It was cloudy and dull when I woke this morning followed shortly by more rain. I prepared myself for a repeat of yesterday’s dull and rainy conditions. Mother nature surprised me. By late morning the clouds were gone and the sun was shinning brightly. The temperature climbed into the low nineties. The humidity made it feel much warmer.
Sunny day on the side of Lake Pontchartrain.
It was a beautiful three walk day in the park. With each walk the standing water got lower, but it is still necessary to stay on the paved surfaces. Most people seem to be doing more driving than walking right now. Those drivers missed the deer I saw this evening.
An alligator on patrol.
Tomorrow is moving day. I’m have about two hundred miles to travel in a northerly direction. Hopefully the Gulf of Mexico won’t have as much influence on the weather. It will still be hot and humid, but the thunderstorms may be more predictable.
Last night as I was going to sleep rain was falling on the roof of my RV home. It started very heavy then leveled out to at a moderate pace. According to the TV weather talkers it let up after a couple of hours. Around 7AM it resumed with a vengeance. The roar of falling rain on the roof woke me up. The good news is it was a good alarm clock so I could watch the Blue Origin rocket launch. The bad news is it continued steadily all morning. The sky brighten during the early afternoon, but another line of storms arrived around 4PM. The next lull is forecast to end around bedtime.
Flooded areas of the campground.
The TV weather talkers report that the storm dropped over 8 inches of rain on the town Fontaiunebleau State Park occupies. Based on the locations of the TV crews covering the story, the reports seem to be from the other side of town. This area got more than a few inches of rain, but I doubt it was 8 inches. The grass and woodland areas were already filled with water before last night. This morning it is deeper and the water is flowing over the roads in a few areas. My site is high and dry, but the site I was on last week is more than a little wet.
I managed to get two walks in during the breaks in the rain. My first walk was just as the rain was ending. I got a little damp from the last few drops or rain. My second walk was just before the late afternoon line of storms. I saw it approaching across Lake Pontchatrain and turned for home. The rain was just starting when I got to my RV home. I decided against testing my luck after supper.
The park staff seems to be concerned with the water levels. They were making more patrols of the park than normal and I saw one ranger stop to take pictures of the water level at a couple of the culverts under the road. Later a maintenance truck stopped and attempted to probe for debris needing to be cleared as the water passed under the road. I think the worst is over. The forecast calls for scattered showers the over the next thirty six hours or so.
Clouds over the lake this afternoon. The next storm was approaching from just out of the left of the frame.
The forecast for today was for more than the normal amount of thunderstorms, but so far it has been about average around here. After a bright sunny morning, a thunderstorm moved through in the early afternoon. A cloudy sky filled the remainder of the day with more thunderstorms do overnight.
Whitecaps on Lake Pontchartrain from the wind this afternoon.
I got an early start this morning. The goal was to restock my food supply. My last major grocery shopping run was a month ago with one quick stop for meat, bread, milk and such almost three weeks ago. I was raiding the freezer, can goods and back of the shelf items for the last few days. The nearest Walmart was about eight miles away on the north side of Interstate 12. A Walmart Neighborhood Grocery store and a Winn Dixie were much closer, but I needed to pick up some hardware items as well. Getting stuck in traffic after days in a quiet country setting was my reward.
The store was busy with customers and Walmart employees. There were lots of employees in the aisles filling blue carts for customer pickup and others were restocking shelves. Navigating up and down the rows of food was difficult in the congestion. I got everything on my list, but didn’t refill all of the extra stock I went through in the last few days. Another week is probably all I can go before my next provisioning trip.
This guy is developing a good set of antlers.
Both of my daily walks around the state park were after the thunderstorms. I still needed to stay on the paved surfaces. The grass areas are all flooded and rapidly turning to mud. The camp hosts tried to stay with their lawn mowing schedule this morning. I think they spent more time getting the mower unstuck from the mud than actually cutting grass. The nice green grass was filled with black mud holes and muddy tire tracks when they got done.
Yesterday evening as the sunset the thunderstorms started. There were two lines of storms before midnight. The overnight hours were probably calm. At least I didn’t wake up to the sound of rain on the roof. This morning, as I was eating breakfast, the storms returned.
Example of the flooded grass areas in the campground.Even roads and parking lots had standing water.
All of these storms dropped rain at a prodigious pace. The areas that had returned to a more or less dry state returned to a flood level greater than I’ve seen in the week plus I’ve been here. The ground is saturated preventing the new rain from sinking into the ground. Most of the tent campers and a few of the RV campers found they were setup in a mud puddle. One of my car camping neighbors left during the night, the other one left early before today’s second round of storms. The occupants of a bigger tent a few sites away abandoned it during the night. They came back in the early afternoon and slogged through ankle deep water to collect their gear. Even the Boy Scout troop camped in one of the group areas had to pack their week equipment in this mornings rain.
By noon today the sun was out. There was still the sound of thunder in the air for most of the afternoon. The area a little ways to the north was under a flash flood warning. I don’t know how to read the sky around here for weather threats. Storms seem to form overhead rather than move in from one direction or another. My concerns about the weather kept me at home today. My desire to go out didn’t out weigh my concern about traveling on unknown roads in low-lying areas with the potential of low visibility in high volume rainstorms.
