Saturday Afternoon Swamp Excursion

This past weekend the weather was absolutely phenomenal.  It had been a long time since we had gone canoeing and Russ wanted to take our canoe, The Garfish, out for an excursion.  I have a friend who has some land that is riverfront property and it is closer to our house that the 15 minute drive through town and out to the public launch to go canoeing in Bayou Nezpique.

My buddy's property is only a 5 minute drive from our house.  You just take two right turns, a left turn, drive to the end of a gravel road and you end up here:

The Swamp

What you have to do is launch your canoe (or pirogue) into the swamp and paddle through the cypress trees and cypress knees until you hit land.  It's only about 100 yards.  Then you pick up your canoe and carry it about 20 yards and you're at the riverbank.  I decided to take some pictures as we got started.

The sights and sounds are incredible.  Palmetto grows up from spots on the dry land and the slow moving water contains a lot of critters.  Spanish moss hangs down from the trees, drooping like beards from the trees.

I snapped a photo of a strange looking white lily:

Here is some palmetto growing, surrounded by a blanket of ferns:

After paddling through the swamp and then carrying the canoe on dry land for a bit, we arrived at the shore of Bayou Nezpique.  This is the same bayou that we normally canoe on but it is probably 5 miles north (as the crow flies).  The chocolate milk-looking water was very still, but of course that is what a bayou is - slow moving water.



Bayou Nezpique

Looking upward, you can see some of the Spanish Moss hanging from all the trees.  Next time we'll bring our fishing poles.  Today, we were running out of daylight and just wanted to get our bearings.  My buddy told us that we can use his land any old time we please.  What a deal!

As I'm walking through the woods, I like to look around and take it all in.  While observing the sights, I located a huge muscadine vine that was growing up and into a small tree.  I told my friend about it and he was pretty excited.  Muscadines are a wild edible grape that make great jelly.  I marked the spot and we'll be back in the summer to harvest some grapes from our new-found vineyard. 

As we were foraging, we also found some oyster mushrooms growing on the side of an old willow tree that had fallen.  We picked them to bring home and cook in an omelet, but doggonit if I didn't leave them in the truck.  We came to a large spot that looked like the land had been plowed.  What in the world?!  Looking down, I saw this:
 

Wild hog tracks

Yep, wild hogs.  These boogers are taking over.  They root around looking for acorns to eat along with edible roots and stuff.  We want to bring our tents and have both of our families camp-out one weekend before it gets too warm and the mosquitoes come out, but we'll have to find a spot away from the herd of wild hogs. 

Here is a close-up of some of the ferns that are growing up all over the place with the bright green contrasting against the dull colors surrounding us in the swamp. 

Bright green ferns

It was getting a little dark and we didn't want to get stranded in the swamp at night, so we started to make our way back to where our trucks were parked.  We canoed past a huge old bald cypress tree, whose trunk spread out at the bottom to approximately ten feet.  I know you can't get perspective from the picture below, but trust me when I say it was enormous.


Huge bald cypress tree

We loaded up the canoe and Warren's pirogue into our trucks and just leaned against the tailgate and watched and listened as two owls hooted at one another.  Lightning bugs started their light show and wood ducks would soon come whistling through the cypress branches after spending the day eating live oak acorns.  What a nice spot!  We'll be coming here often as it is close in proximity to our home and the sights are breathtaking.