Goonies!

Who doesn't love the story of a group of misfits that find treasure but have to let it all slip away to save their lives only to find out that playing marbles isn't as dorky as one might think when the bag is stuffed with jeweles? Hmm?

Wait. I am assuming that everyone reading this blog has already seen Goonies. If you haven't, well, I've just ruined it for you. That seems to be my super power, that and being The Mighty Confessionist!*

Seriously, don't ask me if I've seen a movie before you've seen it unless you want to know that EVERYONE DIES!!**

Anyway...

I love the movie Goonies and as we were driving up Highway 101 I began wondering where it was filmed. I knew that it took place in the pacific Northwest and that it was supposed to be Oregon, but I didn't really know where.

That is when I flug my blackberry at Meg and she began to Google it. Seriously, what did we do before the internet? It would have taken weeks to get the information she pulled as we were driving up the coast.

Anyway, she saw that it was set in Astoria, Oregon and we set the GPS to see how long it would take to get there.

That is when the GPS decided to take us on a thrilling ride through mountains and switchback roads to I-5. WRONG GPS. We wanted to stay on the coast!

At a rest area we checked the map that was posted on the information board and found that we were about 2 hours outside of where we really wanted to be. Damn! Damn! Double Damn!

We fixed that though and took our happy butts back to the ocean despite the GPS refusing to get off the I-5 track. (It eventually gave up and guided us up Highway 101 like we wanted.)

So, we pulled off at Cannon Beach for a moment to reflect on the end of the movie and give me the opportunity to do my best Sloth impression:



And yes, I wore my Superman shirt just for the occasion. I go for authenticity, Yo! (And why is it I can't find any images of Sloth on google? hmm? Well, there are images but in it he's not wearing his superman shirt - is it a copyright thing or what? frustrating.)

Anyway, we say haystack rock that is featured in the restaurant scene (where Mikey matches it up in the carved out old dubloon) and in the final scene (where Sloth proclaims his love for Chunk).



From there we headed up to Forks, where we took our lives into our own hands and searched through darkened forest for any signs of vampires.***

*Seriously, I am the confessionist. Put me in the room with an interviewee and that person will tell me about his or her (a) bladder infection, (b) desire to have a job that doesn't require them to actually work, (c) need for a new babysitter because they got fired for missing so many work days at their last job or (d) that they are just showing up for the interview because welfare is making them. True story. I should work with Brenda on The Closer, we'd rock.

**Yes, I did ruin a movie once (or a dozen time) by accidentally telling the end. I can't seem to help myself. Really. If you ask me "Have you seen movie X?" and I reply "Is that the one where..." just go ahead and stop me or plug your ears or just walk away. I won't get offended because I'm about to ruin the move with something like "Is that the one where the character dies in the end?" Yep, I'm a helper. I'm helping you save those rental fees that blockbuster charges. You're welcome.

***We really didn't trek out into the darkened forest looking for vampires. BECAUSE THIS IS FORKS - THEY FREAKING GLITTER! Why would I risk getting nature all over my shoes when all I have to do is look out for glittering people. Duh. It's like you don't know me at all.

I drove THOUGH a tree, not INTO a tree

That may seem like a fine distiction to you, but I may have worried some with a quick off the cuff post on facebook.


What I meant was this:



It was pretty cool and most of the trees right around this behemoth were enormous in their own right. I can't imagine the stories they could tell if they could speak.

Meg and I thought about this as we made our way back to Hwy-101 to find a hotel for the night. Okay, Meg didn't really so much think about it as listen to me go off on a random tangent of what I thought the trees had to say. I will spare you that ordeal here.

So we spent the night in Garberville at the Humbolt House Inn which was very nice and Meg met some new friends while I was checking us in (haha, I'll let her tell you about the fun new attention grabber that her pregnancy boobs are and the encounters with men that are apparently unable to contain themselves in her presence).

Don't worry, she's safe. I will happily murder anyone that get too close to her as the homeless man at the San Francisco Shell Station almost found out. Don't make me put the smack down on y'all with the Y chromosomes, because I will and you won't like it. FYI: I've been watching Dexter. 'Nuff said.

