One big advantage of the rainstorm was that we got to stay and have one last sailing trip with Paul Cassity. The weather was absolutely gorgeous on Wednesday, with the winds almost totally calm – not good for sailing, but great for motoring.
We’d had a slow and easy start, motoring out of the Yacht Club around the Narrows, when we spotted a huge number of great egrets in one section of shoreline on a small point out into the lake. Paul got us really close, and we realized that we’d discovered a nesting area for blue herons and great egrets.
We must have spent nearly an hour with the binoculars glued to our eyes slowly wandering back and forth in the sailboat on that short stretch. We couldn’t take any pictures that would show the nests and birds, but we had great views through the trees of all the nests.
In one set of two trees alone we spotted over twelve nests, nearly stacked on top of each other. We think there may have been up to thirty individual nests, some already full with nesting moms, and others under construction.
After nearly getting the mast tangled in the treetops, we decided to head on up the river to the Bayou Queue de Tortue.
The Bayou was beautiful as usual, and as usual, it reminded us of our beloved Loxahatchee River in Florida. We spotted many more birds than the last few times, including big flocks of egrets, ibis, and seagulls. We startled a sleepy owl out of his perch near the river, saw a kingfisher, and spotted several alligators (I think they are the only live ones we’ve seen since last June, and the only ones in nature we’ve seen in Louisiana!).
A high point of the day was up on the Bayou when we spotted four roseate spoonbills feeding in the marsh, behind a few trees. Once again Paul maneuvered the boat around back and forth so we could follow the spoonbills. We had fun watching them, but they didn’t provide us with any good photo ops.
We headed back earlier than usual, which gave us a chance to explore the coastline of the lake. We stopped at Carl’s boat, docked in downtown Lake Arthur, and chatted with him for a few moments – we had met him last October when the group from the Gumbo Regatta went out on the trawler and hooked up with a couple of “party boats” downtown. Carl actually remembered us!
After visiting with Carl and his wife, we motored on back up to see the Christian Campground from the water. Right next to us at the cottage is Talen’s Marine and Fuel. They are a big company with several locations, with one of their bigger ones right across a chain link fence from us.
They start early in the morning, with guys’ voices echoing around the yard and into our rooms before daylight. They store marine oil there, so often we’ll have the sound of forklifts going for many hours during the day, with that really annoying high beep when they go in reverse.
Even when no one is there, we have a resounding dull boom throughout the days and evenings as the metal from the storage containers as they expand and contract with the heat and cold. At night we have industrial strength floodlights lighting up our rooms, right through the blinds.
We’ve lived with Talen’s next door to us for several weeks now, so it was very entertaining to see it from the water. There are two old oil barges there that were used to drill wells out in Grand Lake some years ago, but they’ve become obsolete, and are now partially grounded and welded to the dock (so they don’t get loose in high water or hurricanes). Be sure to check out our photos for the views of the barges.
Paul was in a truly exploratory mood, so after all that, he took us the back way by water into downtown Lake Arthur, along a beautiful quite little canal.
We did our usual stop for the sunset photos, after seeing the downtown canal, and Paul let me bring the boat back into the Yacht club marina (I’d done a reasonable amount of driving the boat during the day).
Instead of having dinner locally after our day of sailing, we’d asked Paul if he’d take us to Wal-Mart for food shopping for our leaving supplies. It was wonderful for us to not have to navigate the very busy Jennings area (it’s on the I-10 corridor) by bicycle.
We didn’t get home until almost midnight, but we got everything we needed, and we had full Verizon cell phone signal while we were there, so we got a chance to get caught up with Alex on some things we needed to talk about.
We are going to miss Paul terribly. He is incredibly relaxed and easy going, but he’s adventurous and full of great stories, with a wonderfully clever sense of humor. He’s traveled and worked extensively all over the world, and is well read. He keeps up with current events, and he has the scientist’s inquiring mind. As much as anything else, we have loved the time on the water to chat with him, swapping ideas, knowledge, and viewpoints.
We are working on having him meet us down the road somewhere to do more exploring together.
We’ve also loved our incredible chance to be out on a boat under such wonderful circumstances, seeing and getting to know a beautiful natural resource. No matter how tough the week has been, we always feel better after a day on the boat, and the next few days feel even more productive.
We’ll miss Paul and Lake Arthur!