Touristing

I have been staying overnight for field work during nearly all weekdays since August began, so Nathanael and I have been making the most of our weekends. On one of the first weekends in August we decided to drive around a bit and see some of the Acadiana coastal areas. Egrets are everywhere, but we also spotted many Louisiana Herons (above)...and since seeing Herons fly always makes me think of dinosaurs, it was great. We also snuck up on some Roseate Spoonbills (of which I did not snap a picture), and I was very excited to finally see pink birds in person and in the wild!
Flamingos are next I tell you.

Sabine National Wildlife Refuge turned out to be a lovely place to wander, as it is home to marshland creatures galore. Unfortunately, amongst the flying wildlife, mosquitoes were the ones who seemed to mind the 100 °F heat the least, so if you visit, wear long everything. 
(And no, we did not see any alligators, but we know they were around somewhere.)

We had planned to swim when we got to the ocean. 

It is the same Atlantic, technically, the same ocean as the lapping the beaches of New Hampshire, but instead of being hypothermic in the summer the waters are actually quite warm here. Unfortunately, that warmth and the fact that the Missisippi River drains here means all of the beaches have bacterial warning signs... permanently installed (though they have hinges and can be closed if the levels drop).

 Also, the water is brown. 

So now we know why the beaches of Florida and Mississippi are well known and those in Louisiana are not; everything west of where the Mississippi River hits the ocean is virtually unswimable.

But, it's fun to be at the beach anyway. Especially with a friend like this.

If you look carefully, all of those little nubbins on the horizon are oil rigs. (Click for a closer look.)

Apart from wildlife and waters, the structures on the Louisiana coast were also neat to see. A prime example being the Johnson Bayou Library in Cameron Parish.

I love libraries, and this one would have been especially hard to resist if it hadn't been a weekend.

Who wouldn't want to visit a library with a clearance of nine feet and six inches?

Once back to more inhabited areas, we went out for a date of po-boys and followed it up with dessert at this place...

I got a butterfinger malt.

(Nathanael was looking more stylish than me, as usual, but I figured I should put one of me in here somewhere.)

On the weekends that we are home, we do still garden, though things have slowed down a bit.



Our Indian chili peppers have been doing amazingly well, and we've been harvesting 40 to 60 peppers each week from our three plants.



We have also let a few ripen so we can save the seeds for next years crop.
(The ribbon reminded us which ones we were leaving on the plant for seeds.)



The Zinnias are still growing nicely, and some of them are this unbelievably brilliant orange color that you probably thought was some kind of photo editing mistake...but no, that's really what they look like.
The Zinnia plants have mixed with the weeds in the front of our garden and created what is pretty much a meadow facade covering a giant mass of underground kamikaze soldiers. Nathanael still risks his ankles and picks the flowers for me though.

He also makes me doughnuts.

Yum.