Saturday, Poverty Point and North Toledo Bend

We left the campground shortly after 9:00 am and headed north to Poverty Point World Heritage Site in Epps.  Just a note about Epps; it is a sad little town with more businesses closed than open or so it appeared to us.  Poverty Point though is a fascinating place, established about 1600 BC by an unknown people.  The buildiners of this site moved huge amounts of dirt to construct mounds (one large one, about 70 feet high, remains and appears to be like a bird in flight).  This one has been found not to be a burial mound. These people also participated in a trade network that reached the Appalachain Mountains, the Midwest and even to the Great Lakes!  It appears that they did not have agriculture.

There were mounds near the campground as well.  Seeing this site was rather incredible.  We watched a short film before doing some walking around and in the film they said that it was not until an ariel photograph taken in the 1930's was examined that people saw the overall plan for the site.  This is remarkable because the area had been farmed and some of the features were lowered over the years as farmers plowed the fields.  Hard to imagine that they didn't realize that they were on top of something, or maybe it was just beyond their imagination.

Here's Marty by the closest marker near the highway.

There were/are ridges that these ancient people created, laid out in perfect concentric half-circles.  Now they are barely visible to the eye from the leveling of repeated plowing.  

David walks toward the main mound, shaped in the form of a bird.  Given how flat this land is, it is almost impossible to imagine how much dirt was moved by hand in baskets.

David, pondering the mound.

The mound and one of the ridge markers.  We'll photograph the brochure from the site so you will have a better idea of the layout of this place.

This plaque gives some of the critical information abut the mound we climbed up on.

As is evident from reading the plaque, the archeologists still have very few ideas as to what these people did and who they were.  

This panorama was taken from the top of the mound and looks back toward the Visitor Center where we parked.

When one visits such a place as this, it makes you feel that you are walking in history, in a place where once some early people lived and worked and had a complex society very unlike ours.

We headed next toward North Toledo Bend via Monroe where we got propane, some Starbucks coffee to drink as well as a bag of ground (yes, we are addicted).  We were planning ahead as we had experienced three nights at Poverty Point with frost and used the furnace to get the camper warmed up until the sunshine did its work.  

This is an interesting part of the state.  We left very flat lands, went through forrest lands (timber company type; all southern white pine) saw some clear-cut areas not yet reseeded that had been left leaving the earth scared and ugly  Then into rolling hills, lovely landscape and also some larger farms with cattle.  But for every huge estate we saw there were the abondoned small shacks that are now falling in on themselves.

We went from Monroe on a southernly route first to Winnfield then Natchitoches where we did some interesting navigating between our own decisions and then what the GPS wanted us to do.  In the end we did get to see a most interesting building.  No longer in use, it was at one time quite the store with school supplies, candy, unshelled peacans, notions, etc.

Late afternoon we passed through the little town of Zwolle and came to North Toledo Bend State Park.

This is a lovely park and we are looking forward to exploring it on Sunday.  We are parked under tall pines on a very flat pad with water and electricity (what more does one need?) and are ready to kick back and enjoy some warmer weather and maybe even get out in our kayak.

As it started to get light on Sunday morning, we were treated with the sound of fishermen headed out in their 200hp bass boats.  Fishing seems to be THE thing to do in this neck of the woods.