Friday, March 11, 2011

Spring Break in Louisiana (March 6th-7th)

We left on Sunday after sacrament meeting and drove all day to Louisiana. We made one stop at the Sam Houston memorial. The rosebud trees were in bloom and it was gorgeous.



We made it to our campsite at Lake Fausse Pointe State Park after dark. We car camped that night and woke up to discover that this state park lived up to all of its positive reviews. It is amazing!! It has a splash park, a playground, cabins, fishing, and tons of place to hike, bike, and canoe. We hiked around and then went canoeing on the lake. We definitely would love to come back to Lake Fausse and spend a whole week. It is my kind of camping.




Our next stop was Lake Martin. We walked along the shore and spotted a lot of turtles and alligators. At one point, we counted around 24 to 30 baby alligators grouped together sunning themselves. We then took a boat tour and saw a lot of other wildlife and got real close to some big gators. It was a cold day, so we didn't see as many as we would have liked. We only got to see three really big gators. We did see tons of birds and a nutria. (A nutria is a swamp rat from South America that was farmed for its fur in Louisiana and then escaped into the wild.)









We then drove into Layfette and got a pizza and watched the Layfette Mardi Gras parade. It was really fun and completely family friendly. It didn't get going until after Nicholas' bedtime, so he spent most of the parade snuggled up with Mom and getting really annoyed when Mom didn't move fast enough and beads hit him in the head. He did enjoy all the trinkets we collected. He especially loved the giant coins. They are his "moneys."



2 comments:

Meece said...

What a fun trip, Maren! Wow, you guys really know how to plan 'em. We'd love to go camping with you, btw. That first place you went to looked awesome! Glad you had a good trip!

Net said...

oh my goodness, I can't believe you got so close to those gators! ack! I would have been terrified! but cool pic! and looks like a way fun trip.