Highway 101 North

If you like taking road trips, well, Highway 101 was built with you in mind. Okay, maybe not literally, but with I-5 taking the same route in much less time you have to want to drive to enjoy Hwy-101.

We took the Golden Gate Bridge (Listen up BOSTON there was NOT a toll on this famous bridge, so cities are capable of operating a bridge without bilking each vehicle that needs to cross it. Just an FYI for ya.) as a heavy fog was rolling into the city. It was so sudden and heavy that when we took the turn-off for viewing the bridge you couldn't see anything that was there a mere 5 minutes before. It came on THAT fast.



As we crossed the bridge it looked kind of cool the way the fog made the bottom of the supports sort of disappear. As we crossed the fog became lighter and by the time we reached the other side the fog was gone. POOF! Just as fast as it came, it was gone. Like we had crossed into another dimension.



Looking back at the city from Hwy-101 it looked as though San Francisco was resting in the clouds.



The temperatures also began to change rapidly. The cool, moist 68* of the Bay soon became 100*+ as we climbed further North. A few hours north of San Francisco we were in need of a rest stop, so following the signs we pulled off the highway. This particular exit was also the exit for the petrified forest.

I've always wondered what a petrified forest was and so we went to check it out. Now, I knew that the great redwoods of Northern California were enormous but I forgot about the petrified trees being here too. We decided to make our rest stop at the Petrified Forest.



The kicker was, the petrified forest isn't really a forest. It's like a bunch of really really old trees that are lying around that turned to stone. It's cool and all, but just not that interesting to me and certainly not worth the $8pp charge to check them out. At least, not in my opinion. If they were still standing, I would pay twice that but they aren't, they're a bunch of huge logs that fell in the woods. Anyway, at least we were able to take a much needed break and head out. Oh, and the temperatures were near 100* so I think that had something to do with our unwillingness to stomp around the woods looking at felled trees. I'm just sayin'.

Once we hit the coast though, things changed fast. I remember looking down at the temperature gauge on the dash and noting that it was 98*, then within a half-hour or so I looked down and it was back to 68*. That's a thirty degree drop in about 25-35 miles. When we heard the waves crashing we had to stop at a view point to absorb the cool beauty.



From there the road loops further inland (though not far from the coast so the temperatures stay a bit chilly) toward where the real stars of the forest live.



HUGE Redwoods - seriously, they are massive and tall and OMG! Trees like skyscrapers!

Lombard Street

I kind of breezed over our drive down Lombard Street because the pictures were on Meg's camera and not mine. We weren't expecting to cross an intersection heading to Coit Tower and find this little adventure right in front of us:



Okay, so that is a picture of Lombard Street from the bottom - we didn't get one from the top because we weren't prepared.

We were already on our first switchback when Meg got out her camera, I had packed mine in the back because I am an awesome tourist like that. Anyway, it was pretty cool being able to drive down such a winding and historic street.



I can't imagine living on this stretch of road though. The tourist books and sites all say that there can be as much as an hour wait to turn down this street in the summer months when tourism is at its peak in San Francisco. What a drag it must be for the homeowners. I liked the color combinations on this house, the bright blue and vibrant purple made it especially beautiful on such a cloudy day.



Here's a little travel tip from us to you: When trying to take a picture of something through the sunroof that is sharply downhill from where you are, don't tilt the camera down as you are inclined to do - unless you want a picture of your own forehead.



You're welcome, we're helpers. Anyway, after we drove down Lombard I pulled into a parking space so I could get a picture of the whole run (that's the first pic in this post). It was a really creepy feeling having to climb uphill to get out of the car and I thought it was going to start tumbling down the hill at any moment.



San Francisco is one of our favorite cities on our tour but it is certainly a city I could never live in. It's much like New York but on a much smaller scale like Boston. Everyone is stacked on-top of everyone else. There isn't any room for anything. Maybe I'm just tired of living in such close quarters with other people and want to be able to stretch out without fear of poking my neighbor in the eye.

