Day 6 - Honey Island Swamp Tour

12-24-14, Christmas Eve - Wednesday.  We had reservations for the Noon swamp tour at Honey Island Swamp Tours. It's across Lake Pontchartrain in Slidell off the Pearl River. It was on/off sun in the morning but quickly clouded over and was very cold - 55 degrees.

Our tour guide was Renée Dupree. He wore cutoffs with boots and a cameo jacket! He was a pretty funny guy and other than freezing, we had a good time.



Renée Dupree taking another passenger's picture

We went through bayous (the main one was called Gum Bayou), the swamps and the Pearl River. We saw turtles sunning themselves (or maybe they were just trying to stay out of the cold water) and great blue herons. It was too cold for the alligators to be out - they bury themselves in the mud and don't come out until it gets warm.

Leaving the dock

Fishing shacks to the left of the dock

Fishing shacks to the left of the dock

Gum Bayou

Gum Bayou - you can see how low the water is right now but after winter the rivers will raise back up to the high water line on the trees

Gum Bayou

Gum Bayou

 

These little leaves grow on the trees only after it's rained.

 

Gum knees protect the trees from boats running into them.

The green leafy stuff growing around the tree is not native to her bayou/swamp and is very destructive.

Three trees that grew together.

When Honey Island was discovered many years ago on the Pearl River, it smelled very sweet. As it turns out, the island was full of honey bees - hence the name Honey Island! There are quite a few fishing shacks on the island but none of them are ever for sale. They're just handed down from one generation to the next. Most of them are in pretty rough shape.

Fishing shack on Honey Island

Fishing shack on Honey Island

Fishing shack on Honey Island

There were some really nice homes on the mainland side of the river. Renée told us that the alligators will come up on the yards to sign themselves but keep close to the water so they can escape if people come close.

On stilts for when the river floods

Big deck for fishing

Turtle on a log

Great blue heron

When we got back to town, we had a late lunch at Voodoo BBQ. This was Jim's choice of places to eat while we were in New Orleans. He'd eaten catered lunch from Voodoo a couple of times when he was working down there.

After our late lunch, we hung out in the condo the rest of the day/evening. We'd gotten cold on the swamp tour and were having a tough time warming up - the heat was cranked up and we kind of snoozed and read and watched TV. It was nice to do nothing since we'd been on the go ever since we'd gotten into town the 19th.