Louisiana is Beautiful!! It is a unique area and like nothing we had seen before. So enjoy checking out the amazing and yet interesting place our Grandparents are serving a mission.
This was the view as we crossed the border from Texas. It was so green!! After the Texas drought this was just a wonderful sight.
So if you know what any of these are then you are better than us. Well I know what a liver and gizzards are but they are not normally sold at gas stations where I come from!
We got these pictures of Monarch Butterflies in the garden that Grandma and Grandpa had planted, in the middle of November!
On Thanksgiving Day, one of the prominent families in the town let us visit the nature trail their mother had created on their property. It was so nice to be outside and it was a very worthwhile walk.
One of the members of the Branch there, owns this property. It is full of orange trees and kumquats. We were able to paddle boat in their pond.
This is a Crawdad hole. They were all over in the middle of the lawn. I did not realize they could just invade your yard! Very cool looking holes though.
The oranges were so good and we ate a ton. Wouldn't you love a beautiful yard like this in November?
This is what the ditches look like. We had to take a picture of Lily pads growing in the ditch. Never had that in South Dakota!
The view as we headed out to the backwoods of Louisiana. And it really is the backwoods.
A very unique home with a kitchen on the porch
Clark's Landing is a beautiful Bayou. It would have been something to get in a boat and travel through those trees. Some strangers did offer us their boat but we had a busy day planned.
If you look carefully at the house on the left it is crooked. I don't think we saw anything that was actually straight in Oakdale. Poles, homes, signs were all leaning.
On the left is a hunting encampment. It was opening weekend for duck hunting and squirrel season was also in full force. Apparently squirrel is really good. Who knew!
The people are so kind in Louisiana and are literally often found sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. It is a very laid back life style which has it's pluses and minuses. They are kind and readily available to chat but there is a lot of poverty and garbage. Many people we visited are on government assistance and live in not so fabulous homes. I would describe it as the perfect combination of laid back, small town South Dakota with the filth and poverty of Philadelphia.
We had to take a picture of this. It pretty much sums up the area we visited!
The local grocery store. Not much of a selection and we were met by a man sitting in a rocking chair just hanging out in the store. For a moment we stepped back in time!
There is an armadillo hiding back in there. It as our first sighting of a real one.
Caleb is looking at a tiny toad Brydon caught.
Grandpa took us to visit Chicot State Park. The Bayou was gorgeous and all the foliage and animals were fun to see. We have missed the outdoors. Abilene does not have places we can go hiking like this.
This armadillo was busy digging through the leaves and we got to sit and watch him. Then Brydon decided to try to catch him and did get a good hold of his tail but couldn't pick him up. The boys had a lot of fun with this guy.
On the way home we stopped in Natchitoches, LA (pronounced Nack-A-Dish....yeah who would have guessed that!) and got to visit this cool house from one of our favorite movies. Steel Magnolias is so funny and Brydon loves to quote it. His favorite quote is "That man is a boil on the butt of humanity!"
So there is a little glimpse of Louisiana! And we got to check off another state and a few more miles off this year. It was a worthwhile trip!