The Hills Are Alive

So far, we LOVE San Francisco! Tons of things to do.

We drove down to Fishermans Wharf to check things out the first afternoon we were there. As I was pulling in to a parking area one of the many seagulls that litter the road decided that it would be a good time for a jog.

Seriously.

All of the other gulls flew away but this one stubborn little bugger did the bob-n-weave manuver down the street as we creeped slowly behind. I know, I could have just driven on and murdered the little beast, but I really couldn't do that. I am a sucker that way.

So we idled down the drive into the parking lot when the stupid bird figured out his wings still worked at flew off just as we approached the ticket gate.

I swear I heard it laugh and yell "you're my bitch now!". But whatever.

Aside from beligerant fowl, the Wharf was full of excitement and activity.

We went to Boudins for lunch upon a reccomendation and enjoyed soup in a bread bowl.

It was chilly but a nice change from the heat in Fresno. Meg and I wrapped up in sweaters and walked the piers.



Now is the part where we tell you what sucked about San Francisco.... if you want to see Alcatraz, you have to make reservations and buy your tickets in advance. There is only one ticket agency that sells tours of Alcatraz, the trouble is that they sell out several days in advance to.... TOUR COMPANIES!

Tour Companies buy all of the tickets at $26 each and turn around and sell them in "packages" for $75 - $150 each. Yeah, if you want to see Alcatraz you have to buy their delux packages with 4 and 5 hour tours (not the hop-on hop-off tours that are popular, these are the sit in a van and drive around tours that are not so popular).

Rip Off!

Anyway, we decided to do a self guided tour of the 49-mile drive that is much like the Freedom Trail in Boston. There are signs posted (supposedly, we only saw one) around town that lead you on a 49-mile drive to all of the most popular or scenic sights of the city.

Thankfully we looked up all of the stops and figured out the ones we were most interested in and plugged those into the GPS. Much easier and reliable than just following the signs (as many seem to be missing).

We went to the top of Coit Tower and checked out the city from a birds eye-view (no sign of our seagull friend from the wharf).



Watchout for those stairs!!



The view was totally worth it though!

We drove down the famous Lombard Street (and parked at the end where I thought my little car was going to roll down the hill). I had to get out of the car up-hill which was more difficult than I had anticipated. Meg offered to get out to take the picture because all she had to do was fall out her door.



(more pics are on Megs camera and I should have those up soon)

We also were able to check out the Golden Gate Bridge and walked around Golden Gate Park.



There are tons of pictures up if you want to check them out. I'll try to get more posted tonight but right now I have to go get my Goonie on at Cannon Beach!

My Girls!!

From Phoenix we drove to Northern California to see the girls - our beautiful nieces Whip, Dez, Allie and Banana. I know, their parents chose some weird names but we manage. :)

So we got there pretty late and, though excited to see how much they have grown, crashed fairly quickly into slumbering heaps on the guest bed.

The next several days were spent enjoying ourselves.

Dez, Allie and Banana were the subjects of an impromptu photo-shoot while Whip and Angie went to make sure their classes were registered properly, financial aid was in place and to pick up their books.













We had fun climbing in trees, finding artistic displays and jumping off benches all the while snapping a whopping 300 pictures. I think Dez and Allie are going to be quite the photographers when they get older...

We went to see a movie at the drive-in (it was GI Joe which we found incredibly entertaining. The girls each gave it two thumbs up, though the little ones for different reasons than the big ones - ehem Channing Tatum ehem).

We went to the Zoo and saw elephants, monkeys, kangaroos and, well, lots of other animals...







On our last night there we played a game of catch-phrase. Angie has an electronic version that automatically counts down the time while you try to get through as many words or phrases as possible.

Some of our favorite 'heat of the moment' clues and responses were:

Clue: Another name for a hooker
Answer: Ho
Word I was trying to get them to guess: Idaho

Sure, I could have gone with "where potatoes are grown" or "we had family living in Pocatello and Boise" but those just seemed too easy. So I thought outside of the box and tried for "I da Ho"...

