Saturday, February 17, 2018

Tickfaw State Park, Ponchatoula, LA, Alligators

We left Shepard State Park and are now at Tickfaw State Park in Livingston Parish, Louisiana.  Much of Tickfaw State Park is a cypress swamp with miles of boardwalks throughout for viewing wildlife in their natural habitat.  Lots of hiking trails and a popular place for canoeing and kayaking.

Our Route

Our Site

We visited Ponchatoula, Louisiana which is the self proclaimed strawberry captial of the world and is actually a nice little town with much of the downtown restored to how it looked in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  There are lots of antique shops and many places to eat.

Turn of the century locomotive of the Louisiana Cypress Lumber Co. which was based in Ponchatoula

View Of Downtown

Sign at the State Park

Section of the many elevated boardwalks through the cypress swamp

Another section of the boardwalk

Our first alligator of the year - about 7 or 8 feet long

He looks Happy! 

The second alligator we saw here - about the same size as the first - he was blocking our hiking trail - it was a loop so we reversed direction and sure enough he was still there when we came around the other way so we had to backtrack back to the campground

View of same alligator from the other side

Another alligator

5 Line Skink - right behind the camper

Pretty good size Rat Snake - about 4 to 5 feet long

Close-up of the same snake

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