We’re chugging along here in Oak Grove, making preparations to leave on May 20. We’re lining up places to stay and looking over the mileage and distances on our daily stretches in between stops. We’ve been riding every day, covering our usual 22+-mile route, and still dealing with 15-30 mph winds (which are head winds or strong side winds most days).
Though the winds are a nuisance, we are pleased about how strong we are getting. We can really feel a difference. Since we haven’t ridden hills in forever, we are glad for the strength-building workout.
Birding, snakes and turtles
We are continuing to see a phenomenal number of birds – both because we are getting better at recognizing the birds, and because more birds are arriving. Spring was late this year because of severe weather and the unusual late cold, which means many migratory birds are still arriving.
We are not only seeing birds still building nests, we are now seeing baby birds everywhere. Jo Ann has barn swallows and starlings building nests on her house. One nest is right below the main living area, tucked up behind a support pole, out of sight. We tiptoe over to it and look up quietly, and if we’re lucky, we see a small head or two peeking down at us. It’s pretty funny!
We know where a yellow-crowned night heron has her nest out on East Creole Hwy (every day we watch her sitting on it), and today we saw a family of clapper rails – the mom and dad and about eight chicks – trotting slowly across the road in front of us. We see as many five or six baby birds dead each day, too.
We’re also starting to see more unusual birds, which provides great entertainment looking them up in the Audubon bird book Jo Ann has loaned us (the book is never more than about six feet away from us). What makes it hard is that the birds aren’t normally from this area, so we could be seeing anything at all. So far we’ve recognized at least a handful of unusual birds, as well as continuing to figure out the year-round or seasonal locals.
Twice we’ve seen a flock of thirty or so huge white pelicans riding the thermals; and one day Donny took us back up over the Gibbstown Bridge to look for a crested caracara he’d seen earlier. Today Jo Ann took us back up near Creole where we saw hundreds of gulls, terns and egrets clustered in and near the canal. There’d been a fish kill, and the birds were happy as could be. It was quite a sight!
We’re starting to recognize various snakes, and we see turtles more often too, along with crabs in the canals along the route we ride. About two weeks ago, we spotted a red-eared slider turtle walking across the yard, and we discovered it was looking for a place to nest. When we checked back later, we found the hole where she’d laid her eggs, so in another 6-10 weeks Jo Ann will have a bunch of baby red-eared sliders in her yard.
Gators on the Geaux
Jo Ann and Chelsea have continued with the project of seeing as many Gators on the Geaux as they can. Jo Ann has spent a fair amount of time on the phone hunting down the gators – so many have been vandalized, stolen, or ruined in the hurricanes that it became very frustrating following the list we had, never mind that the list was seriously inaccurate to start with.
Chelsea has made up a spreadsheet of the gators, arranged by street number, street name, and area of town, including the name of the gator and the owner. She and Jo Ann go into Lake Charles at least twice a week, and when they do, they see as many gators as they can. Chelsea takes a photo of each one to add to the album, and updates the spreadsheet. It’s been great fun.
We’ll post the album when we leave, with however many gators we have managed to see by that time.
Cattle drives
This is a big cattle area down here; cattle are everywhere. We see them grazing in the marshes at every turn; they even graze on the beach. We started seeing calves in the fields months ago, and now those calves are adolescents, with another crop of babies coming along.
We’ve now seen three separate cattle drives in front of Jo Ann’s house. A group of cowboys gets together (they are the real deal), each one bringing a trailer and horses. They unload the horses, and on horseback, they drive the cattle up the road, on Hwy 82, over to where the cows will be either “worked” or put in another pasture.
It’s been great fun watching the commotion as the cowboys drive the cattle along. Jo Ann has a home on pilings, so we have a ringside seat from the porch and front room. One day one of the cows got loose and got into the marsh. Four cowboys chased it down, swinging lassoes at it. One got off his horse to get the cow while the others kept tossing their ropes.
They finally got a rope around its horns, but then the one cowboy’s horse got away. Two cowboys were getting the cow out of the marsh by the rope on its horns, and the other had to chase down the horse. They caught the horse, but meanwhile the cow was having none of it. She went stiff legged and lowered her front legs. The cowboys pulled a trailer up and slowly got the cow into the trailer, stiff-legged the whole way.
Following all this is the parade of trailers with the occasional cow in some, and the occasional horse in others. We counted as many as eight long trailers in one drive, followed by all the regular traffic waiting to get by.
Road work
Another major bit of commotion has been the roadwork. All the roads in the area took quite a beating from Rita and Ike, so they are gradually being repaired. When we first arrived, Donny had come back to tell us it was pretty rough up ahead, and that we might want to take another route. That was just the start of a 6-week saga.
First we had all the huge machinery that dug up the road. Next came the gravel on the roads. Then we waited and waited and waited. The road crew had started the paving on the far end of our section of highway, so for weeks we lived with huge asphalt trucks rumbling by all day long.
The condition of the roads was awful in a car, never mind by bicycle. The good news is that we only had a mile of it each way on our bike rides, and we have a short side road we can take to avoid about a half mile of it.
We are very excited because they will have finished paving the entire 6-mile stretch, including putting in a shoulder, by tomorrow. It’s now a total dream to ride on it, so when we leave next week, we have a beautiful stretch of newly paved highway for our start. And best of all, the commotion is over.
Removal of Jo Ann’s pile
Another big event was the removal, long awaited, of the pile of debris from hurricanes Rita and Ike. Jo Ann had to have someone come and clear the land in back of her house – an amazing amount of things ended up being deposited willy-nilly. Just out of curiosity, I went out with Chelsea one morning to identify what had ended up in the pile.
We spotted pieces of heavy machinery, a rolling bed, bedspreads, blue tarps, a styrofoam cooler, lawn chairs and a folding table, aluminum siding, hoses, brooms, a boat trailer, roofing, a mattress, clothing, plywood fencing, sheets and blankets, window screens, a kid’s rolling backpack, artificial flowers, a mailbox, a fire extinguisher, suitcases, plastic storage bins, galoshes, a hammock, rope, jars, a wheelbarrow, and chicken wire.
More things were deep in the pile and we couldn’t decipher them. What heartbreaking evidence of lives changed in the storm surge! When the pile was finally gone, it felt like another bit of healing taking place after the hurricanes.
Mother’s Day
We had a wonderful day – we started out with a gorgeous bike ride early; then met Jo Ann at the Baptist Church. It was a big day at the church as it was both Mother’s Day and it was the first day of being back in the main part of the church since the major repairs after Ike. The members had quite a feeling of celebration.
Donny came over to celebrate lunch with us; then Jo Ann and Chelsea and I took off for Lake Charles. Donny had treated us to a Lake Charles Chorale performance – a program full of songs from the Old West, followed by folk ballads and war protest songs from the 50s and 60s. The program was very restful and very well done.
We went from there right to L’Auberge to meet Ruby and her husband J.A. for dinner. We stuffed ourselves on the excellent buffet, had fun talking to Ruby and J.A., and headed home tired and completely satisfied. Alex had texted me a happy Mother’s Day message, so my day was complete.