Creole Nature Trail tour through the wetlands!

Smiling alligator

On Thursday, we went back to the visitor center to make use of their new free GPS video tour of the Creole Nature Trail, a 180-mile trip through southwestern Louisiana's wetlands.

We began the trip in Sulfur, a city whose sulfur mines were discovered in 1867 while a geologist was surveying for oil in the area. The sulfur, although extremely lucrative, proved deadly with the crude methods several miners used to extract it from deep underground. In 1890, German chemist Dr. Herman Frasch patented a method to mine the sulfur that ultimately proved successful in December 1894, which resulted in tremendous growth to the town over the next few decades.

Pensive alligator

The trail next took us south towards a tiny little town named Hackberry, and the Calcasieu Lake (pronounced KAL-ca-shoo). We stopped for lunch at Brown's grocery store and had Boudin balls and Andouille sausage po-boys. Yum!

Posing turtle

As we drove farther south through the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, we saw hundreds of different types of birds, like cormorants, egrets, ducks, and lots of others. We also caught sight of many little crabs scurrying across the road in front of us, claws raised, challenging us to a duel. So silly.

The wetlands are a vast expanse of treeless land with native grasses and pools of water supporting the wildlife that live here. The grasses are so varied that they lend the landscape a patchwork quilt effect of greens and blacks and tans, with pools of water here and there and streams running throughout.

Ken at Holly Beach

We continued south all the way to Holly Beach on the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. Holly Beach is a little community, among several nearby, that was virtually wiped off the map first in 1957 during Hurricane Audrey and then again during Hurricane Rita in 2005. The townspeople have begun to rebuild some of the houses, but much of the devastation is still evident with only the footers of a building remaining or a portion of a sign. The beach itself is a wide, white sandy beach with a spectacular view of the Gulf. We stopped to pick up some shells and dip our toes in the water before continuing our journey.

Much of the industry in this area is focused on oil or natural gas, and we could see several oil rigs out in the Gulf. Next we crossed the Calcasieu Ship Channel on a small ferry and headed farther east toward Oak Grove. As we turned north to head back to Lake Charles, the alligators we saw were, sadly, ones that had been hit by cars. We managed to see only one live alligator lurking in a shallow bit of water along the roadside. We drove on and on looking for more live alligators so we could take a picture, but they all hid from us.

Lake Charles

Once we returned the GPS unit to the visitor center in Lake Charles, we stopped by the Cypress Pond, an impressively named little man-made spot next to the visitor center to show off alligators and turtles. The four resident alligators, now completely accustomed to human visitors, did NOT dart off when we approached, and even posed for pictures! We walked along the boardwalk to the beach where folks and their dogs were enjoying the sun. Beautiful day!

Lake Charles

Afterwards, we returned to our favorite (thus far) restaurant, Steamboat Bill's, to stock up on more tasty Creole food.  This time we were determined to try the crawfish pistolettes, shrimp gumbo, and crawfish etouffee. The etouffee was spectacular. The crawfish pistolettes were just as good as their shrimp counterparts of the previous night, though our tastebuds preferred the shrimp version. We also tasted the shrimp gumbo, but found that we enjoyed the other stuff quite a bit more, although Ken believes this to be the best variation of gumbo we have so far sampled. We topped off the meal with a delicious piece of cheesecake (and, of course, another pecan praline), both of which we ate the next day, since we were stuffed from dinner. Extra yum!