Photo-ception
Photo of Sean, taking a photo of Kevin, taking a photo of Angie at the Woodlands Plantation.
Crawfish!!!
At first, I was kind of scared to try crawfish; they are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They turned out to be delicious! The kind people at Woodland plantation served us some awesome food. (We got to see their gators too!)
Taking on a different trail
We started the day bright and early with a trip across the Mississippi River to cut across traffic.
Good morning from Louisiana!
Instead of going to our usual site on trail B, my group got drafted to do a set of 3 new transects down trail A. We had 4.5 hours to complete this task, and amazingly we did it! All with 20 minutes to spare. I think the lack of humidity and lower temperatures really helped with our energy levels. None of us felt tired throughout transecting, despite hacking through meters of black berry.
Sideways again. Curse you WordPress!
We were all feeling rejuvenated on our way over to the bed and breakfast! We even were able to take a few low key roadkill surveys for Sean along the way. Once we got to Plaquemines Parish, we sadly found out that the boat we were going to ride was broken. Hopefully they get it fixed in the morning!
Currently we are all staying here on this bed and breakfast plantation. This place is straight on the label of Southern Comfort! It’s lovely here but also eerie. They’ve provided us with a delicious crawfish boil and some jambalaya! Even more, we got to witness some gators in action.
Property gators!
Just feeding the neighbors, no biggie
This plantation look familiar?
Delicious crawfish. Smelled very swampy, but tasted subtle and buttery.
We are all currently entering data in the spirits church area. It will most likely be a long night…
Day 6 – a night out
The morning was a little crazy but good. We had to pack up a different set of clothes because we are staying out at a place called Woodland Plantation, which is a bed and breakfast. Before we headed out for our h new place we did some veg work. We had 5 hours to do 3 transects and we all rose to the occasion!! Which made Sean happy and everyone very happy. The group was supposed to get a boat tour of the restoration project going on in the marshes that are close by but the boat wasn’t working so we got a mini tour of the pump system that takes the silt out of the Mississippi River and into the marsh. We spent the rest of the day walking around the plantation looking at it all and learning about the system. We also got see some alligators get some food ( they got steak and fish!). It was really cool, these reptiles are amazing. For our dinner we had a salad, garlic bread, jambalaya. The main course was Craw fish boil. It was really good, not a lot of meat on a craw fish but it was really good. Now we are enjoying a quiet night inputting our data.
Me next to a giant cypress tree
Me next to an alligator
Everyone enjoying an afternoon in front of the main house of the old plantation
Me about to eat a craw fish
Me eating craw fish
A great sunset in Louisiana
Crawfish boil at Woodland Plantation
Love me some crawfish and corn. It’s the only way to eat crawfish. A crawfish boil is used as a way to socialize, because eating crawfish is very time consuming. This time gives people the chance to really sit down and not rush through their meal.
Gators galore!
Spirit Hall was once a church and is now ironically a bar and a restaurant at Woodland Plantation. Foster saved this church from being demolished and restored it. He had to cut the church in half in order to transport it over to his plantation. It is a beautiful place with blue and yellow stained glass windows, hard wood floors and many historical stories from newspapers on the walls. This place is now used for socializing. We met the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana Billy Nungesser. He told us the story of how he pardoned a crawfish after Mardi Gras!!!
New Orleans Historic Collection
The New Orleans Historical Collection has items from New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Gulf South. There are items that include, diaries, journals, paintings, furniture, etc. Many of these items are located in the history galleries and there are changing of exhibits. The New Orleans Historical Collection is also a research center/publisher. In the research center, you can go look at any item in the collection which isn’t on display. There is also an online catalog to look at Historical items. The items in the collection were sorted by time frame, making it easier to understand the history throughout time.
At the Collection we saw the film “Surrounded by Water” that described the history of New Orleans and it’s connection between the Old World and the New World. The Mississippi River that extends far between states is a system that continually deposits sediment along its route. This sediment builds the land that places like New Orleans are founded on. The Indians that first arrived to what would become New Orleans picked the place to settle that was above sea level and wouldn’t flood normally. This eventually became the French Quarter.
From the woodlands to the city
Like most days, today was all over the place! We started off in the field first thing in the morning. Most teams finished up yesterday’s transects, and by 12:00 pm we all decided to join forces and power through a full 100 meters. We called ourselves Hayden and the machete girls. We had two ladies carving the path of blackberry and box elder, and groups of three recording the first, second, third, and fourth 20 meters. It was a hard trail, but we finished just in time!
If you turn your head, here’s a field selfie!
By 1:30pm we were in the French quarter, ready to meet Daphne at the historical New Orleans museum. We watched a 30 minute documentary on the geomorphology of NOLA pre-hurricane. Because we were crunched for time, we only had around 20 minutes to explore the museums historical exhibits.
Check out this dude. Sleepy in the 1700s
Afterwards we were joined by Harry Schearer who discussed the politics of the levee failures in depth. He had a very smooth voice!
it was interesting to hear about not only the structural failures but also the socio-political ones as well. We had one more talk after Harry, with Mark S. (Full name in another post.. Too long to remember right now!) of NOLA.com. He talked to us about history of his newspaper business, as well as all of the failures of the Louisiana Storm Protection Master Plan. All the details are listed in Katie and I’s other post!
We got to listen to Mark in fancy business chairs!
We finished off our night at the Waffle House after a failed dinner attempt at Chickie Wah Wah. It had to be the best decision we’ve made so far. Our waitress was named Keedy and she was the sweetest. They were all so sweet! And the food was amazing. Good night y’all!
