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

Shepard State Park - Gautier, Mississippi - Biloxi - Mardi Gras

We have been at Shepard State Park in Gautier (go-shay), Mississippi for a few days and will be leaving for Louisiana tomorrow.  We stayed at the Lamotte Bayou Campground which is part of Shepard State Park.  While we were here it rained a lot so we haven't gotten out too much but we did go to Biloxi on Tuesday (Fat Tuesday) and saw some of the Mardi Gras festivities.  

Our Route From Alabama to Mississippi

The entrance to the state park is an interesting elevated log building - the building is the welcome center and camp store but it was being renovated due to hurricane damage so it was not open

Entrance to the campground

Our campsite among the palmettos

One of the many casinos in Biloxi - this guitar was enormous and surprisingly detailed - pic was taken from a moving vehicle so its a little blurry

Part of the huge crowd for Fat Tuesday

Another casino - more of the crowd

Biloxi Light House - built in 1848 - had water 1/3 the way up during Katrina but it survived!

We even found Margaritaville 

Lots of interestingly named establishments along the coast

We walked the somewhat famous Biloxi Bay Bridge which is about 1.5 miles long so about a 3 mile walk out and back.  The bridge was heavily damaged by Katrina in 2005 and was redesigned and rebuilt - it reopened in  2008 - Golden Nugget Casino in the background (Darby's head in forground)