Today, Tuesday the 25th April started out with the coolness this year has brought. We went for a walk and within the hour, sun appeared and the temps went from cool to warm immediately. Which made it a great day to tour a cypress swamp on Lake Martin, about a 10 minute drive away. The “lake” is generally 3 feet deep and aobut 7 feet at it’s deepest and is loaded with alligators. Also snapping turtles on the muddy lake bed, so no swimming or paddle boarding. Lots of kayaks out and quite a few fishermen in aluminum boats.
We were 19, including our guide Brett, a couple from Holland (who had shipped their motor home to Baltimore and were on a 6 month tour), 2 young women and a young man (late 20s?) from France, and a local family (men, women, children).
These trees, when not growing in water, grow to be 200 years old and about 120-160 feet high. Growing in water, they will always be this size as they were planted here prior to the area being flooded. It’s green in Louisiana that even the water is green!
There are quite a few of these dotting the lake. At some point it was determined that no more could be built. So even though they are privately owned, the first person to arrive at any duck blind has the use of it for the day. Hunting season is November through January.
Fortunaely for the gators, lots of logs float in the lake. Gators need to sun themselves until their body temperature reaches 76 F in order to be able to digest food. Another intersting fact: measure snout to eyes; the number of inches equals their length which in turn tells you the age. Oh, only the males get longer than 8 feet.
We also saw ahingas also known as snake birds ( and one of the few birds with solid bones), great blue herons, a bald eagle, osprey and at one point went by a cloud of baby dragonflies. I did not get photos of any of them. Oh, we were also accompanied by a slew of butterflies that kept landing on us.
It was peaceful. If I lived here, I would certainly be on this body of water tooling around. But not on my paddle board!
Shared Illusions 