Clark Creek & Port Hudson

A few weeks ago, my little ones stayed at a friends house for some swimming fun. Therefore, DH and I (along with DQ and The Teen) decided to get out and enjoy some nature like we used to do a long time ago. We chose to visit the Clark Creek area just over the Louisiana/Mississippi border northeast of St. Francisville. This is a beautiful little area that I advise you hike in when the weather gets a little cooler.

It's more than 2000 acres of natural beauty that boasts nearly 40 waterfalls that range from 10 feet to 25 feet in height! If you stay on the established trails you'll only get to see 6 - 8 of these waterfalls. All along the trails you will see a mixed hardwood and pine forest with beech and magnolia trees throughout. As you stroll, hike, or huff/puff along you might also see birds, snakes (some poisonous!), a snail or two, and maybe, just MAYBE a black bear since this area provide excellent habitat for it.

If you plan to hike this area, go at your own risk. It's a pretty strenuous workout. It's also located in a remote area so any medical assistance is quite a distance away. However, across the street from the parking lot there is a home on a bluff where a man has a 6 wheel ATV for emergency recoveries.

There is no drinking or potable water avialable at Clark Creek so be sure to pack a cooler full of iced water. Take a few bottles down into the trail with you.

As you approach the parking area you will prob'ly see the greeting crew as shown in the photo below.

Stop in the pond store to pick up a trail map. Be sure to take a peek at the original cash register that the store aquire in 1903. The owner has the original box it was delivered in sitting up on a top shelf behind her. Ask her to point it out to you. Also, peek at the doll house in the store.

Once you get on the trail, there is a bluff where most vistors carve their names as my hubby is doing here.

Here is the first waterfall of the Clark Creek area. Isn't it pretty?
DQ and The Teen slowly approach an ambush! DH is such a kid!

They have no idea what they're about to walk into.

The 2nd waterfall. You can actually hike right down the stream from waterfall #1 to this one. Just don't go OVER it!

Time for the long climb out of here!

And the MANY stairs!

On the way back out past the old store, you will see these 2 little cabins on your right. They can be rented on a nightly basis. For more info, talk to the lady in the store.

Leaving the Clark Creek area and heading south we found a historical marker in front of someone's house. Seems that Oliver Pollock was an Irish merchant in Spanish N.O. he also served in that city as a Commercial Agent for the Continental Congress & helped finance the American Revolution with his fortune. He died at Pinckneyville, MS in 1832 and is buried here.

Continuing our southerly trek, we decided to stop at Port Hudson for a visit and lunch. The Teen looks real excited huh!?

I wondered what the inside of a cannon looked like and since I couldn't see all the way down into it, I just stuck my camera in the end of it and turned the flash on. Looks like a cannon.

Aaaannnnd, this concludes our Field Trip to Clark Creek and Port Hudson. Next time I'm taking geocache coordinates to hunt for a different kind of treasure! There's a bunch of them at Clark Creek and 2 at Port Hudson. I WILL find them!!!

Geocaching Photos

These are just some shots that I took while geocaching sometime last week. I just started playing with my camera and different angles a little bit.

Geocaching: Mardi Gras

While everyone else in Louisiana was celebrating Mardi Gras by attending the many, many, many parades, the gang and I were geocaching. I thought I'd make a little post about the different kinds of caches we found this weekend. First of all, I'd like to say that the Lord provided some BEAUTIFUL weather for us to enjoy! It was a real blessing and treat to get outdoors after our illnesses and get some fresh air. A few natural sights we enjoyed while on our hunt were.....

A redtail hawk

A flock of poules d'eau, my first time to see them in the wild!!!

A beautiful old oak tree

This is the smallest geocache I have found yet.

The teeny pc of paper inside of it held only 8 signatures.

This is a 35 mm film canister attached to the top of a fence pole cover. This is one of the most common micro-caches out there. The other is a magnetic key holder.

This is our FAVORITE kind of geocache. Can you see it?

It's an ammo can full of geojunk.

Little Bird shows off some of her junk.

We went to find Kangaroo who was walking around a fishing pond with DQ. Little Bird spotted Kangaroo and they started to run towards each other as if they haven't seen each other in decades!

Can't you just feel the love?

We had so much fun this weekend and found a total of 20 geocaches!!! Our personal goal for 2009 is to find 200, but if we keep going like we have been so far, we might have to double that number!

Third Week of February Stuff

Gosh, have I neglected my blog for a week? Oh my! I'm so embarrassed!! Let me see if I get get ya'll updated. This means I have to remember what I did last week and then post a separate blog about certain things and link it to this one. Oh, Geez!! What a chore!!!

Well, first of all, for Valentine's day....we did nothing. The entire family had the flu. The rest of the week involved recuperating.

Hubby felt well enough to pull the camper out of it's hiding place and we commenced to preparing it for our Disney World vacation in June. Lemme tell ya!...Washing the windows in that thing was a JOB! However, it is all nice and shiny clean. We're planning on taking it down the road for a week long stay at Tickfaw State Park. We can't go too far because hubby still has to go to work. But at least we'll still FEEL like we're camping.

On Thursday, I attended a luncheon with my mom. She did a painting demonstration and devotion and then she sang a song to go with the devotional. I had to play the piano for her to sing. My thoughts on her devotional and scripture will be in a separate post shortly.

I've gotten the Geocaching bug again and have been trying to collect as many finds as possible. I set a personal goal of 200 finds for this coming year. I'm happy to report that I'm on a roll with 20 finds this weekend alone!!! My Mardi Gras geocaching will have it's own post shortly.

At this very moment, I'm sitting in my living room, typing on my little bloggy thingy, watching....um, no, listening to Handy Manny while trying to keep my eyes open. All that geocaching has got me worn out and I'm so very sleepy even though I got about 9 hours of sleep last night! I actually went to bed at a normal hour!!! Go figure!

