Civilization on the Other Side of Texas

 Couldn't get out of Texas without one, or two  more delays. Before we made it near Houston, a slight hiccup was before us, in the form of an 18-wheeler hauling lettuce... the problem was that it was on its side being unloaded on the highway. What a start.

Let's get going. We got around Houston, with all its freeway construction... only to get to the escape route, and had to come to a complete halt. We never saw what the mess was that held us up for nearly half an hour. 

....

We found another world on the other side of Texas, its called Louisiana. We landed in Lake Charles/Iowa (pronounced I-O-Way) KOA.

We found out that hurricane Laura, which hit last year, took a toll on the area, closing a lot of places. 

This is the entrance to Sam Houston Jones State Park. The wind blew, the flooding came... and they started fires to remove some of the debris, but it got out of control and burned a little bit more than they wanted burned.

Plan "B": take a walk on a nature boardwalk... WRONG.

Plan C: take a drive. That was achieved. We climbed in the truck and went for it. It was definitely an eye opener seeing the aftermath of hurricane Laura. Lake Charles looked like it took the brunt of the storm.

The above were just a few examples of the damage done downtown. Notice the helicopter tail section laying on the ground. The boardwalk was not build on uneven ground, it was washed off its pilings, and partially washed away. The interesting design on the skyscraper wasn't by design, it was by "Laura". The tan windows are plywood.

Now... let's look at the nicer side of town. There were a bunch of beautiful buildings in the downtown historic district.

Two sides of the old City Hall

Public school when boys and girls had separate entrances.

A church and its associated school, all red brick.

Let's return to the park. The park is a memorial to all our military veterans, past and present.

We created our own tour of the historic district, there were a lot of beautiful Victorian houses, some in good shape, some not so good. Home we went for lunch.

The next day we took a long drive (.9 miles) from the RV park to visit Louisiana Spirits rum distillery. 

COVIDS limited the tour of the plant... but it did happen. 

Imagine cleaning the copper pot stills after each use.

The process starts in tanks that blend molasses, cane sugar and water, then moves to the copper pot stills. After the fermentation process is completed the rum is moved to barrels for aging, or large vats for flavor mixing.

When the rum is aged in the barrels (bourbon barrels), they move the rum from top barrels down. Once a bottom barrel is half empty they pull some from the next shelf up, after that shelf has been syphoned down, they fill them with the next shelf up... until the only barrels temporarily half full are the top shelf barrels. They have over 3200 barrels to work with.

This is where it all comes together... sampling their wares.

The start/end is the store... and yes, we did walk out with several varieties of rum, no rum cakes though. You get a little more info at: https://bayourum.com/distillery/.

We took a drive to Jennings to handle alligators. Have no fear we're not talking anything over 12 feet.

Gator Chateau is a place where alligators are brought when they are captured in places they shouldn't be. In the little pond (top photo), the alligators range from two feet to about four feet. Once they get to about five feet, the Chateau will release them back into the wild, usually in the location where they were first captured.

The ones Carol and I handled were small and young, and used to being handled by humans. Once they get large enough they go into the pond, where they no longer associate with humans. After a few weeks the alligators don't remember humans, and now look at us as food, should we go into the water. Additional information available at: https://jeffdavis.org/gator-chateau/.

It isn't an all day tour at the Chateau, so after we played with the baby alligators, we took a walk around the lake in front, then to the truck for a drive to Lake Arthur. 

Lake Arthur had its own troubles with weather from hurricane Dell as well. The damage is definitely still there. 

If you look close at the bottom picture you will notice a semi-trailer between the trees.

It does make Carol and I grateful for the way God has protected us in our journeys. Most of the bad weather we have had has been either been behind, or in front of us... it does make it tough to keep truck and trailer clean.

Here are a couple of happy pictures on our drive to Lake Arthur.

These were two of the pelicans we saw... earlier there was a group of five or six the first time we drove by.

The vehicle is not beached due to a storm, it is a marsh runner. This is one version of marsh runners. The way they move across the marshes and fields is via tracks, like tank tracks. 

After having lunch in Lake Arthur, we drove back home.

Scenes of just relaxing in the evening.

We took a walk around the area outside of the RV campground and found some interesting discoveries.

Can you guess what these are? If your from the South it should be a piece of cake. These are crawfish mounds. These little devils build tunneling systems. You can go online to learn more.

This is the official plant of Louisiana. Californians would call this a weed out of control... the rest of the world calls them Thistle. They are everywhere around here, in all sizes.

We are done here in Lake Charles/Iowa, preparing to move on.