Acadiana

L'Acadia est la région de Lafayette a l'ouest de la Nouvelle Orléans, passé Bâton Rouge sur l'interstate 10. Nous étions à Henderson entre le bayou Teche et le Bassin Atchafalaya. Les locaux ont des noms français et parle ou baragouinent leur version de la langue, leur hospitalité est sans reproche, des gens simple et vrais.

Il y a des incontournables à faire ou à visiter en voici quelques exemples; Il faut absolument aller déjeuner le samedi matin au café des amis a Breaux Bridge, soyez certain d'être dans la file d'attente au plus tard à 7h00 pour avoir une place assise à l'ouverture vers 7h45, sinon vous devrez attendre au bar votre tour pour manger en prenant une bière et regardant le monde danser au son de l'orchestre Zydeco.

Aussi il y a le lac Martin qui est très connu des photographes, il y a une trail avec un boardwalk mais il était fermé pour rénovations, la meilleure façon de le voir est en bateau plat avec un opérateur local. Il y a un seul opérateur qui a des installations sur place au lac, mais comme il a fait toute sorte de magouilles selon les locaux Champagne est le gars le plus hait du parrish et de l’encourager n’aide pas la communauté dans notre cas on est allé avec http://www.cajuncountryswamptours.com/ et c’était excellent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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En passant sur l’interstate 10 entre Grosse Tête et Henderson un long pont de 18 miles de long ce qui le place 14ème au monde traverse le Bassin Atchafalaya un gros marécage 32 km de large par 240 km de long. Avec de gros Cyprès chauve un peu partout il fut un temps où il en était remplis mais comme le bois de ces arbres est entre autre résistant aux thermites et à la pourriture il fut coupé à outrance au 19ème siècle. Il est possible de visiter soit en Air boat ou Bateau Plat.

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Il y a trois iles de sel dans la région et deux d’entre eux peuvent être visité. La plus connue des deux est Avery Island ou est l’usine de Tabasco et le très photographié Jungle Garden. L’autre Jefferson Island avec une grosse maison d’époque et un magnifique jardin.

Dans la ville de Lafayette il y a aussi Vermillon ville un village d’antan reconstitué a visité.

La Louisiane (Nouvelle Orleans)

Notre destination première était South Padre Island à la fin du Texas sur la côte du golfe. L’épave sur laquelle je devais plonger n’était pas disponible en novembre, leur saison est terminée et de plus c’est un $600 de fuel allé et retour. Nous avons donc décidé de faire de Lafayette notre destination la plus a l’ouest de notre roadtrip.

Notre premier arrêt en Louisiane était la Nouvelle Orléans, nous étions stationnés sur le bord du canal du lac ponchartrain sur le mauvais bord de la digue. Il y avait un service de navette qui t’amène dans le quartier Français le matin et te ramasse le soir. En plus dans le parc il y avait un concours de BBQ avec juges etc..

 

Je vais en ville de jour, je ne tiens pas particulièrement au Night Life Urbain. A pied le meilleur moyen de visiter le coin. J’ai visité les endroits que je n’avais pas vu et voulait photographier, Mardi Gras World entre autre et le cimetière Saint Louis était dans ma ligne de mire. J’ai su plus tard que c’était un endroit dangereux pour les photographes, beaucoup de mugging.dans les coins isolé du cimetière.

Destin Fla. Oct. 2013

 

Destin en Floride est une ville de villégiature sur la côte nord du golfe du Mexique.

En novembre la saison touristique est terminée mais la météo est bonne, cette année mon épouse assistait une conférence, donc nous sommes arrêtés pour quelques jours, Le matin je peux prendre de grandes marches avec le chien, cette année il y avait un avertissement pour une maman ourse et 2 bébés, on ne l’a pas rencontré.

The trip (first leg)

So on the thursday after work, I got home attached the fifth wheel to the truck and we took off. Passing the border was our easiest ever, no traffic and no inspection as we usually have to go trough. This being our first real road trip with this new combination of truck and trailer I'm kind of curious to cross the Adirondack Park, it goes very well the truck pulls the load easily over the mountains. That night we make it to Woodstock home of the famous 1969 concert.

The next day we drove down to Natural Bridge in Virginia, called like this because of a natural arch first surveyed in the 18th century by none other then George Washington. We have been there before and spent the time to visit the surroundings. This time we were on the road with a deadline, we had to be in Destin, Florida on the monday morning for a conference my wife was attending. So we just stayed the night and hit the road the next morning.

On the saturday we drove down the 81 until it turns into the 40 down in Tennessee, our destination that night was in Chattanooga. When we got there the RV park was full, after verification they found a site but it was a tight fit If the fifth wheel would have been a foot more we could not get in. An interesting fact was that the RV park was on the site of a civil war battle.

On the sunday morning we took the 59 across Alabama until we reached Montgomery, then we took small roads south all the way to Destin, thanks to the time zone change that day we arrived at destination around 5h00 pm.

