Around Louisiana- Saturday, July 09, 2011

If you’re in Nova Scotia, you should go on a whale watching tour, but if you’re in Louisiana, you should definitely go on an alligator watching tour. We were shown around the bayous of the Manchac Swamp by Captain Tom Billiot of the Cajun Pride tour company. It was an amazing trip, made even better by Captain Tom’s personal stories. He is a native French speaker who has lived in the Louisiana swamps all of his life. His Cajun accent is endearing and his personal stories seem endless. He says he has guided more than 10,000 tours and could do a two hour tour on any subject in the swamps, including leeches. We have no doubt that he could.

We started seeing alligators before the tour even began. Two were swimming near the banks where we were about the board the boats. Capt. Tom seems to know many of them personally, and told us how the one nearest to us had lost sight in his left eye after territorial fights with other gators this spring. On other days, that one has come up on the banks by the ticket office, and Capt. Tom has had to get it back into the water before tourists mistook it for one of the big plastic ones. We were also amazed by the huge black grasshoppers that seemed to be everywhere.

After the boat was launched, we made our way through the bayou. Capt. Tom would periodically throw marshmallows out to the alligators and some of the other animals as well. We saw at least two families of raccoons along the shore, and Capt. Tom threw marshmallows to them too. Twice he stopped the boat and got young alligators to come up after bits of chicken that he held out on a stick. We saw a family of herons, who had chicks that had recently hatched. There were dragonflies and Spanish moss, and everything you’d want in a swamp tour. Towards the end of the tour, Capt. Tom opened the crates that had been next to Julie the entire time. From the first one, he pulled a small baby alligator. Since his mouth was taped shut, the baby gator was passed around and all three girls got a chance to hold him. Then, Captain Tom took out a good sized alligator snapping turtle. She was too dangerous to pass around, but he did bring her around for everyone to see. She had her mouth wide open the entire time and you could see the little “worm” that the snapper uses to entice little fish in. We all agreed it was a fantastic tour, and the best morning we’ve had on the trip so far. Anna bought an alligator tooth and Dad bought some alligator meat in the form of a Slim Jim-like stick.

After lunch, we went to the other side of New Orleans to the Chalmette National Battlefield Park. This park is the location of the famous Battle of New Orleans, won by Andrew Jackson at the end of the War of 1812. The Bobby Horton song exaggerates the situation a little bit. The British were not cowards and did not “run through the briars where a rabbit couldn’t go” to get away. However, it was an enormously lopsided battle. The British had around 2,000 casualties at the end of the fighting, while the Americans had lost only 20. It is the battle that made Jackson a hero and that would give Americans the idea that they had won the war.

Of course we started at the visitor’s center, and this one is brand new. It still has the new visitor’s center smell. It officially opened this year on January 8th, the anniversary of the battle. The old one was destroyed by Katrina. (In fact there were many parts of the neighborhoods we drove through today that have not recovered and houses are standing empty.) We watched the short programs and electric map, and looked in the circle of exhibits. Then Scott (and sometimes Julie) went out on the battlefield. Anna and Emma had probably had enough of battlefields over the last few days, and it was also very hot- in the 90s- so they chose to stay in the air conditioned car and play with their DS games.

In fact, there’s not a lot to the battlefield. War of 1812 battles are on a much smaller scale than Civil War battles. You can see the American line behind the works that were thrown up by Jackson’s men. In front of that is a wide open field, which the British tried to cross. The Mississippi River is not visible from the battlefield level anymore, but the nearby Chalmette oil refinery is. There is a plantation-style home that has a romantic looking façade, but it’s quite small, with only three rooms per floor, and it is a post-war addition to the battle field. Besides the cannon along the American lines, the most iconic thing on this battlefield is the 100 foot obelisk-shaped monument. Scott made Emma and Anna get out of the car when he took pictures there.

It’s “Louisiana Saturday Night,” but we were done and went back to the hotel where the girls swam again in the bath-temperature pool.