Aviation and Cypress Sawmill Museum

We went to two museums housed in one big building in Patterson, LA. The full name is the Wedell Williams Aviation Museum and the Cypress Sawmill Museum. The museum is a division of Louisiana State Museum with free admission! Wedell and Williams were two guys from LA that were very good at flying/building airplanes. Here are some pictures!

This platform is where we watched a video telling us about the history of the planes on exhibit.


Next we walked over to the Cypress Sawmill Museum. The cypress trees were cut from the Atchafalaya Basin and the surrounding bayous in Patterson/Morgan City. For the most part, the logging equipment was on display. This was my favorite part because I like trees better than planes. I am in most of the pictures to show scale (not because I'm a camera hog!).

This is the oldest harvested cypress tree!

This is a rain cistern made of cypress wood. Cisterns were made from cypress wood because the wood doesn't rot. It was huge!

A log flipper for cutting the wood into planks.

Mortar and pestle made from cypress wood.

My grandfather made his own sawmill for planking wood and this piece of equipment reminds me of his sawmill!

This is a Navy plane on display in the front parking lot. Dave is standing by it.

That's it for now, until next time!

Bird nest

I found this bird nest high up in a maple tree in our front yard. I noticed the nest while walking to the mail box a few days ago. What type of bird makes this nest?

I hope the baby birds don't fall out the nest, its very high up!

Chicot State Park

Dave and I stayed overnight at Chicot State Park in Ville Platte, LA. The park has a huge lake called Lake Chicot and some of the cabins are situated on the banks of the lake. We stayed in cabin #24 which happened to be by the lake with a fishing pier! We loved the park and will go back in spring. Here are a few pictures from our stay.

This is our cabin, although its more like a small trailer. It has two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living room. The cabin goes for $85/night. The best thing about our cabin was the boat launch/fishing pier located right behind the cabin!

We fished on the pier alot but never caught any fish.

There were a bunch of cypress trees at the edge of the lake.

This picture was taken at another part of the lake. The fishing pier was huge and extends far into the lake. We discovered an abandoned dog at the pier and he followed us around until we got in the truck and left.

Me with the dog. He was so nice! We called the park ranger and reported the lost dog but the rangers couldn't do anything about him. They don't have animal control in that parish so he will stay at the park until someone takes him home.

Next we went to the Louisiana State Arboretum, located inside Chicot State Park. There is a visitor center by the parking lot and beyond that is miles of hiking trails. We spent about 2 hours walking on the trails. We saw tons of armadillos!

This armadillo was digging for grubs next to the boardwalk and didn't even notice us. I was able to sneak close to him and take a picture. The grubs must have been deep in the soil because he was halfway buried in the dirt.

One of the boardwalks at the arboretum.

The best part of our stay at Chicot was the raccoons that visited our cabin at night. We were sitting outside by the camp fire and heard some animals walking up behind us. We got the flashlights out and saw three raccoons! They smelled our hot dogs and wanted us to feed them. We didn't give them our food, although one raccoon climbed on the picnic table and tried to pull a plate out of Dave's hand! They stayed by our camp fire around 20 minutes and then moved on to another cabin in search of food.

Support Your Local Independent Nursery Month

Pam from Digging has declared October "Support Your Local Independent Nursery Month" so today I am featuring my go-to garden center---Louisiana Nursery. The main reason I love Louisiana Nursery is the sales! At the end of the year all tropical plants are reduced 90%. Can't beat that. They also have many stores located around Baton Rouge and one in Prairieville. I frequent the Perkins Road and Prairieville location often, but the Perkins Road nursery is my favorite and thats where these pictures were taken.

The mums were so pretty! LA Nursery has so many colors to choose from. Mums look so nice for holiday displays! Don't forget to plant your mums in a sunny spot in your garden. They are perennials so they will come back every year and bloom a few times a year too.

A huge Crotan display! Keep them in a sunny spot and the leaves will hold color; put them in shade and the leaves loose color.

