Author Archives: Jill and Bud

We spent the last four days at Chicot State Park near Ville Platte, Louisiana. This is north of the delta area. We had a nice spot at the end of the loop.

There was only one trail, it went all the way around Chicot Lake. The loop was 22 miles long, well beyond what Matey and I can do. We did take a couple of walks along it.

Most of the trees were just getting their leaves. Some, like this one in the center, were still in flower. I know it’s March, but to a northerner like me, it felt like May.

The lake was beautiful and the edges were all cypress/tupelo swamps.

There was an arboretum at the park and Sunday Bud and I walked through it.

It included some of the swamp. By Sunday the needles were peeping out on the cypress trees. The tree closest with less pronounced flutes in the trunk is a tupelo. They were not yet in flower.

There were wetland areas where these lovely flowers were in bloom. It is Pakera glabella; butterweed, cress leaf groundsel or yellow top.

There were also upland areas with beech/magnolia stands.

There were dogwoods in the understory. Most had lost their flowers but I found this one still in full bloom.

March or May, it was a lovely time in a very pretty park.

Morgan City is in the northwestern part of the Mississippi Delta. There is so much water here it gets confusing. This is a panoramic view from the top of the levee across from our campground. To the left is Flat Lake and Pique Bayou. To the right is Lake Palourde, which appears to be slightly lower than the bayou. I think the levee is to keep Pique Bayou from flooding Lake Palourde.

Here’s another structure built to control water flow, but I really don’t know which side is being protected.

Today we drove 68 miles south, southeast to get to the “coast” at Cocodrie. As you can see from the map, the ratio of water to land just gets greater and greater.

There wasn’t really a coast, just waterways winding through marshes.

There was a nice restaurant, the CoCo Marina, where they let us sit in a corner with Matey. Matey was supposed to be outside on the deck, but since no one else was eating in this back room they let him be in with us.

Of course we had seafood. I had Mahi Mahi tacos and Bud had an oyster Po’ Boy. Very good.

Dry land is such a premium down here that this old cemetery was located on an Indian mound. Even so, the crypts are above ground.

Even much further inland long stretches of US route 90 are causeways…

through the swamp.

It was a pretty and interesting drive. This is my attempt to capture an egret rookery as we drove past at 70 mph.

There were thousands of boats, from fishing and shrimp boats on the smaller bayous,

to barges and bigger transport ships on the larger bayous. It was an enjoyable day of touring, but we definitely saw more water than land.

We are at another city campground, this one southwest of New Orleans. There are several camping areas in this park.

We are at a newer area, with only baby trees.

But we do have an unobstructed view of the lake (Lake Palourde) and we have good TV reception.

This is a very lovely park.

They have a nice picnic area,

a pretty little beach,

and a walking trail that goes all around it.

There are lots of squirrels here. These reddish brown ones seem quite tame.

There are also black ones that are a bit more skittish.

This seems like a good base to explore the delta area of Louisiana. TV for Bud, walking and good cell and internet for me, and squirrels for Matey.

We have left the quiet of Citronelle behind and are now camped in Louisiana in the very busy Fontainebleau State Park.

This is a popular family park only about an hour across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. As this is the weekend the park is pretty full.

Fontainebleau was once the plantation and sugar mill of Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville, who founded the city of Mandeville and purchased the land and set up the sugar mill using money he made from selling land he inherited in New Orleans. Today these ruins are all that’s left of the sugar mill and plantation…

along with these live oaks which sheltered the cabins where almost 100 enslaved people lived. The plantation operated from around 1828 until 1852.

There’s a nice nature trail here.

This part of the trail is a raised road constructed by the CCC. In our travels I have been impressed by all the wonderful public places we have because of the CCC and the WPA. It would be good if we could find a way to have programs like these again.

The park is on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. This 630 square mile body of water isn’t actually a lake, it’s an estuary joining the Gulf of Mexico. The park is just east of the causeway that crosses the lake to New Orleans. At 23 miles long, the causeway is the longest bridge that continuously crosses water.

There’s a nice beach…

and some lovely pavilions.

In 2021 Hurricane Ida hit here. The bathhouse is still being repaired.

The boardwalk through the marsh was destroyed.

Many of the trees were stripped of their small branches.

But nature recovers…

and Fontainebleau State Park remains a lovely place.

We are now at Citronelle Lakeview RV Park just outside of Citronelle, Alabama. This place has everything I look for in camping. It has level, concrete sites with full hook-ups and a reasonable amount of space between sites.

It is right on a beautiful little lake.

The entrance road goes all the way around the lake, so the park is isolated and quiet.

There is a disc golf course right next to the campground.

We’ve played there every day, and we’ve pretty much had the place to ourselves. It’s a nice course, too.

The park complex also includes a golf course. We played there yesterday. It was pretty and interesting, though not in the best shape.

Well it is February and it was cheap, so no complaints. We had fun.

This all belongs to the city of Citronelle and camping was only $125 a week. So we are here a week (leaving tomorrow) and it would be perfect except…there is very spotty cell service and no internet. Which I found is really important. Oh well, the rest has been great. By the way, I am in town doing wash as I post this, and the internet is very slow even here.

