Bluebonnet Swamp

 Baton Rouge, LA

Another day, another boardwalk to walk along.

Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center

Today we drove to the Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center.  We wanted to see mushrooms that might have sprung up since the rain yesterday as well as birds so we spent our time looking down and up as we walked.  BSNC has a network of trails and boardwalks leading from the Nature Center.  The Nature center has some nice displays as well as some enclosures with snakes and other wildlife from Louisiana and beyond.

There were many snakes and turtles being looked after here.

They had a wall of insects you might see in the area.  They were only slightly larger than real life.

They also sold this hat that didn't appeal to me at all.

We found some Common Script Lichen.  We were looking for Christmas Lichen but didn't find any.

The swamp had some great Bald Cypress growing.

We found some Turkey Tail or False Turkey Tail fungus

We also saw Crowded Parchment 

And Wood ear fungus

The Resurrection Fern as in full resurrection after the rain.

Here is another example of Wood ear.  

I was messing around in Google Photos and found a heatmap of the photos I have stored in it.  It closely resembles our County Map.

Here is our County Map as it stands today.  We are 696 Counties now (including parishes).

That's it for today.  Also posts might not come daily anymore.  We are taking our time to relax in Baton Rouge and I am also playing a lot of Animal Crossing.  I will post interesting things when they happen and I am sure things will get really interesting when we get to NOLA on December 5th.

If you missed my previous post you can find it here.  We learned how Tabasco is made.

The Home of Tabasco

 Avery Island, LA

They have a shrinking ray so you can take selfies with "giant" Tabasco Bottles!

Tabasco Factory Tour

Today we did the 1.5 hr. drive through Lafayette, LA and down to Avery Island, LA to tour the Tabasco Factory.  We had booked our tickets online so when we arrived we went to the Museum and picked up our stickers.  They also gave us tiny Tabasco bottles.  The tour leads you through 8 buildings and is self guided.  It was a Tuesday so it wasn't too crowded but you could tell they had the capacity for big crowds.

The grounds were beautiful.  The family that owns Tabasco has conserved the land and looks out for nature.

I assume you can buy an empty barrel

The museum was the weakest link in the tour IMHO.

Various Tabasco knock offs

For some reason they grew a bunch of bamboo.  It was cool but didn't really fit in.

They don't grow the peppers they use here but they did have a few plants

They use charred white oak barrels.  They didn't specify where they get them.  They replace all of the bands with stainless steal and knock back the char before they age the pepper mash.

The mash ages for up to three years.  They put salt on the top of the barrels to seal them off from contaminants. It isn't high proof alcohol so they have to take extra steps.

After aging the barrels are blended with each other and vinegar and then mixed for 2 to 3 weeks.

A large hunk of salt from the local salt mine

Need any salt?

They bottle M-Th.  Today they were bottling the green stuff which we like very much.

A Tabasco chandelier 

A model of the mosquito used in a commercial to try to get more people to use the Tabasco they already had in the fridge.

After the tour we went to lunch.  It was just a walk up and order type place.  The food wasn't amazing but they had all of the sauces there to try and it was fun.

They had Gator Claws in the gift shop.  I assume these are a byproduct from meat and gator skins but that doesn't mean that it isn't grizzly and a terrible idea.

This was the closest thing to a cool shirt I could find.  I was surprised at their lack of hipster T-shirt selection.  They need to contract a few designers.  There is money to be made!

There was also a tasting bar for people that didn't eat in the restaurant.

Grooming children to keep the crawfish boil tradition alive

Afterwards we took the auto tour of Jungle Gardens and Bird City.

This is Bird City.  It's a rookery for Egrets, mostly Snowy Egrets.  In the 19th Century Plume Hunters nearly wiped out the Snowy Egret population.  They would hunt during nesting season and the chics of hunted parents would starve.  The McIlhenny family (owners of Tabasco and the land) found several surviving Egrets and brought them back to Avery Island and set up this breeding platform.  It worked.  At one point it was estimated that 90% of the Snowy Egret population was here on Avery Island.

Afterwards we headed home.  We were stopping in Lafayette to get dog food and then traveling back the way we came.  This part of Louisiana has few options for traveling South or West.  On the way back we heard there was a bad accident on the I-10 bridge and traffic was backed up for miles adding 55 minutes to our supposed 1 hour 20 minute drive.  Donna looked for alternate routs but they were all longer than the delay so we sat in stop and go traffic for the first time in a very long time.

These times weren't accurate for the time we looked.  I-10 was hosed and the other option was showing within a few minutes of I-10 so we stayed the course. 

We added 4 more parishes on this trip.  

That's it for today.  If you missed yesterday's 36 inch Po' boy you can read about it here.