Read earlier entries from December, 1998.
I saw some oranges, coconuts, tangerines, and bananas growing. I climbed up on my mom and picked some tangerines. We also saw a sign that said "Slow, manatee area," with a picture of a manatee on it. I remembered that yesterday, January the fifth, was two months on the road. Time really flies these days.
Today we went to the Everglades and went on an airboat ride.When we were on the road to the Everglades I didn't see any roadkill even though some people call it Roadkill Alley. When we went on the airboat ride we saw some osprey, some alligators, some raccoons, lots of kingfishers, lots of pelicans, and about a million gulls.
The ride was very loud so everyone had a pair of earmuffs. Whenever the boat turned it would go up on one side and sometimes you would get sprayed. The boat had a metal body with two rows of seats made to seat six in all. It had a five-foot, two-blade fan with a blade guard and a thin metal rudder used for steering the boat. The blade was wood that looked like oak with polyurethane to me and where the blade got thinner there was a metal strip about two inches long. The captain's chair was in the back and raised four feet in the air so he could see. He had a pedal for speed and a lever for steering and a panel with a speedometer, a trip odometer, a radio, and four more gauges that I didn't examine. Right on the side were two paddles in case the fan broke down, and in back of the captain was the fan. The water had to be at least half an inch deep for an airboat to run. The water looked muddy but it was really tannin from the red mangroves.
The raccoons we didn't only see, they actually came over to the shore
where we were and begged for goodies. I took some pictures and they
should be on the web site when we get them developed.
Today we went on a parasailing ride and an "Aqua-cycle" ride. On the parasailing ride (don't worry, I didn't go up) we got a fun ride around St. Petersburg Beach on a motorboat and my dad got to go up. After the ride I think my exact words were, "I know what I missed and I'm glad I missed it."
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Left: Dad goes up on the tow rope. Right: St. Petersburg Beach as seen by a parasailer. |
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Afterwards, we all pedalled an aqua-bike. It looks like a tricycle with orange wheels about four feet tall and two feet across. They had air in them to make you float. The two back ones had ridges for paddles. It was all pedal power and really hard to pedal. When we were coming in to shore we didn't bother pedalling, we just let the waves push us in.
We passed through Talahassee, which is southeast of Quincy. We saw the first statehouse without a gold dome that we've seen.
The next place we expect to be is in/around New Orleans.
There were plenty of casinos. I only got a good look at two. One looked like in the next hurricane everyone would have glass shards embedded in them no matter where they were in the building because there were all windows outside. The other looked like a pirate ship.
We ended up in a state park in Westwego, which is around New Orleans.
We're staying in Westwego for the next two or three days.Today we toured New Orleans.
We didn't get a really good look at the Superdome but it just looked like a very large dome with a triangular cavity all around the side. My geography book said it was the world's largest sports dome.
The French Quarter was huge.
We saw some street performers. Some were good, but one that I call the tone deaf woman was very bad.
Bourbon Street is where the Mardi Gras (mar-dee gra) parade route is.
Mardi Gras is French for "fat Tuesday." You have to round up all the goodies in the house and eat them because for the next six weeks starting on Ash Wednesday you are not allowed to eat any goodies.
There were decorated balconies on every sidestreet you could see. There were working shutters on doors and windows and they were very large. Many of the walls and gates had broken glass and spikes on top. This was so hoodlums wouldn't climb over the walls and steal something.
The mule-drawn buggy rides were a lot faster than I thought.
There were gas lights in the French Quarter because that was what they used a hundred years ago.
I think maybe the Mississippi River is not as wide as you imagine.
Maybe you imagine that you can barely see the other side. If you think
that, you're wrong. I felt like I could throw a rock across it. The
Mississippi is about a half mile across in New Orleans.
The levee gates weren't really gates, they were moving walls for when the Mississippi floods.
The riverboats we saw are big power boats that take two or three day cruises up the Mississippi and back.
Today the park naturalist came over and helped us try to identify some birds.
We went on a cruise on the John James Audubon. We saw some white pelicans. Now we've seen all the pelicans of the U.S.A. (brown and white). We saw the Domino Sugar factory where they refine more than 6,000,000 pounds of sugar a day. That's 42,000,000 a week and about 312,000,000 a year. We saw barges, cruise liners, tugboats, pilot boats, freighters from all over the world, naval vessels, and tankers.
