complicated for the quick overview I wanted.

At Schriever, I passed a sign with an arrow pointing to Bayou Plantations (it said).

In quick progression, I passed through Assumption Parish and St. Mary Parish ("The Cajun Coast").

Numerous waterways either flow into or are created by the Atchafalaya River, the basin of which is (I think) the foundation of this national heritage area.  And as if those waterways weren't enough, the Intracoastal Waterway flows through here, too - I crossed it at Amelia.

Before Morgan City, I found myself on a long, straight, elevated road, which I guessed was taking me over the Atchafalaya River and surrounding water bodies.  Not as long as the elevated road that I-10 becomes to the north of here, but similar and because the I-10 section is actually labeled as the Atchafalaya, that's why I figure this section is likely downstream of that one.

Lionel Grizzaffi Bridge

Though I might be wrong about that because between Morgan City and Berwick, I came to a bridge labeled Lionel Grizzaffi Bridge.  Now, neither this nor the long elevated road before it said what body of water they were spanning, but Wikipedia says the Grizzaffi Bridge crosses the Atchafalaya River.

I've been finding Louisiana isn't much for labeling its bodies of water.  Maybe they've got so many of them they'll bust the state's budget if they put up signs at every bridge that crosses even just the main waterways, let alone the smaller ones.  Or maybe they figure if you need to know, you'll already know.  But it's not good for curious tourists like me.

In Patterson, I passed a sign directing me to the Wedell-Williams Aviation/Cypress Sawmill Museum.  The idea of combining these two particular subjects in one museum seemed to me like it must be a mistake so I looked it up.  No mistake.  There's a good description of it at this link.   https://www.louisianatravel.com/aviation-and-cypress-sawmill-museum  I'm sorry I'll have to miss it.

I passed through the small town of Calumet - common name in many states.

I've been seeing huge fields of yellow flowers along the road.

Many Louisiana roads are really bumpy and I don't think they have to be.  The seams in the roadway aren't level, and I'm bumping over every single seam along the road - which I think occur every 10' or so - which means constant bumping.  All over the state.  And that's when the roadway's in good repair.  It's much worse when it's been patched or needs to be.  Very wearing on people driving vehicles with less than wonderful suspension systems.  I mean, this RV isn't even a Honda, let alone a Cadillac.

I turned off US Hwy 90 at Franklin and headed into the hinterlands.  And the farther I went, the more absurd it seemed that this was the route to a state park.  But this time I got directions from both Google and Bing, and both said this was the route.  The alternative was to have gone around via I-10, which was not only a longer route that would take me through almost zero countryside but was also the only road I'd previously been on in Louisiana, and I wanted my month here to be something else.

So I turned on Parish Route 3211, then on Main Street, then on Katy Bridge App Rd. (I never could figure out what "app" means), which crossed Bayou Teche (per a sign), then on State Rt. 87 (nice and smooth, what a relief), then on Charenton Beach Road, and then on the Atchafalaya Spillway Levee Road, which is supposed to arrive 14 miles later at the state park.  Some of these roads had actual street signs, so I usually knew I was on the right roads.

Along the way I passed what I now know are sugar cane fields, scattered houses, and a Texas Petroleum Company plant.

Bayou Teche, by the way, was once part of the main route of the Mississippi River, back several thousand years ago.  In its gradual and meandering way, the river slowly moved eastward, depositing silt as it went, leaving this and many other waterways behind.

For a few miles, the levee road was a gravel road along the base of a levee with a 30 mph speed limit (fat chance I could go that fast).  It ran alongside a body of water that looked like a bayou, but I think it's actually water flowing from another body of water that's an offshoot of the Atchafalaya River.  (That river and its basin include an awful lot of water.)  The bayou-pretender was on my left, and the levee was on my right, which seemed odd until I looked at a map later.  That's when I found that the levee is almost certainly there to hold back the Atchafalaya River, which is on the east side of that offshoot I mentioned above, and that's on the east side of this levee.  The offshoot of the offshoot, which is what I was driving along, soon emptied into Lake Fausse Pointe on my left.  

some of the 100+ pelicans at Lake Fausse Pointe

Back near Charenton where I turned on the Levee Road, I saw a string of old motor homes and shacks and houseboats along the Bayou.  One of them had a name: SA-SI-BON, their sign said.  I saw what must have been at least a hundred White Pelicans hanging around in the lake.  A lot of them were sitting on left-over pilings from old piers, like the ones in my photo (sorry it's fuzzy), and others were swimming in the choppy lake (the wind was really blowing).

a section of Levee Road

That levee road nearly did me in.  The farther down it I went, the more surreal the whole thing became, because the road changed from gravel to dirt, and became even more bumpy than the gravel road and included serious ruts thanks to recent rains.  I still had half the distance to go when I was ready to call it quits, but it was way too late by then to change my mind.

I had to go very slowly over the bumps and ruts, partly to keep all my worldly household goods from falling out of cupboards onto the floor, partly to keep my critters from ditto, and partly to keep my head from exploding with a headache.  It was seriously crazy.  At several points I found myself saying, "This is Wacko," both in my head and (as the bumps and ruts continued) out loud.

Finally, a few hundred feet from the state park entrance, I came to paved road.  Apparently the bit that comes from I-10 is paved, and I came via The Scenic Route.

As I drove into the campground, I saw a sign advertising the LA Dutch Oven Society.  I found online that they've got chapters all over the state, with meetings called Dutch Oven Gatherings (D.O.G.s) on a different weekend each month, usually at a state park.  The one meeting on the 1st Saturday each month meets here at Lake Fausse Pointe State Park.  Another meets at Bogue Chitto State Park and still another meets at Bayou Segnette State Park, both of which I've stayed at.  All the chapters have names and one of them calls itself Le Chien Cookers (presumably because of the D.O.G.s).

When I checked in, I asked about wildlife, and the ranger assured me there were lots of deer, alligators, snakes, raccoons, and she kept listing so many species I stopped paying attention.  Anyway, she had me with the first 3.

And one of the first things I noticed about the campground is that it was half flooded.  Only a few of the campsites were unusable, but there was a lot of standing water all over everywhere.  The mosquitoes are going to be fierce in another month if they don't have a bad freeze.