Day sixty six - Wednesday

We left the coach this morning with the intent of going by the office of a local tour company to see what our options would be with this company. We ended up in a small office located on the Pearl River just east of Slidell.

The clerk talked us out of taking their plantation tour, telling us they really only provide transportation to the plantation. Since we have a car, we can drive ourselves. However, they had a swamp tour leaving in just ten minutes. We paid $23.00 each for the two-hour boat tour and got aboard with 19 other people.

On this tour we floated down the Pearl River seeing a small alligator and a house that had been washed down stream several miles by Hurricane Katrina. The house was still intact but now swamped, literally, in about two feet of water.

Our tour guide, a Cajun, turned us around and ran us back upstream and into a swamp. Here, we entered very shallow water and moved along very slowly as he described the wildlife and ecology of the swamp. Here, we saw two more alligators, several snakes, including a Cottonmouth Water Moccasin. Turtles were everywhere and the flora and fauna was fascinating.

After the swamp tour we headed to Lakeshore Mississippi where we visited the Silver Slipper Casino. Ann did some gambling before we had an early dinner (supper) at the buffet. We paid half price for the buffet and found it was quite good for a casino buffet. There was a surprising variety and the food was very good, especially the catfish and the ribs. The ribs weren't BBQ, they were smoked.

Back at the coach we had a game of Scrabble and called it an evening.

Top photo shows the swamp we toured and the bottom photo shows one of the alligators we saw on the tour.