Last night, I had the CRV at the laundromat. Mom had driven it up to where Iwas so I could drive the laundry back. When I was getting in the car, I didn't think to adjust the seat back and just smacked the heck out of my shin. The poor people in the park that heard me swearing. This morning, Sierra was excited about eating and turned right into me and smacked her skull against the exact spot the CRV got me last night. Whimpering and limping to the couch, I recovered for a moment. When I could stand, I continued getting our stuff ready for the day. I went to get a few things from above the couch and again, smacked that exact same spot on the wood frame of the couch. Is my name Earl? I don't get it.

Going to the swamp boat ride was pretty cool. The Pontchartrain Causeway was interesting to drive over. Get on a bridge and 30 minutes later, you might be to the other side. It looks like open ocean. Our tour guide through the swamp was a really nice guy. As we were heading out and he was going to "open her up", we started picking up lots of speed. It was amazingly smooth. But while we were zipping along, I instantly heard in my head that scream that takes place right at the beginning of the CSI Miami theme. (hee hee!)

We saw blue and white herons, different plants and flowers, and many more alligators than anticipated. It was warm out and the guide didn't expect too many to be out in the open. We ate in the swamp too which was interesting. There is a plant that if you break it open, there's a part that you bite off the outer layer, peel it, and eat the inside. Tasted good. The impressive thing is that Angela ate one too. Good girl.

The only thing in the swamp that made me nervous was that we approached a levy and he stopped to tell us some stuff. I thought, "Ok, there's no where to go here, we're going to turn around." No sir, we went right up to the levy wall that, while it had no vegetation and looked like a worn path, it did not seem like something you should take a boat over. He gets right up to it and starts to rev the fan up. I started thinking, "Oh god! He's going to 'Dukes of Hazzard' this thing!" But Arthur took us to the top smoothly and we slid right down the other side. On the way back, my thoughts changed to, "Wow, it would be SO cool to 'Dukes of Hazzard' this thing!"

I was a little disappointed in my camera usage. I thought I had 3 videos of gators swimming around but only found one on the camera, and it wasn't even the good one I wanted. Oh well, it's still very interesting looking.

For lunch, we were at a restaurant. Angela had the chicken strips, of course, and wanted ketchup, of course. I handed her the ketchup bottle which is one of those plain red bottles, not the kind you buy at the store but with the little tiny hole that allows you to launch ketchup 15-20 feet. I turned back to talk to mom when out of my peripheral, I noticed Angela not moving. This caused me to look at her. There were no witnesses and she isn't confessing how it happened but ketchup from the top down...her hair in 2 spots, arm, shoulder, chest, stomach, and lap. She cracks me up.

Afterwards, we went down the road to a plantation. The original house was built in 1790 on a 6000 acre plantation. It was very interesting to see all of the authentic items and even the replicas were great to look at and think about things 200+ years ago. At the end of the house tour, a gentleman did a demonstration on how the walls were built. It was a demonstration of mixing clay and cured Spanish Moss and how it was applied. 85% of his talk was about the creation process of the mud that goes into the wall. At the end, Angela's one question was, "How do they make the stuff that goes in the wall?" What a great guy, he gave her the 30 second recap.

Long travel day tomorrow. On to Florida...