Mammoth in the Swamp, Day 3

 Thursday

The thought having occurred to me that we were only 30-minutes away from the Cajun restaurants in Shreveport, it acted upon my mind until it loosened my tongue. Next thing you know we were choosing a venue and planning our day.

But the day started out with rain, a lot of it. Or it might have started the day before, I don't remember exactly. When it began to slack off shortly after breakfast, our tentative notion to do some more kayaking was slacking off as well. So we went for a drive to check out the "Starr Ranch" boat ramp. We took the kayak, but unfortunately we took Molly as well. By the time we got there it was turning into a nice day and the ramp, with a special put-in place for kayaks and canoes, was nice.

 

But driving back to deposit Molly seemed pointless, so we just nosed around on the bank and then went on to look at a historic bridge up-lake.

Which was kind of a waste of time that could have been better spent bird-watching. I've never seen such a plethora of birds, especially warblers. I can't put any of these down on my life list, but I heard and saw signs of all of these:
(Excuse me if this repeats earlier reports)
Northern Parula Warbler; black-and-white warbler; Acadian Flycatcher, yellow-breasted chat.
I actually saw or heard/verified: red-eyed vireo, Carolina wren, Summer Tanager, Prothonotary Warbler, wood thrush, white-eyed vireo, plus the prior mentioned birds--Mississippi Kite,  American Crow, Fish Crow, Pileated Woodpecker, Chickadees, titmice, bluejays, Cardinals,
White-breasted nuthatch

With my legs oddly sore from all the stairs Molly and I climbed the day before--yes, stairs on the trails. Apparently the CCC just loved to build stairs through the woods--we set out to walk some more. We got in almost an hour before suppers and almost an hour after. With bird-watching stops, of course.

For supper we went to Crawdaddy's. Very good etauffee and Ed enjoyed his fried crawfish/etauffee combo. Out of sheer stupidity, I ordered a side salad to accompany my grilled fish with crawfish etauffee topping. The menu listed it as "artisan" lettuce or something which made me think it would be mesclun--ha! It was a few pieces of iceberg lettuce with a boiled egg and a handful of cherry tomatoes out of a box from the supermarket. What a waste; never again. I could have had the boudin balls, or the crawfish cornbread!!!  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But the food was pretty good, just not spicy enough. And seemed to have a little too much flour in the roux or maybe that was too much file powder.  It had a dry-ish aftertaste like I've had in my gumbo if I use too much file powder. Nowadays I tend to leave it out altogether--it has no taste and is simply a thickening, like corn starch.

Friday and return.

For a drive which should have been under three hours, I sure made a mess of it. First of all I eschewed the shorter route--we've taken that before and it involves a lot of little two-lane roads through the woods with farm trucks, logging trucks, and slow country people going to the wally mart. The route I chose--TX-43 to Atlanta, TX-77 over to where it intersected with 259, 259 north to the interstate--would have been fine except I made one last-minute course correction that didn't waste any time but was pointless. And then google confused me and I got us going the wrong way on the Interstate.

However annoying, my little goofs were nothing compared to the huge back-up on the Interstate due to a road-construction single lane closure. I never saw the like for such a trivial thing. Sure, the closure went on for a couple of miles, but still!  It wasn't even all that narrow.

but we got home by 2:30 or so, not bad. Can't wait until next trip! Bad Lands!!!