Clue: Famous Boxer
Answers: Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield
Word Whip was trying to get us to guess: Rocky Balboa

I don't know if she forgot that he was a fictional character or not...

Clue: A really nice watch
Answers: Rolex
Word Whip was trying for: Rolodex

She read it wrong and thought it said Rolex. We continued to give her a hard time the rest of the night, because we're generous and kind that way.

There were others, I'm sure, that had us cracking up. Allie played a few rounds, but being so young was at a serious disadvantage. She would give a word or two as a clue and if the person guessing got even remotely close to the answer she'd clam up and just wave her arm as if to say "and....." while her eyes proceeded to bulge out of her head. It was really cute.

About halfway through we abandoned our teams and just took turns giving the clues. I think I enjoyed watching Angie give the clues because she got so into it. She'd get all excited and out of breath trying to give the best clues possible.

Dez and Whip were both hilarious at guessing - at one point Meg asked something about what you take when you're all hot and bothered and Whip piped up with "a cold shower", which was the correct answer but you could have heard a pin drop as both Angie and I had to pick ourselves up off the floor.

It's hard to believe that she'll be 18 in just a few months and then next summer she's off to join the Navy.

Anyway - that's what we've been doing for the last few weeks - and now we're enjoying all that San Francisco has to offer...

The Ramblings of a Rambling Woman

So if you haven't noticed we've had a little vacation from our trip. I know! Who needs a vacation from their vacation? But it's nice to be able to pop in and visit family when on the road - to sleep in the same bed for a week or so - to cook meals instead of order them.

We left Springtown, sunburned and reflective after visiting our dad's grave. The drive through the two-lane highways of West Texas was uneventful. The land opened as we left Fort Worth in our rear-view mirror, surrounded by cows, fields and nothingness. Pumpjacks bobbing up and down against the horizon looking like ancient dinosaurs risen from extinction.

Our arrival in Roswell that night went fairly smoothly. I hadn't made reservations online thinking we'd pick whatever looked to fit our needs the best. That didn't work out so well as the first two hotels we checked only had smoking rooms available. So did the third but the rate was good enough we were more than willing to overlook the odor with a few spritz of air freshener.

We slept that night and, in the morning, went to check out the International UFO Museum. Let me say this, I have a problem with the name of the museum. Why 'International'? Wouldn't 'Intergalactic' make more sense? Or what about 'Universal'? International seems to say that they are a museum featuring some of our more notorious illegal immigrants... but whatever. I am not the one who picked the name.

We checked out the exhibits. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I am certainly not vain enough to believe that Earth is the only planet in the vast universe to sustain life of some sort. It could be intelligent and it certainly could venture over to Earth for a quick vacation.

What we found in the museum were just a bunch of old blurry photos from decades ago "documenting" UFO's spotted over Roswell. My question is this - if UFO's were spotted so frequently, when camera equipment was shoddy at best, why did they stop? Are they afraid of our new telephoto lenses and DSLR's? Or is it that once we snap a high-res photo and can zoom in on an object while maintaining clarity and focus, the object is no longer an unidentified flying object?

So, Roswell was pretty much a waste of time and we headed to another attraction in New Mexico that we hoped wouldn't disappoint us too.

We went to Carlsbad Caverns. AWESOME!



The surface temperature was just about 106* when we parked the car in the lot. The visitor center is air conditioned and we cooled off from our brief walk up the path and stairways. We purchased our elevator tickets and took the 750 foot plunge into the earth where it was a chilly 68*.

Nice.

We strolled the dimly lit trails at a leisurely pace. Taking pictures when inspiration struck.



It was amazing to see the rock formations and how, with little experience and supplies, one man discovered this cave system. Meg and QotU visited these caverns about 10 or 12 years ago and took the guided tour (this time we opted for the self-guided audio tour). On the tour that is lead by the park rangers they walk you into a cave and turn out the lights.

Pitch Black Surrounds You.

Absolute darkness 750 feet below the desert is not something I am eager to experience. (I blame this movie.)

Anyway, we had a good time exploring what lies beneath the New Mexico desert and then made our way toward Phoenix where we spent a week lazing about visiting with family and friends.

