Fireworks

What a day and what a night! Just got back from a spontaneous trip to Louisiana. Sometimes you roll out of bed not knowing where the day is gonna take you...

I was lazy and slept in until about 3pm on Sunday. When I finally got out of bed I decided to go on a little road trip, visit the Walgreens in Orange where I used to work, and maybe see some of Louisiana while I was at it. Hillary and I broke up recently, so I planned on going it alone, but before leaving I received an IM from Lisa, who I last saw back in January. She lives in Orange, and since I was already going that way...

There were a couple of mockingbirds attacking a snake (a Blotched Watersnake, I think) in front of her parent's house. We didn't really have a plan - just got in the car and started driving. Crossed the Sabine River, and stopped at a rest area on the Louisiana side. There's a swamp boardwalk there...didn't see much there aside from dragonflies and cypress knees. No gators, no turtles. But there were magnificent curtains of spanish moss hanging from the cypresses, and a Northern Parula was singing from somewhere in the canopy. It really looked like Louisiana is supposed to look, that postcard image of the blue bayou...

We didn't have any luck finding a good place to eat in Sulphur, so we kept driving and finally stopped at a seafood place off the highway in Lake Charles... mood lighting, unwanted shell fragments in my crawfish etouffée, and $$...We've both had better, but then it didn't suck either.

Next stop was the Isle of Capri Casino. It was already dark when we arrived, and we joined the crowd atop the parking garage to watch the fireworks display across the water - nice show, and there was a cool breeze, so it felt good to be outside. Birds were swarming around a high rooftop nearby, and I was curious but didn't make any effort to identify them...all I know is they definitely weren't nighthawks (might have been swallows). Played the cash eating machines (or did they play us?), and as soon as Lisa and I had thrown all our money away we hit the road again. My pockets were about $30 lighter after that little adventure. Then it was back to Orange, where a big yellow moon was rising above the trees, and the stars were out.

...and now I'm back home, and it's the middle of the night. It was good seeing Lisa again. A couple of random observations from recent days come to mind...a Green Treefrog, its body inflated like a little balloon, calling to others of its kind from atop the drive-thru sign at the Jack-in-the-Box...a Summer Tanager fluttering down from a tree in my yard with a huge cicada buzzing loudly in its beak...