I had to stay on the paved surfaces during my walks today. Even the deer I met on the road seemed to think the paved surface was better for walking than the boggy woodlands. The campground has transitioned back to midweek mode from the busy weekend activity.
This morning before the expected afternoon thunderstorms, I set out on the Cane Bayou trail. The trail is labeled as a 4.8 mile hike from the park visitors center to the bayou. It is a wide fairly well cared for trail through the woods. Just like areas of the campground, the trail shows signs of all the rain that has fallen in the area of the last few weeks. There are many areas of standing water on the trail. It is necessary to hop, skip and jump across some of the streams and navigate through the vegetation to avoid some of the puddles. I only got in the water once and that wasn’t too bad.
Trail to Cane Bayou.
The hike was a little disappointing. There wasn’t a lot of scenery along the way. In some areas the swarming bugs were a real problem. Once I got sweaty the bugs thought I was a great place to land. None of them bit, but they were a big annoyance. All along the trail I was waving the bugs away, looking toward the sky to see if the rumbling thunder was approaching all while watching out for puddles to avoid. Somehow I did manage to see a deer in the woods and a snake on the trail in front of me.
The culmination of the hike was the biggest disappointment. The trail ended about thirty feet or so from the bayou. Between the end of the trail and the bayou was a wet marsh area filled with two foot high grass before the tree line along the bank. I couldn’t find a way through it or around it. The recent rain is probably to blame. All I could do was turn around and repeat the hop, skip and jump over the water hazards along the trail back to my RV home. I needed a nice hot shower after the hike.
Small gator in the pond near the beach. Sailboats on Lake Pontchartrain.
The campground is busy for the weekend. It is filled with all kinds of campers. There are big diesel pusher moterhomes all the way down to tents and car sleepers. My neighbor on one side is sleeping in her car and the neighbor on the other side has hung a hammock bake in the woods a little ways. He is using his car to support an awning to cook under. MY guess is that he will be sleeping in his car tonight. It’s raining pretty hard right now.
Sun setting before it was obscured by a thunderstorm.
It rained lightly off and on overnight setting up a cascade of events that changed my plans for the day. The rain caused me to close the windows and turn on the AC to keep the inside temperature in the comfort zone. Getting used to the drone of the AC delayed getting to sleep a little, but I probably got a better nights sleep overall. The AC noise, the closed windows and being in a quieter part of the campground resulted in not waking up on the same schedule I’ve been on since I arrived here last week. There wasn’t much of the morning left when I got up.
Clouds returning to the area after a brief break in the gloomy day,
The morning weather didn’t help much. It was cloudy and dull most of the day. For a short period during the early afternoon the sun was out, but tall billowing clouds soon blocked the sun. Thunderstorms with accompanying flash flood warnings were in the area. The forecast was the tipping point that caused me mot to venture out today. Instead I continued to walk the trails in the state park.
Today I found a Great Blue Heron along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The bird allowed me to get fairly close. It was almost like it knew I was taking pictures and decided to pose for me. First it faced right with a curved neck. The next pose was with an extended neck and finally facing left. This went on for about five minutes before it lost interest and flew away. In truth, I think the food in the water wasn’t sufficient to keep its interest.
The cloudy dull conditions continued into the evening. Only light rain showers have occurred overhead. The big storms have avoided the immediate area. The high temperature for the day was in the high eighties. I keep trying to understand the subtleties of the forecasts around here. Lake Pontchartrain seems to play a big role in the weather. The storms seem to flow north and south of the lake with a few forming over the lake. It’s all very confusing.
There was a higher chance of rain today than the last couple. As of the evening it hasn’t rained here. There have been thunderstorms in the area and a few dark clouds with a lot of rumbling nearby. The temperature reached the low nineties with the expected high level of humidity.
Site 103 in the South Campground at Fontainebleau State Park.
Today was a moving day, but not a travel day. My initial reservation at this state park concluded today. I booked this location without my usual level of research, so I only booked a week. The possibility of another tropical storm in the gulf added to my caution. This is a very nice campground with plenty of areas in the state park to explore. The Gulf of Mexico is also not breading any tropical systems at the moment. I decided early in the week to extend my stay here at Fontainebleau State Park for another week. The site I was on is not available over the weekend so I needed to change to another site for the second week.
Small alligator that still has its juvenile stripes.
This morning I got everything ready to move. It takes almost as long to prepare for a short move as a long travel day. I still have to load the bicycle on the car, but I don’t have to prepare the car to be towed. Inside I can leave a few things out, but most things still have to be stowed. Overall, I think it takes about a half an hour less to prepare for a move as opposed to traveling to a new location. That’s why under normal conditions, if I have to move to a new site I don’t extend my stay. This place is nice enough to make an exception. I may even go into New Orleans in the next week. I have been to the Crescent City a couple of times before, so the attraction value is slightly diminished by the difficulties of finding parking. This state park has a lot to offer on its own.
