A Few Disappointments in Louisiana

David felt enervated and tired this morning but better than yesterday. Fortunately we didn’t have far to go and got to our next campground, Ajax Country Livin’ RV Park, around 11. The office was closed, but information was posted so that we could pick a site and pay. The campground was a large gravel lot on a slope with some grass and a few trees. We picked the most level site. I got an envelope from the porch and paid for two nights. After we set up and had lunch, we drove to Natchitoches (“Nakatish”), a pleasant little town on a river with a 33-block National Historic Landmark District.

We drove around. I got out and took photos of buildings and churches while David stayed in the car, resting. Then we went to WalMart and returned to the campground where we did our laundry. Most of the people there were temporary workers and had two trucks as well a camper. We had seen a lot of huge pipelines being assembled and buried in various locations and assumed these workers were here for that, especially since many of them seemed to have welding equipment. David overheard one of the workers wonder where he was going to park his truck now that we were in our campsite.

We were eating dinner when there was a knock on the door, around 7:30. A woman stood there and demanded to see my discount card, although I had written down the number already. I showed her the card. Then she insisted we pay more money, because we were in a 50-amp site. We explained we were plugged in to the 30-amp receptacle, not the 50-amp receptacle. She insisted that the instructions clearly stated that 50-amps were more. But we’re not using 50 amps, we said. She said we could move to another site that had only a 30-amp receptacle. In the dozens of campgrounds we’ve stayed at, we’ve never encountered this situation. In every other campground that had 30/50 amp sites, you pay for whatever amperage you use. David said we would move to a 30-amp only site. Later he decided he was too tired, so we decided to pay the ransom and leave the next day instead of staying two nights. It wasn’t the amount of money, but the principle and the woman’s attitude. Besides, the campground was marginal anyway.

The next day David was feeling better. We went to Cotile Lake Recreation Area in Boyce. It’s a big park with lots of trees on a pretty good-sized lake. The campsites have concrete pads and concrete picnic tables and power that would be hard to reach without an extension cord. We got a really nice spot overlooking the lake and woods. As I was walking backwards, directing David into the site, I tripped over a brick, stumbled and fell, hurting my leg. I screamed as I fell and lay on the ground moaning, rubbing my leg. David got out of the truck and told me to get up before the cavalry got there. A woman and her small dog were headed my way. She asked me if I was okay. I told her I was fine, just a little bruised. Then she told me some big weather was coming, and they were getting ready to leave. We checked the weather. It was going to rain later in the day.

The "vista"

After lunch, we left to drive on the 17-mile Longleaf Trail Scenic Byway through another part of the Kisatchie National forest. Louisiana has only one national forest, but it’s divided into five sections in the state. The sky was grey and threatening. It looked like it could rain any moment. The photocopied brochure I had delineated 14 stops. The first stop was an overlook. It didn’t really overlook much. Next was Longleaf Vista where there was a nature trail and some outdoor plaques. We started walking on the nature trail. There was thunder; it got darker and started to rain, so we turned back. The forest here is mainly a longleaf pine sandhills-type habitat, different from other habitats we’ve seen in LA. We tried to find the other stops on the map, but either they weren’t well-marked or weren’t marked at all and, except for a tree used by woodpeckers, we missed them all. We drove down one dirt road to see vistas and the “little Grand Canyon”, but all you could see were trees and forest. No vistas and no canyon view. Except for the nature trail, it seemed like the rest of the scenic byway stops were a stretch. The entire forest had been logged and what we were seeing was “second” growth, as are many if not most forests in the south. Although the drive was somewhat disappointing, if we hadn’t done it, we would have wondered what we had missed.

The rain had stopped, so we headed to Oakley Plantation, part of the Cane River Creole National Historical Park. It had gotten down to the low 50’s. A big wind and rain had just come through and knocked out their power, so they couldn’t allow us in the house. We walked around the grounds a little, but then it started pouring rain, so we decided to head back and skip our final stop at another plantation.