13 years...

From New Orleans we drove to Springtown Texas. You may be wondering why, when most of our journey has been to major cities, we would choose to travel to this small, speck of a town in Texas.

Well, we didn't really choose it, he did. Or rather his ancestors did when they helped to settle the area generations ago. His only choice was that he wanted to be buried there.

And he was, 13 years ago.

We spent the morning looking through the cemetery until we found his grave marker, where we paid our respects. He is still with us, and we know he always will be. This is just the place where his body was laid to rest all those years ago.



We also spent about an hour looking through the other headstones for the location where his mother, grandmother and younger brother were laid to rest. We were not very successful in that endeavor.

I did, however, manage to achieve a vacation first.

Sunburn.

The summer sun in Texas is much stronger than I had anticipated.

From Springtown we took some of the old two-lane highways west toward New Mexico.



Surrounded only by fields, cows and blacktop we drove through small towns that were little more than crossroads and gas stations. We stopped for a late lunch or early dinner at a Dairy Queen in one of these little settlements.

Then continued West through the sunset to Roswell...

Southern Belle I am not

Our last exploration in Louisiana was to Oak Alley, the famous plantation house with the 1/4 mile row of 100 year old oak trees leading up to it from the street.



It was quite beautiful and peaceful on the grounds. We stopped at their cafe for breakfast before our tour and enjoyed some really wonderful beignets (Cafe du Monde could learn a thing or two from Oak Alley, they were light and wonderful. Not the tiny bricks of cement we previously consumed).

Anyway. We made our way to the big house by walking up a lane lined with, what the tour guide called baby oaks that are only about fifty years old. The branches, bowed by hurricanes and heat, were gnarled and tangled from trunk to tip and back again.



We weren't allowed to take photos inside the Big House so spent the time enjoying the stories of the original occupants of Oak Alley. We made our way into a large dining room whose walls were lined with doors leading out to the veranda. The design of the house allowed for cross ventilation, I am assuming to help keep the women from passing out beneath the many layers of skirts, petticoats and crinoline.

I guessed that the hoop-skirt fashion was designed to remove many of these layers while keeping the full swish of skirt. Our tour guide wore a hoop skirt in bright red and her blouse had lace frothing at her neck that was punctuated by what appeared to be an antique brooch.

Her sweet southern drawl told the story of a man who married a much younger woman and built the property to be her dream home. Standing exactly where they would have stood during a dinner party I was amazed at just how tiny everything was, the tables and chairs seemed better suited for a class of 5th graders, than a group of adults.

But, back before Flintstones Vitamins the men averaged about 5'5" tall and the women well under that. So having larger furniture would never have crossed their minds.

As she explained other traditions these diminutive southerners had my mind wandered. Not that I didn't find the peccadilloes of generations past entertaining; like serving sliced pineapple to guests as a showing of hospitality - but beware it you receive an uncut pineapple one morning - this is the passive-aggressive way of your hosts telling you that they enjoyed your stay but your pineapple breakfast is to go.

My mind wandered to the image of me, all 5'8" plus sized me, time travelling back to 1860's Louisiana and meeting these people. I imagine it would be much like this:



Only with less anger and fur - okay okay, MAYBE less anger, I can't promise that my road-rage is gone (though it has improved markedly).

Alright, alright! Also MAYBE less fur, I haven't spent much time with the Lady Bic, nice lady that she is... ANYWAY.

We were able to get a glimpse of what life was like back then, and be thankful for air conditioning, vehicles and the myriad of other modern conveniences we take for granted daily.

The original kitchen, a small building beside the big house separated by gardens, had burned down in the early 1900's and was only recently rebuilt as part of the exhibit. Another part of the plantation that was destroyed were the slave quarters. There is a memorial plaque in place near one of the baby oaks approximately where the old slave quarters would have been.

