In the Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana. Cypress trees and their knees were amazing. Giant vines and spiders and velvety moss surrounded us. It was absolutely breathtaking.
The park was packed with people. Kids were all over the place. Our spot was located right in front of a playground, which couldn't have made Alex happier. He immediately went to play, while I pulled out our tent. It would be the first time we had pitched it.
When I had finished setting up the tent, I went to check on Alex. There was a small patch of trees between the campsite and the playground and when I tried to walk through, I almost tripped. There were cypress knees sticking up all over the place. It looked so cool!
Alex was busy with some new friends he had made. A group of boys were gathered in a field. They were huddled together like they were plotting something, or I took it that way, anyway. I asked Alex about them. He said they had been calling him names, like "Michael Jackson", but he wasn't worried about it.
We went back to camp and I sprayed repellent on us. The mosquitoes were really, really bad. We overheard the group of boys daring eachother to do things. One was dared to run through our camp, which he promptly did, and then we heard them dare another to hit a boy in the face that was riding by on a skateboard.
I began to worry about what these kids were going to do next. I tried to talk to them, but they scattered when I got close. I decided to go looking for their parents. The boys were riding bikes around the circle and we couldn't tell where they came from. We asked a girl if she knew where they were camped.
Alex thought the girl looked like Ashley Simpson, so, oddly enough, we kept calling her Jessica. She seemed like she wanted to help us, but said she didn't know the boys. Something about her made us suspicious of her. We felt she knew more than she was letting on.
At one point, we saw three very big men that had managed to stop one of the boys on his bike. By the time we got up to them, they had let him go. They said the boys had been terrorizing one of their daughters, but they had put the fear of God into him and we shouldn't have any more problems with them. Alex thought one of the men looked like Chuck Norris.
The boys were determined not to be intimidated by all the people trying to stop them. Jessica said she had found them, too, and told them to stop. She told us if they didn't stop, we should just tell them we would pray for them. We thought that was a curious thing to say.
We finally managed to corner a boy that looked like one of them. He told us he wasn't with them. They were staying in a cabin next to him, he said, and they were all in a church group. Now what Jessica had said seemed to fit. And now I realized why all the boys but one looked the same to me. They were all wearing the same group shirts, except for the head trouble-maker. He was easy to spot.
We decided to go to the park host. Jessica asked if we would like her to go tell her. We said no, thank-you, but maybe she could show us where the host was. She said she didn't know. We asked her how she planned on telling her if she didn't know where she was. She didn't know that, either.
Alex was really beginning to enjoy our hunt for clues to the identity of the boys and for the truth about our friend Jessica.
We located the park host and the boys happened to pass as we were standing there. The leader took off when we called to him, but the host knew one of the boys and called him by his name. He denied being part of it and we couldn't positively identify him. The host said she would have the ranger stop by to talk with us, so we headed back.
The boys were now walking and when we rounded the restrooms, we spotted the main one. He had put on a coat, but we knew it was him and this time I didn't let him get past me. I asked what group he was with and he told me he was a boy scout.
"Really?", I asked. I had to chuckle to myself. Out loud, I asked if this was any way for a boy scout to be acting. He played innocent, but I told him I knew it was him and he would be in serious trouble if he didn't stop.
The ranger stopped by later and we explained everything to him. We hadn't been bothered since I had talked to the boy. He stopped by again later to tell Alex that he had talked to the guy that looked like Chuck Norris. He said it really did look like him! We saw Jessica two sites down with her parents. We decided she was probably being straight with us. The rest of the night was pretty quite. Even the mosquitoes had gone to bed.
We settled in for our first night of sleeping in the tent. We had plenty of warm and cozy blankets and lots of neighbors with dogs and fires going. We felt completely safe and so very peaceful. It was a wonderful feeling. We talked about it for quite a while until we both drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, we took showers and loaded up and then walked over to the trails. We came across another big playground and a wading pool that was closed for the winter. There were three trails, one a quarter-mile, one a mile, and one three miles. The three mile trail had a three hundred foot footbridge, so we headed for that one.
We were right on the swamp and the mosquitoes were swarming everywhere. I had sprayed us with repellent, but it was not helping. We had to continuously fan ourselves with pamphlets to try to keep them at bay. They would even get in your mouth when you tried to talk.
Signs were all over, telling us about the animals and plant life. Cypress trees and their knees were amazing. Giant vines and spiders and velvety moss surrounded us. It was absolutely breathtaking.
On one of the bridges, Alex was far ahead of me and two of the boys from last night passed by on bikes. When the "boy scout" passed me, he said, "Excuse me." When they passed Alex, one said, "Excuse me.", and the other said, "Good morning."
After we walked the footbridge, we turned around. We didn't want to do the entire three miles. We were ready to head out to Metairie to see Alex's dad. He was very excited about it.
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