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Niagara Falls and fall foliage wrap-up

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This is a final entry about my fall foliage trip, very much overdue. I decided to pay a short visit to Niagara Falls on my way back home. I caught the very end of fall foliage there. The foliage that was more sheltered away from the falls seemed to still be much fuller than right by the main flow of the river: Compared to: The main river was still pretty, but it was harder to find a spot that showed very much fall color. Along the river I saw some trees with interesting vines growing in them that turn bright red in the fall: I was able to revisit a couple of favorite spots in the park and see some I missed the first time. It was really nice to be able to walk the park without paying quite as much attention to avoiding overdoing it as I had to a year and a half earlier. Now for some closing thoughts: I lived in California for many years, where there certainly are trees that change color, but it's much more spread out over months and the trees are fewer and f
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Closing notes

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I'm heading home today and the sightseeing is finished for this trip. My intention this winter was not to be gone for so long that I was really sick of traveling by the end of my trip, and I succeeded at that. However, I'm also not feeling completely ready to be back home. ----- I am glad that I got back near home before the current storm arrived in the Southeast. If I'd spent another few days traveling before starting to head home, I'd have had to deal with the kind of weather I was most hoping to miss on this trip. For the most part, I've had fabulous weather, almost no insects, and light traffic. My kind of trip. ----- Normally when I think about speed limits I think about road conditions or human conditions (such as school zones). Factoring into the 50 mph speed limit on the Natchez Trace Parkway there is another consideration: wildlife. On the latter part of my trip I saw a wild turkey cross the road and decide halfway across to start flying instead of
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Just when I thought I was out of swamp country...

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I knew that there would be a bit of cypress swamp just North of Jackson, MS because the helpful young men at the information center pointed it out to me the day before. What I wasn't expecting was more cypress swamp even further North. That got me starting to wonder where the Northernmost cypress swamp is located in North America. That was easy to find out thanks to this article:  https://conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2017/02/16/fun-fact-did-you-know-that-calvert-county-is-home-to-the-northernmost-natural-range-of-bald-cypress-trees-in-america/  It looks like I can visit the Northernmost cypress swamp the next time I drive to Maryland. Until then, this is the Northernmost cypress swamp that I've walked in: I also saw more slash pine, and to satisfy a similar curiosity about them, I found this map of its growing area (source: https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/pinell/all.html ): And more saw palmetto too  https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/
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I think I'm paying for that cafe au lait

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Footnote to the previous entry: During the swamp tour, there was a woman roughly my age from Alberta, Canada who was accompanied by someone she'd hired as a tour guide in this part of the South. Not only did her tour guide rave about Lake Martin (the tour I took) compared to other possible swamp tours, but he insisted that I try gator meat while I was in the area. Both he and the Canadian woman said it tastes like chicken. I found a place close to my hotel that served gator as an appetizer. This gator was fairly heavily spiced and deep fried. I ate mine with some of the breading removed so that I could taste the gator a bit better. After sampling gator, I'm not at all sure why people would say that "it tastes like chicken" unless they mean that it can be prepared in similar ways. In my experience, gator is quite a bit more gamey than chicken. I happen to like gamey meats, so that was fine with me. The day after the beignets and cafe au lait (and fried alligator and
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How do you pronounce Baton Rouge? (part 2)

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Footnote to the previous entry: It was odd to cross the Mississippi River without also crossing a state line. Now to continue into the swamp! I really wondered whether my navigator had fallen into some kind of trance sending me through what looked like new housing construction in soon-to-be suburbs instead of sending me to Lake Martin. But after I got there, it did seem to have taken me on the most direct route, I just didn't expect the big new houses along the way. This is more like what I expected, and I did eventually get to the dirt road and the old shack: The restroom was clean, but had some interesting features, including a spatula and a sharp folding knife drying on a ledge near the sink: I loved the swamp tour. One of the other tourists has been on several swamp tours and thinks that Lake Martin is the best. I don't know about that, but I can say it was wonderful. It's unlike anywhere I've been before and felt magical to me. Here are a couple of ph
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How do you pronounce Baton Rouge?

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I'll get to that question later. When I saw the photo on Champagne's Swamp Tours website, I knew I wanted to go if at all possible:  https://champagnesswamptours.com/swamp-boat-tours/  That was farther than I wanted to drive from Fairhope in a single day, but it was an easy day trip from where I planned to stay near Baton Rouge. They had openings in the 1pm tour on the day I planned to be there, so I planned the day around that. Soon I had other ideas: beignets and the LSU Rural Life Museum. That's where this photo was taken: When I arrived, I noticed a docent-led tour of a bunch of school-age kids beginning not far from the front desk. I slowly approached the group, looking at various exhibits, until I got to where I would have had to excuse myself to someone to get past them into the next room. Instead, I checked in with one of the adults in the group to ask if it was okay, and then I tagged along with them for a while. The adult that I spoke with explained that t
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Last Gulf Coast Hurrah

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It was raining lightly when I started out from Fairhope, Alabama this time, heading out on the homestretch of my trip after a second visit with my friend there. From her house to I-10 is about 10 miles, then it's freeway all the way to the Mississippi border. Within the first 30 miles on I-10, I saw the aftermath of three accidents. And they make fun of Californians for not being able to drive in the rain... Of course I have no way of knowing that the accidents didn't involve California drivers 😊 I cut over to the coast at Biloxi and I came across the visitor center just as I was looking for a place to use the restroom. Right across from the visitor center is a pier: And the beach that was the site of some important civil rights demonstrations: Inside the visitor center I saw this postcard on display: I had suspected mosquitos were bad here and now it's confirmed. By visiting the Southeast in January, I've gotten off very easy bug-wise. I'm sure
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