Patriot Point

As usual we decided not to drive directly to Montreal but to do at least one top on the way. Sebastien had never been to Charleston so we did a small detour and got a room in a Hotel at Patriot Point home of the Yorktown Carrier. We have half a day to spend there, not more because the plan is to sleep in Petersburg that night. So at 9h00 at opening time we are at the gate, still we can't see everything the carrier alone take most of a day if you want to see all of it. There is a Vietnam forward naval base and a WW2 Submarine to visit. There is also a new exhibit, a WW2 destroyer that I never saw.

So we decided to visit the Destroyer first since I had never visited it and then visited 85% of the Carrier before noon. It is quite impressive to visit exception made for the few planes on deck that are more modern it's like tang a trip in time to 1945 during the war in the pacific.
The scale of it is dwarfing, the pictures of the time illustrate well that wars are fought by young men in their twenties. When we visit the insides of the ship it gives us a good feel for what the life onboard would have been like.

Aft a brief visit of the gift shop we were on the road at 12h30 and that night we slept at our projected destination. The next day we drove back to Montreal and arrived home arround 21h00.
I am done traveling for a while so I wont be posting much until the fall.
In the meantime don't hesitate to visit my website www.bigphotodan.ca . I just finished getting all of the pictures in my computer, over 4000 of them and I will be updating my site as I work with them.

Blue Grotto

Today we are diving at the blue grotto another cavern located about a mile from our cabin, we get there and the outside part of the site is not as nice as the other place and Mr.Grumpy is in charge of the place, The briefing is a very nicely made video with emphasis on not touching the bottom. This cavern is deeper it goes down a chimney to a depth of over one hundred feet, to deep for the certification level of Sebastien and frankly to much for my comfort level. So we will stay in the first part that is delimitated by a line at 60 feet, actually on both dives there we did not exceed 55 feet. There is a nice turtle swimming at the surface.

The entry from a floating dock is easy and as soon as we go down spectacular. Once again there are some underwater platforms for gathering and our mandatory 3 minutes safety stop at 15 feet. The cavern is vast and with no pass-trough. There is even a diving bell feed with compressed air that I find cool but Sebastien does not like it. So we swim around taking pictures.

At the end of the last dive as we are waiting on the platform during our safety stop there is a lot of small fishes that are so close that we could touch them. Also as we exit there is one big catfish near the platform. It was a very nice dive indeed, now we pack up our dive gear for a long time and start our drive to the north.

We had great dives on this vacation a total of 14 and a lot of fun. We bring back memories an a few thousand pictures as well as some videos.

Devil's Den

After the manatees snorkeling we drove 45 miles to the cabin I had reserved at the Devil's Den a popular site for diving in a cavern environment with a depth profile not exceeding 52 feet and with most of the cavern allowing to ascend easily to the surface.
The cabin is perfect for our needs with 2 beds one on the main floor and the other one on the mezzanine. It's got a kitchen with stove and fridge and an outdoor grill for charcoal BBQ, there is a big covered porch perfect for hanging our gear to dry after diving. No internet in the cabin but we have access to a slow one at the dive shop. So we went and did a basic grocery so we can eat most of our meals at the cabin. There is a couple of divers in the cabin next to ours and they are very nice.

There is no fixed time to dive the cavern, we are allowed togo in any time between 9h00 and 17h00 so we have breakfast, do a morning dive, have lunch at the cabin and then do an afternoon dive. They fill up our tanks during the surface interval. We have to put all our gear on except fins and mask at the surface and then enter the cavern going down at least 50 steps and trough an entrance carved in the stone. At the bottom of the stairs there is a platform with stairs that goes down in the water where we can do our final set up. Under the water there is 2 or 3 more platforms, the first one at around 10 feet perfect for assembly of the team and buoyancy adjustment. There is a platform at 17 feet perfect to do our 3 minutes safety stop on the ascent.

So we start our first dive and first circle the cavern to get a better understanding of it's submerged configuration, we look for fossils that are present in that cavern but we can't find any, probably because of our lack of knowledge on what we are looking for. We go trough some passthrough but only the bigger ones because with the camera and flashes it's a bit awkward. So we end up this dive a bit before our air is all used up because Sebastien's is cold and the water being at 69f and he's wearing is shorty, it is understandable. We will go for lunch and he will wear his full wetsuit for the afternoon dive, also I wont bring the camera so that we can explore more of the narrow tunnel passages.

On our afternoon dive as we are getting ready a lone diver ask us if he can buddy with us, we agree and we are 3 to dive. We know that in the cavern there are some dead end tunnels that can be dangerous to dive trough, it was explained in the briefing, the good thing is that they are clearly marked, also before entering a tunnel we close our lights and make sure that there is daylight at the end of it. We go trough some pretty long and narrow ones, the longest I go trough is about 40 feet long and I have to rotate in order to squeeze out of the exit. By the time we surface we both agree that we had enough of cavern penetration and that would not be a diving specialty that we will take.

Tomorrow we go diving another cavern about a mile from here, but that will be another posting.