The New Orleans port has surpassed Rotterdam and Singapore to become the busiest port in the world.
We just saw our first "K" TV station. (Call letters that start with K start west of the Mississippi, and W is east. For example, KJXT would be west of the Mississippi, while WJXT is east of the Mississippi.)
Today went by quickly.
We saw some crawfish chimneys near the drainage ditches by the side of
the road. A crawfish looks like a small freshwater lobster. I didn't
get a good look at the houses, but they are made out of mud. The
chimneys were really "front doors" to houses. When the crawfish feels
it is going to be dry, he digs a hole until he hits water and stays
there eating animals that get in his hole. If the water in his hole
runs dry, he just digs deeper. How does the dirt get out and why isn't
there a pile? You got it. The chimney.
We went to tour the Chretien Point
plantation. The house has been turned into a bed and breakfast.
The original owner, Felicité Chretien, killed a robber around
mid 1800's and hid him under the stairs so the kids wouldn't see him
and he eventually got the nickname "Robert under the stairs." (With a
French accent it sounds like "Robear under the stair.") Because of
this incident a similar one was recreated in Gone With The
Wind, where Scarlett O'Hara kills a Yankee on the
stairwell.
At the Acadian Cultural Center, we saw a movie about how some people
got moved from Acadia (Nova Scotia) to the thirteen colonies and then
to Acadiana (central Lousiana).
There were lots of books on sale there about Cajun cooking and culture. There were lots of toys. There were displays of old traps, farming equipment, homes, clothing, cooking, oil production, and some other old stuff.
There was a place with a video screen where you would press a button and see a Cajun comedian tell a joke. There was a comedienne who would tell her joke mixing half of her English words with her French joke. The one I liked best was: some guy is hunting in a tree stand and he sees a deer. He shoots it and climbs down the tree. He goes tracking, trips over something, and falls in a ravine. He grabs onto something and pulls himself up and finds out he's holding onto a pair of antlers. The deer attacks him with his hooves and antlers. The guy pulls out his brand new knife and they exchange cuts and finally the deer dies. He's carrying the deer home when he spots the deer he just shot!
For my Webelos requirements, I finished Forester and Handyman.
Gotta go, I have a campfire waiting.
25th: Ruston, LA
We went to visit The Boomerang
Man [he doesn't have a website, but he does have an e-mail
address] in Monroe, and bought a few boomerangs and a tumble
stick. This one man, with a small shop on a quarter acre of land, is
the largest boomerang seller in America.
We went to this park in Ruston intending to stay one night, but it is such a nice, secluded, private, enjoyable, and all-out great place, that we decided to stay one more day.
We threw our new boomerangs today and I almost took my dad's head off. The boomerangs were so brightly colored, you could see them anywhere you wanted except the ground. My dad had a boomerang called the Emu which I was pretty good at throwing.
The dog went all out (especially with the fire pit full of bacon grease). He was going twenty miles an hour zooming everywhere. He even was close to the other side of the lake swimming at about three knots and chasing ducks left and right. I mean, this dog was e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. (Except the neighbors' yards.)
We're in Texarkana. Texarkana is two cities: one on the Arkansas border and the other on the Texas side.
The place we moved to has a starving mutt next door and a chow a.k.a. Beardog (mostly bear). We saw a little black starving dog in the campground. Furface wanted her in the worst way and we knew because he licked her thoroughly, wanted to play, and was very excited when she was near. We fed her and wanted to keep her but we didn't have the room and there would be an overcrowded trailer on the road in America.
Warning -- Monsoon Warning! Down here at least three days of heavy rain are expected with thirty m.p.h. wind. The wind is enough to tip this tin can and the rain could flood the campground-on-a-peninsula.
On the road out of Hawkins we saw a sign that said, "Hawkins. Pancake
capital of Texas. Home of Lillian Richard (Aunt Jemima)."
We also saw some longhorn cattle. The difference between longhorn cattle and regular cattle is that the longhorn cattle horns look like )____( and the regular horns look like (__).
Now we're in a safe campground called Whispering Pines. We saw two does in the forest behind our camp as we were setting up. A dog started barking and they went off like a shot.
Sorry, gotta go. The lightning might fry my computer.
Continue on to February.