Swamp Tour on Lake Martin

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Woke up to the news that the restaurant we ate at last night burned and will be closed for 6 months!  Had breakfast of biscuits and gravy, fruit, and berry smoothies.  Left to meet our guide for a swamp tour on Lake Martin.  He was with Cajun Country Swamp Tours. (www.cajuncountryswamptours.com)  He was very knowledgeable about the wildlife, birds, trees and swamp.  He grew up on Bayou Teche and his family has been here for years.  He had a conservation mentality and a passion for leaving things for future generations.  We saw many alligators, egrets, blue, and green herons, pileated woodpecker and beautiful Cyprus and Tupelo trees.   Excellent tour, highly recommend this company.  I appreciated that it wasn’t real commercialized and that he cared about conserving the area.  Our boat had some people from Australia and a couple who spoke French so maybe Canadian or French so his jokes were lost on all but us.  He was funny, however and I would highly recommend this company to anyone.

I believe this bird is endangered or threatened but unfortunately cannot remember name.

. The swamp was beautiful, way more so than I could have imagined.  He showed us lots of duck blinds on the swamp and the lake.  Apparently there are rules keeping people from building too close to an existing duck blind.  Most of them have been in families for years so it is very difficult to get a spot.

Drove to north of Breaux Bridge to have a plate lunch at Glenda’s Creole Kitchen.  Anthony Bordain visited there last year, we had seen it on the food channel and a lady at the visitor center told us where it was.  We were served a huge lunch that she graciously split for us on  two plates (I think she gave us extra – thank you!) and peach tea.  We had smothered pork and stuffed turkey with rice, corn, potato salad.  So nummy.  Each day the plate lunch options change.  I think I would never cook if I lived close and probably would have to buy a much larger wardrobe.  Homemade cake to go!

Drove to Lafayette to see what  is one of the oldest live oak in the USA.  They estimate it to be 500 or more years old.  It is enormous taking up a whole city block!  They lose a few leaves all year long so are not deciduous like the oak trees I am used to. Walked around the city and stumbled upon a  9-11 Memorial with 2 beams from the Twin Towers.  It gave me the chills as in all our travels, we have not seen one single 9-11 memorial until today (9-11-12).