The plaque listed the plantation inventory from historical records. And by inventory I mean human beings. People with a price associated to them. It's astonishing really. The plaque said that each person had a value, and depending on your physical condition (a strong 35 year old male was worth as much as $1500 while a 60 year old one-armed man was worth $25), gender (females were worth much, much less) and skill set (cooks, blacksmiths and carpenters held the highest value) the plantation owner could buy or sell you whenever he wanted.

Without taking into consideration your family (all children belonged to the female and were sold as a group rather than individually) or personal wishes. Barbaric.

Anyway, the trip was enlightening and worth the 45 minute drive from downtown.

An alligator tale

On Saturday we got up at the crack of dawn to go and poke around some Louisiana swampland to see what we could stir up. I had spent a bit of the night before wondering what does one wear on a swamp tour?

Knowing that I would find in my suitcase I decided on a t-shirt and capris, that much was easy. Now for footwear. Sneakers? Flip-flops? If I wore sneakers and stepped in something we I would risk foot rot in these hot temperatures. But if I chose flip-flops, an alligator might just come up and chomp on my toes.

Oh the dilemmas one can concoct in the wee hours of the night. Thank the Lord for Twitter because I was able to glean much helpful information from the Internet and decided sneakers would be best.

Our tour company was Cajun Encounters and they picked us up right at the hotel. Now, if you have a car you can just drive right out to the dock on your own, there is parking and the total cost of the tour is cut in half. It's a bit of a drive, about 45 minutes from downtown New Orleans but totally worth it. If I were to do this again, I would certainly drive myself.

Not because the drive out isn't peppered with entertaining banter from the driver, but because at the end of the tour when you're all hot and sweaty and just want to go back to the hotel to shower, you have to wait for the van to return and that could be up to an hour (which it was, talk about MISERABLE). Anyway, that's not the point of this story, I'm off on a tangent - but wait! I just remembered that I have audio of the driver - I'm going to have to figure out how to put that on here because Hoo-Boy was it funny.

Anyway.

Once we were aboard our tour boat, our kind and very knowledgeable tour guide, Captain Tom, spent the two hours we were with him talking about the swamp itself, its inhabitants and the general goings on in and around the swamp.

These swamps are quite busy places.

A few minutes away from the dock we saw our first 'gator', not the original Gator we left behind in Boston because he's still roaming around The Rose with his lovely wifey. We saw an actual alligator.

Okay, it was more like a large lizard because it was just a tiny thing. They look so much larger on TV, I thought to myself.

Then Cindy showed up.

Hola Cindy!



Captain Tom said that they named her Cindy because she reminded them of Cindy Crawford.

Huh?

Oh, the little black speck that looks like a mole on her right side - haha. I'm sure Cindy Crawford is very flattered.

Anyway, Cindy came right up to the boat and we got a good look at the length of her.



She's one of three large females in the area that we were exploring and the only one feeling sociable enough to come out and say hello.

As we explored we saw dozens of little alligators, but none so large as Cindy, all over the place. We learned that in the state of Louisiana it is illegal to feed the alligators meat within a certain distance of people. So what did our guide throw into the water to get their attention?

Marshmallows.

Yep, puffed sugar is all it takes to attract the attention of a few alligators, large and small.

He said that it was because an alligator has a very small brain and really only has the capacity to think about two things - reproduction and food, though not at the same time I hope.

Anyway, he told us that if you feed meat to an alligator that will automatically make you a food source in that alligators brain. Whatever you feed them is what they assume you taste like. So, if you toss a chicken in the water for them to eat, they think you taste like chicken and will then size you up for lunch.

Feeding them marshmallows negates this danger. See, alligators have a special acid they release in their throat when eating to help breakdown their prey so the stomach can easily digest it. Their taste buds are located in their stomach, so they don't even taste anything until it's been swallowed (a faulty design if you ask me).

By feeding them marshmallows, which dissolve into nothing the second they hit the acid, the stomach doesn't register anything and they can't process the sugar so it's just a mouthful of nothing to them. So they assume that the person throwing the marshmallows and the boat full of people all taste like nothing and are not a food source.



So they don't attack us. Seems like good reasoning to me and it worked nicely as far as we could tell. We saw lots of alligators but they were all very docile, just swimming around in the brackish water.