This is a very different state park from any we’ve been in. It has 496 campsites all with electric, water, and sewer. It has 8 tent sites.

You can stay here for the season (if you apply the November of the previous year and are lucky enough to get a spot). Some sites are short term only. Our neighbors wanted to stay 6 weeks and ended up with three different campsites, each for two weeks. I waited until October 26 to reserve a site and could only get two nights.

With so many campsites it does somewhat resemble a village.

However, it has 6,000 acres and over 28 miles of trails. It also has two miles of beach, right on the Gulf of Mexico, two restaurants, a lodge, cabins, nature center, pickle ball courts and more. No wonder it’s so popular.

I prefer the foot trails,

but most of the trails are gravel, paved,

or wide boardwalks suitable for biking. Biking is very popular here, there even seems to be a bike club! I’ve seen several signs in front of campers that say “Folks on Spokes, Gulf Shores, Alabama”. It would be a nice place to spend some time, but we’ll enjoy our two nights.

Yesterday we moved west to Big Lagoon State Park tucked in on the north shore of the Intracoastal Waterway just southwest of Pensacola. We have a nice spot with internet and TV. This was a substitute for Falling Waters State Park where I had a reservation. They are rebuilding a road and closed the campground.

I was glad to find another state park and happy to find a nice, though sandy, trail.

Of course Matey and I went exploring. We followed this boardwalk…

and found the sandy trail and Long Pond.

We did not find Big Lagoon because the boardwalk was blocked on the south shore of Long Pond. The entire southern half of the park is still closed due to damage from Hurricane Sally, a category 2 storm that made landfall a few miles west of here in September of 2020. We are only staying two nights so we have enough to explore, but it’s too bad the rest of the park is still closed.

After staying five nights at the Buffer Preserve, we moved the trailer about 10 miles to Aqua Bay RV Park in Highland View, which is on the northwest edge of Port St Joe.

We’ve been here for a week. Matey likes the little beach just across Route 98, two blocks from the camper.

I’ve enjoyed revisiting my old haunts, like this park just bayside of downtown. That’s the lighthouse that was moved from Cape San Blas, along with two keepers houses.

It’s nice to see the marina finally rebuilt after Hurricane Michael (October 10, 2018). They seem to be just finishing the docks, now.

Bud has golfed twice with the old group, I went to a garden club meeting, saw my old pals from Master Gardeners, and we had some of our old neighbors over. It’s been fun. Today I walked the walking trail behind our old house. It’s the grey one you can see past the trees.

It was a cold and blustery day,

but Matey and I enjoyed walking the familiar, but still lovely trail.

We visited our favorite beaches; the beach at Salinas Park,

the Stump Hole (which used to be where the lighthouse sat until it eroded away),

and Windmark Beach.

I stopped to say goodbye to Zana, at Bow Wow Beach, our old pet supply store. She told me that despite what Matey’s trainer told me, dogs, especially small dogs, shouldn’t really have leashes attached to collars because even gentle tugs can eventually scar their tracheas. I was dismayed and said I would go and search out Matey’s old halter, but instead she decided to give Matey a gift and we walked out with Matey wearing this lovely blue halter.

I don’t want to live in a house, and I don’t want to live in Florida anymore; but if I did, I would have to come back to Port St Joe.

Back when we lived in Port St Joe I was working on setting up an Herbarium at the St Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve. I did this as a project with the Master Gardeners of Gulf County. When I told Dylan, the manager, that we were leaving he told me if we ever came back by we should let him know, as they had an extra site for volunteers and we were welcome to use it.

Well, we’re back at Port St Joe. And Dylan still had the extra space.

So we are here in the third volunteer space.

The Buffer Preserve Center is a nice building. It used to be a hunting lodge for the private hunting preserve owned by the St Joe Company. It was given to the state as part of a deal where the state moved highway 98 inland so the St Joe Company could build Windmark Beach Development between the highway and the beach. The company also built public beach accesses at either end of that property and turned the old road into a walking/bike path. The land in the Buffer Preserve is being managed by the state to restore the native habitat and help protect the water in St Joseph Bay.

It is certainly a nice place for us to be. This is our back yard.

And this is the view from the window over our sink. The window blind is blocking the edge of the bay,

but the bay is right there.

Our last stop before a stay at Port St Joe is Ochlockonee (o-KLOK-nee) River State Park. We had stopped in here before on our way home to Port St Joe from Tallahassee when we had a Florida Parks pass and I didn’t expect much except a place to spend the night.

I was pleasantly surprised. It is lovely and very peaceful here. When I walked Matey in the morning it was so quiet that the sound of a little bird’s wings was startling.

There are several trails here and they are very well groomed.

As a bonus, they have white squirrels. These are not albinos (notice the dark eye) but a genetic variant that live in this area.

They also have one white deer. She really stands out. There are three deer in this photo, but you only notice her.

We saw her in the distance while driving on the “scenic drive”. We stopped in the road and she obliged by crossing not far in front of us. She’s obviously used to cars and people.

It would be restful to stay here longer, but today it’s on to Port St Joe.