Acadiana Park in Lafayette, Louisiana

May 1, 2023

As both us were feeling almost back to normal, we decided to go for a short hike/walk. In looking at the map, Acadiana Park was close by and it got good reviews. It is a city park of 150 acres with 6 miles of trails and a campground. http://naturestation.org/pages/about-us

Since they allow dogs, we took Nox with us in the truck.

There isn’t a lot of parking by the trail head. We were lucky that someone left as we were trying to find a parking spot.

The Nature Station is in the campground, but there is a trail to it from the trailhead.

On either side of the trail was Virginia creeper and in among the Virginia creeper was poison ivy.

Bruce kept Nox on a tight leash to keep her out of the poison ivy. Nox has a superpower of finding poison ivy on the side of trails.

We got a ways down the trail, when I realized mosquitoes had found me. I told Bruce we needed to turn around and get mosquito spray out of the truck. I told him this as I was walking back to the truck, slapping mosquitoes.

After spraying ourselves with mosquito spray, we decided to take the path to the campground and see if it would be a good fit for our RV.

It was a beautiful campground, with large trees a couple of playgrounds. The sites were short and we wouldn’t fit in the biggest ones. There was a nice amount of space between sites.

We put Nox in her backpack and decided to stop in at the Nature Station. It is small with with turtle shells and other various natural items. They made the most of the tiny space. They did have a couple of live corn snakes. There was a poster with the poisonous snakes in the area.

When we went outside, I noticed some turtles on the downed trees in the creek behind the Nature Station. The naturalist saw us looking at the turtles and he stopped and talked to us for a while.

Bruce mentioned the mosquitoes and the naturalist kindly offered us mosquito spray. We didn’t take him up on his offer since we had already sprayed ourselves with mosquito spray. He pointed out the kayak launch next to the Nature Station and talked about kayaking to the Vermillion River.

We said goodbye to the naturalist and head out on the boardwalk. The boardwalks had stairs down to paths through the woods. The boardwalks also had seating.

There were some majestic trees along the boardwalk. We also saw Louisiana Irises blooming among the ferns next to the boardwalk. Dragonflies flittered around the boardwalk. I was lucky enough to get a picture when one landed.

It was a beautiful day and the hiking was just right for us. Nox was excited to get harnessed into the truck and head home.

We took her for a walk when we reached the RV. She was happy to stretch her legs.

Once inside the RV, a short while later, I noticed she was sound asleep. She was worn out.