This petunia was the most interesting petunia I've seen. It looks black and gold, just like the New Orleans Saints! Maybe thats why this was the last one. Around here anything that is black/gold or purple/gold goes quick!

Pansies are great cool season plants. LA Nursery has plenty of color choices but everyone was filling their cart with the purple and gold pansies! Go LSU Tigers!

Red Stick Farmer's Market

Every Saturday local farmers meet in downtown Baton Rouge to sell their produce at the farmer's market. The market is not limited to just fruits and vegetables, you can find a grandma/grandpa team selling freshly baked bread, jelly, or pies. I'm always tempted to buy bread and this time I caved in a bought an $8 loaf of chocolate bread!

When we got home, I tore a section off and microwaved it for 10 seconds. That made it so soft and gooey. I need to go back and get another loaf! The bakers of my chocolate bread are a husband and wife team who are retired and started a second career baking. They are located in Plaquemine (right across the river from me) and had a wide assortment of different breads for sell. Once I saw the chocolate bread I didn't want anything else!

Dave picked up another 2 pound jug of honey for $12. Thats a good price considering what Walmart sells honey for. He buys the River Road honey and it tastes alot better than anything you'd buy at Walmart.

The plant vendors are at the entrance to the farmer's market. I almost bought more catnip for Ginger (outside cat) but I passed it by. Looking back, I don't know why I didn't buy the catnip. It was a healthy plant at a good price.....

A table full of vegetables! I don't like any of the vegetables on the table!

The following pictures are table tops in the cafe that kids have painted. I wish I could take pictures of all the tables, but there were too many. They were all cute! The kids can paint better than me!

New plants

A few weekends ago Dave and I went to Louisiana Nursery to check out the selection of clearance plants. We found a great deal on a 3G red hibiscus that was 90% off! We only paid $1.80 for it! I picked a hibiscus that I could separate into two plants so I really got two hibiscus for $1.80. The plants were root bound and needed to be re-potted; now they are looking great! Here are some other plants I bought:

This is a Rabbit's Foot fern. It gets its name from the hairy foot like stems that grow from the soil. It is very unusual! Here is a close up of the "rabbit's foot".

This is an aloe but I don't know the name of it. Didn't come with a tag. Maybe David from Tropical Texana can identify it for me. He has lots of aloes and agaves.

Out and About

Dave and I were off work Wed-Sat and we spent time at local attractions.

Wednesday we visited the WWII museum in New Orleans. The museum has volunteer WWII veterans at the museum and we talked to an 85 year old veteran who served in the Navy and told us lots of stories about piloting boats in the Pacific. He talked to us for at least 30 minutes and even showed us a picture of him and his wife on their wedding day in 1954. They are still married today.

Thursday we went fishing at Sherburne WMA. This is a great place to see wildlife! We saw a Barred Owl, lots of rabbits and deer, and a few cardinals.

We came across this bridge but it was too high to fish off of. It was a pretty place though.

I took this picture on the bridge overlooking the bayou.

This is a sign that was by the bridge. There are several signs like this one located across the WMA and it gives you local info about the wildlife.

We saw these bushes all over the place! Its called Beautyberry and the birds love the berries!

Friday we went to Port Hudson State Historic Site. This was a Civil War battle site that the North eventually captured. The Confederate troops held off the Union for 48 days. Port Hudson was the longest siege in American military history! They have a small museum that has Civil War artifacts.

Dave loved seeing the canons that the Union and Confederate troops actually used!

This is me beside a Confederate flag that was really used in the war. It was so big!

Port Hudson has trails through the woods where battles took place. One strategy that the Confederate soldiers used was to dig deep trenches and fire upon the enemy from these trenches. They were also a way for the soldiers to move around the field without the Union troops seeing them. These ditches are called earthworks and can still be seen today!

This is one of the trails we walked on. Every now and then, we saw a sign telling about a battle that took place at that spot on the trail.

Port Hudson is a great place to visit if you like history, they even have Civil War re-enactments there in March. I've never been to one, but we're going to go next March.