We also saw some other swamp inhabitants.

There was the dragonfly that became my best friend on the trip, just hanging out for a bit and then flying off to parts unknown.



The sacred Ibis of ancient Egypt also lives in the swamps. Introduced to the area for reason I don't remember, they have flourished in the wet and humid conditions. They didn't come down out of their tree to say hello, they must have been too shy because I was snapping away like the Swamparazzi.



One bird that decided to give us a show of his (or her?) awesome fishing skills was this Great Blue Heron - amazing how HUGE this bird is and how it just snaps up its breakfast from the water.



We watched until it flew away to a nearby growth of trees, where we played a short game of Where's Waldo. Can you see Waldo the Blue Heron?



No?

How about now?



We also went through some of the "neighborhoods" of the swamp. People that have homes right on the water, and live there, where the only way in or out is by boat. One home had a handicapped parking placard out front that I found absolutely hilarious.



One of these home on the water belonged to Captain Tom.



He grew up in the swamp, though he now lives primarily in the French Quarter and has this family house that he and his sister inherited from their grandfather.

He said that there are places you can rent kayaks and small boats to do some independent exploration of the swamps not far from where we will dock at the end of the tour. But he had some advice for us in the form of a cautionary tale.

He, and several of the other tour captains, are part of a volunteer rescue squad called in when the police search and rescue can't find you. They only call these guys when it's really, very bad.

The squad got a call one day, a young couple had rented a kayak and taken off on a self guided tour, but hadn't returned. The police had combed the swamp to the best of their ability and found nothing. They needed help. Captain Tom and a few others packed up their gear and headed out in small boats. They each took enough supplies to last a few days, that's how long it can take to find people lost in the swamp, if they find them at all.

Tom was the one to find them, dehydrated and near death later the next day. They had been in the swamp less than 48 hours and another 5 or 6 hours would have cost them their lives.

They had come to Louisiana on vacation and hoping to see some wildlife, embarked on a kayak adventure. They figured they were smart people and could handle it, but according to Tom they made some really dumb mistakes.

First they only packed a light lunch of sandwiches and Corona, no water, for their trip. Second, they had a GPS but neglected to bring spare batteries. Third, they saw a wild boar and gave chase through the swamp, not paying attention to where they were going.

It wasn't until they had taken a slew of pictures and ate their lunch that they realized the GPS had spent the entire trip searching for signal. The constant searching combined with the heat were too much for the Energizer Bunny and the machine they depended on for navigation was dead.

They wandered further into the swamp without knowing it. Having no water they drank the beer which only further dehydrated their bodies. It was bad. The man was so dehydrated that he became incapacitated and the only thing that saved them was the wife remembering something on a nature program about the humidity causing copious amounts of dew in the mornings.

They barely survived the night and in the early dawn hours she wrapped her arm in her t-shirt and brushed it through the foliage around them, then squeezed the soaking garment over the mouth of an empty beer bottle. She managed to collect enough fresh water to keep them both alive until Tom found them.



These swamps are beautiful with their strange trees and unique wildlife, but they are dangerous and can kill you if you don't pay attention. Just the two hours we spent, in a motorized and covered boat, were enough for me. The sun shone over head mercilessly, the clouds offering no relief from the heat. I can't imagine being in a kayak without water for two days in this place.

We returned to the dock and thanked Tom for his educational and enlightening tour and were glad to soon be heading back to our air conditioned hotel room for a shower and then to lunch. We had an unfortunate wait for our return bus, about 45 minutes, and the waiting area is not air conditioned. It's just a screened in porch with a fan, so that seriously sucked. My advice to Cajun Encounters, if they were to ask, would be to get some AC in the waiting area or people won't be inclined to return. Though the trip is fascinating, having the parting memory being that of overheated and smelly people waiting in a too small space really negates the whole wonder of it all.

So, yeah, if you have the ability to drive yourself, do - you will be much better off at the end of the tour - trust me.

There are more pictures of the swamp up on my photo page at flickr (just follow the link in the menu bar).