After Holly Beach, LA 27 heads east along the coastline and, just before reaching Cameron, there’s a free ferry which crosses the outlet of Calcasieu Lake (Remember, that’s “Calca-shoo”!). The ferry was named “Cameron No. II”, and carried the Louisiana Dept. of Transportation’s motto “Louisiana On The Move”. That struck me as pleasantly reassuring, given the wreckage from Hurricane Ike we’ve been seeing!! Makeshift repairs to buildings, blue tarps, snack shops operating out of RV’s. A lot of RV’s were moved down here to live in while debris was being removed and current efforts are made to rebuild. New construction is now all up on stilts, including mobile homes! Some homes are being built up on berms or raised mounds. Many new churches are being built. Humor still survives, as shown by the “Hurricane Cafe” we saw in town! However, don’t trust any area where the trees lean inland!
The Trail continues north from Cameron on LA 27 through the village of Creole to the Cameron Prairie Refuge. We arrived just as the Refuge’s Visitor Center was closing for the day. We were still able to see Red Eared Slider turtles floating or sunning on a rock in the pond in front of the Center building. Look at this guy’s pretty red streaks behind his eyes!
Within the Refuge, we drove the 3-mile Pintail Drive. This was really fun for us! Lots of wildlife sightings! (OK, you non-birders can just move on to the next posting! All birders can appreciate the following list.) We saw Glossy Ibises, Black-necked Stilts, Egrets, Common Moorhens, White-face ibis, Tri-color Heron, Little Blue heron, Anhingas, Grackles, and –- drum roll, please –- Roseate Spoonbills! (Tried for a close-up picture of the latter but wasn’t successful. They are so stunning!) We also spotted 2 small alligators: one in the roadside slough and one lurking in a culvert beside the road. (See pictures below)
Doesn’t look like much, right? Look closer at the opening of the culvert…look for his eyes and forehead. You may need to increase the magnification just a bit. (MS Vista users: look in the lower right of your task bar. You’ll see 100%; click on the "Plus" sign just before it. This will increase your image size. The "Minus" sign decreases the image size. Cool, huh? Windows XP users: I dunno what to tell you!)
And a few birds…Black-necked Stilt, Glossy Ibis, Great Egret.
If you squint while looking at the shot below, you can just make out the Roseate Spoonbill in the center, surrounded by various kinds of egrets! (OK, it’s a lousy shot!)
We covered a lot of country today. Thanks for following us so far! We drove north back up toward Lake Charles and saw a mini-storage business named “Cajun Storage”. Do you suppose this was a place to store Cajuns????????????
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