Supposedly, Ville Platte is the smoked meat capital of the world. Okay, maybe the nation. Alright, maybe Louisiana, okay maybe this Parrish. Are any of these statements true? Maybe. But, no matter, we have arrived at Chicot State Park, just north of Ville Platte, early this afternoon and discovered that we had selected a campsite on which we would never ever have been able to level the camper. So what made a trip back out to the the entrance station to change sites for something more level. We are now happily set up on a nice level site.
It does seem that the State of Louisiana and each park's administration can set up their wifi service and block whatever web sites they choose. This campground blocks all weather sites, Facebook, Messanger, the Apple App Store, most of the TV stations, and a whole lot more. So, don't look for any FB postings by us until we leave here on Wednesday. We can, however, get and send email, so that is something. Don't know if this Blog site is blocked either, it might be and then this too will have to wait.
On Wednesday we rode out to the ranger station and complained about the lack of sites that we were able to access on the Internet. The response we got was that anything that "streamed" was blocked. In order words, they could not really explain why such sites is USA Today, or CNN, or the Kennebec Journal, WeatherUnderground, Marty's web site, Facebook, Instagram were all blocked...oh yes, NCAA is also blocked.
When we started RV camping five years ago, nobody expected wifi hot-spots in campgrounds. In our experience, Louisiana was first to offer it. Maybe other sites are doing so as well; all we know is that we don't have smart phone data plans, so we've come to rely on wifi for our tablets and computers.
There's always MacDonald's and Starbucks for backup!
Back to Teets Meat Market: we discovered this place three years ago when we were here, and got some other of their wonderful smoked meats. We shopped briefly on Monday for food to enjoy while we are here in the park and will shop again on the way out for things to bring home.
That is smoked bacon on the left side.
Now, back to the park:
The name is pronounced "Chico". This is French country down here so their pronunciation is what you do.
The park is quite large and surrounds Chicot Lake. There is a 20-mile hiking trail that goes around the entire lake. It would be a bit much to do in a day (it isn't bicycle-friendly), but we think there are folks who do hke it. There is also an Arboretum in the park as well which, providing the weather cooperates, we will visit. There are two boat landings and two separate camping areas with more than 200 sites. This park, unfortunately, has seen even less maintainence than the others we have stayed in. There are dead trees just waiting for the next big storm to bring them down, but there isn't any money for it, according to the campground host. Three years ago there was signage along the roadway warning that the road was substandard. Those same signs are still there (maybe it's now sub-substandard)!
We have "weather" headed our way starting Wednesday. We will have wind, rain (lots of it up to 10-12"), thunder, and maybe a tornado tossed in for kicks. Now, it isn't a one day event but a multi day taking us through Thursday or Friday. It is all a big storm system that is coming out of California. Tuesday night we started getting wind and today it is building. Our clear sky on our arrival day has mostly been cloudy or partly cloudy so the temp has stayed in the 70's.
Tuesday we got ourselves down to the boat landing before breakfast so Marty could get some photos of the lake and trees using long exposures. Below are two that she took. The long-exposure of 30-60 seconds causes anything that moves to become a blur; the effect is often quite lovely.
Bald Cypress trees in Chicot Lake
We also rode our bikes to the Arboretum (Louisiana State) and then did several of the trails there. The only problem is that we are ahead of the spring season so there are no leaves out and only a handfull of blossoming things.
Being mid-week, the campgrounds are nearly empty; maybe there are ten rigs distributed over the two campgrounds here. Day campers come for the fishing, but it's definitely early for retired folks like us to be making the circuit.
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