Adult surrounded by well camouflaged little ones. Another young alligator.
My new site is in the older South Campground. In some ways the site is better than my last one. There isn’t any standing water on the site pad and it is in a quieter area of the park. The only negative is the proximity of the neighbors. The distance between sites is a little less. That will only matter during the busy weekend days.
Today marked two days in a row that it didn’t rain. Instead it was mostly sunny with a high temperature around ninety. The expected humidity made it seem much warmer.
Clouds filling in as the afternoon progresses.
This was also the second day in a row that I was woken up by the sound of lawn mowers. I’m beginning to develop a real dislike for the sound of a lawn mower in a campground. Yesterday wasn’t bad. The sound of the mowers was in the distance until late in the morning when they arrived outside my rig. This morning was just annoying. The camp hosts, that live across the street, seem to be enamored with the lawn mowers. I noticed last week that that they seemed to have the mowers at their site more often than not. This morning shortly after seven they arrived at their site with two riding mowers. I think they had a race from the maintenance facility where the mowers are stored. They manicured the grass around their site, before parking the mowers presumably while they had breakfast. About an hour later they were off in tandem to mow more grass. A while later they were back at their site again. This pattern repeated until afternoon when they returned from the maintenance facility in their equally noisy gas utility vehicle.
A little pollination.
The lawn mower noise caused a ripple to my days activities. I was up early, but fell asleep in front of the TV after breakfast. My morning walk was closer to an afternoon walk. The walk was also about double the duration of most of my walks. I took another walk into alligator marsh on the boardwalk and along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in the other direction. Once again there were a lot of people enjoying the beach and water.
It was over two hours before I got back to my RV home. I don’t really notice the humidity while I’m on the hike. When I get back inside and sit down the sweating catches up with me. This afternoon there was a puddle on the floor where all the sweat dripped. A towel and dry clothes were in order before preparing a late afternoon lunch – early dinner.
On my evening walk I went looking for more deer. They were in hiding today, but I did see a raccoon. The little masked bandit was raiding one of the dumpsters. He climbed up the outside picked up the cover and was inside in quick order. From the sounds of things he was having a little more challenging time getting back out. I think he probably would have succeeded, but a concerned camper carefully opened the lid to give the raccoon a better route out. I didn’t hang around long enough to learn if he succeeded.
It was a no rain day. The sun was out most of the day driving the temperature to about 90 degrees. When you combine the temperature with the humidity it seemed a lot warmer. Despite the heat the reprieve from all the rain was welcome.
For my first walk of the day I took a different path to the day use area. I walked out to the main park road and stopped at the remnants of the old sugar mill. The park is on the site of Bernard de Marigny’s sugarcane plantation from the 1800s. This whole area of the north bank of Lake Pontchartrain was settled in support of de Marigny’s activities.
Two guys on paddle boards out on Lake Pontchartrain,
When I got to the day use area, the beach and splash pad were busy for a weekday morning. It seemed to be mostly mothers finding a way to keep their young kids cool and busy on a warm day. The lake is shallow and the bottom in this area is lined with soft sand which makes for a nice place to play in the water. The only down side, that people seem to ignore, are the signs warning about high bacteria levels.
My second walk of the day was after my evening meal. There were still many people at the beach area. A few families were gathered at picnic tables for an evening cookout meal. It is a little cooler and the animals were also out. Tonight I saw alligators, deer and an egret during my walk.
The day began sunny and warm with the usual high humidity. The hourly forecast called for a 60% chance of rain around the lunch hour followed by a break until the chance returns around the supper hour. It didn’t work out that way.
I set out after a late breakfast to get my exercise in before the first forecast shower. The weather radar looked clear and all of the horizons seemed clear. I took my time walking through the campground toward the day use area and the beach. Yesterday’s rain had made any off road travel impossible once more. The grass areas varied from a soggy mess to fully flooded. The walk is about a half a mile along the roads. As I approached the beach the northwestern horizon was turning black. I was getting caught away from the shelter of my RV home again.
With the beach in sight and the leading wind front associated with the storm arriving, I turned around and started for home at a brisk pace. I made it back just as the first significant rain drops started to fall. Once inside, I got the windows closed and the air conditioner on as the plip plop of rain drops on the roof turned to a continuous roar. The forecast was wrong. Rain fell at a high rate for over three hours. It was after four when I no longer heard the sound of rain on the roof.
The TV weather talkers and my cell phone weather radar app indicated that flash flood warnings were in place for the area. The wind was not very strong, so sever thunderstorm warnings were not issued. The flash flood warning kept me at home. I was going to explore the area today, but traveling on unknown roads in the rain didn’t seem prudent. You never know when a flooded road is around the corner particularly in an area that I don’t think is more than a foot or two above sea level.
I spent the afternoon reading. The TV was on, but most of the time it was very hard to hear over the sound of the rain. The good news is once the storm ended it was a beautiful evening. I got my first evening walk to the beach area in. Each of the previous day’s I’ve been here had wet or threatening weather after the supper hour. One of the smaller alligators was even out of the pond.
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 