Later ya'll!

Geocaching: New Year's Eve

I discovered a new hobby this year. Actually, my sister Trina introduced me to it. It's called Geocaching (pronounced Geo"cash"ing) and I've been participating since May of 2008. It's a worldwide outdoor "sport" in which one uses multi-million dollar technology in the form of a hand held GPS receiver to traipse through the woods in pursuit of tupperware or ammo cans filled with happy meal toys and other trinkets. This type of treasure is a.k.a "traditional cache". I like to compare it to a glorified Easter egg hunt. It's really loads of fun and my kiddos love opening up the boxes to find Mardi Gras beads and other items. These little boxes of trinkets are hidden EVERYWHERE! There are many variations of the game but my favorites are virtual caches and traditional caches. Oh, a virtual cache is like the traditional cache, but they don't contain a physical treasure chest such as an ammo box or tupperware container. Instead, the geocacher is treated to a special place that should be easy to recognize as the "correct location." This place might be strange, interesting, unique, or special in some way.

Me and my gang have now found 64 caches this year and we've even hidden 1 in a little park in town. I had set a personal goal of finding 100 by today but, well, fell short of that goal. So, I'm setting another personal goal of finding 100 of them in 2009. If I meet that, then I'll tack on another 50....maybe.

If you ever want to start geocaching, check out Geocaching.com to find out how to do this. I was up at midnight last night doing all my mapping and planning for today's adventure. So, this morning we left the house at around 9:30 a.m. We had to take 21 y.o. DD to work before we could start enjoying our day. If we didn't have to do that, we could've hit a lot more geos today.

Anyway, so our first geo was waaaaaay up in Greensburg, LA at an old slave cemetery. What a neat area! The following information (not the pics) comes from the site that I use to get my geocaching information.....Geocaching.com!

The cemetery.

This place dates back to way before the Civil War. Lots of graves here are marked with stones. No names at all. There is one recent marker but even that one has the name faded away. The place was once owned by a prominent local family before and after the Civil War. After the war, the owner had to set the slaves free. The majority of them chose to stay for whatever reason. The owner also gave each of the families that stayed a small piece of land and just enough lumber from his sawmill to build a small private house.

Of course, after the war, times were hard and the property was broken up and sold off piece by piece. The final blow was the Great Depression of the late 20's and early 30's. There was no money and the remainder of the property was sold to "The Company" to raise money to pay property taxes. "The Company" was Southern Timbers, which eventually became Crown Zellerbach, then Cavenham, and now Weyerhaeuser.

The gang shows off their first find of the day!

After we left this particular geocache spot, we moved on to another which was located down a hunting road. As we were driving along, awestruck by the countryside, we rounded a curve where I was so surprised by what I saw that I just slammed on my brakes and shouted, "What in the world!?" If I hadn't been out geocaching, I would never have seen this with my own two eyes. I don't know the story behind it but it sure was a funny sight to see in the middle of nowhere!

Cowfield 1942 Steam Locomotive?

Incoming!!!

The gang finds a cache!

Layne attempts to open the treasure.

Kyle says, "Lemme show ya how it's done."

This geocache also gave us our first travel bug of the day! "What's a travel bug?" you might ask. Simply put, it's a trackable tag that you attach to an item. Then the item becomes a hitchhiker that travels from cache to cache via real persons. You can track it's travels and progress on the geocaching website.

Kangaroo shows off a travel bug!

We moved on to cache #3 for the day, Camp Moore. This is the site where confederate soldiers from several states were trained, the largest camp in the confederacy. A minor engagement was fought near this location on October 5 - 9, 1864. The men who are buried in the cemetery here died of disease while in the service of their cause. The historical marker at the entrance reads, "One of the principal Louisiana Confederate induction centers and training camps during the war for Southern independence. Named for Governor Thomas Overton Moore. Over 400 soldiers buried in the camp cemetery."

Before leaving the house this morning, I was wise enough to stock a cooler with picnic items for snacks. I figured we would be looking for our treasures in locations that did not provide us with needed facilities or food. When we first arrived at Camp Moore, the place was deserted. No cars anywhere! I couldn't figure out what was going on until I found a sign that said they were closed until Friday but pedestrians were welcome to roam the grounds during daylight hours only. I figured, "Well, that's us!"

Before we could go off hunting for this cache, I needed to eat. I mentioned lunch to the kiddos and they responded by stampeding to the cooler. Very strange kids. So, I haul out the cooler, we make sandwiches, and seat ourselves in the back of the surburban (the picnic tables were too far away to haul the cooler). As it turns out, our surburban seats were the best!! A freight train came by at that very moment to amazement of the girls. We all waved at the engineer and the girls were so excited when he tooted the whistle and waved back!

The lone sentry stands guard over the fallen soldiers.

Posing with a "soldier".

Layne found it!

Sorting through the treasure.

Little Bird finds another travel bug!

Our next few caches were in the town of Amite, LA. I learned a lot about this area today. I had no idea that Amite was such a pretty little town! It's amazing what one discovers when they get away from the house!

A beautiful little church that hides a geocache.

Our last cache of the day had us enjoying nature with some cows. The smell brought back so many childhood memories! I phoned hubby and said, "Can we buy some farmland and raise some cattle?" He said, "Why would you want to do that?" I said, "For the smell!" Now, don't get me wrong, I certainly wouldn't want my home to constantly be filled with Ode de Elsie, but the scent is wonderful in it's own way.

Eat more chikin!

At any rate, we grabbed the cache for this one and headed the burb for home. I'm so excited that we found 7 out of 8 planned caches today for a total of 64 found for 2008! I really should plan another run for tomorrow and get 2009 started off with a bang!!!