In the eighth grade my grandmother, sister, and myself took a trip to Louisiana to visit my uncle and his family. This was all done on Easter break and boy did we need it bad. We left at about 2:00-3:00 in the morning so we could try to beat most of the traffic. We had our route made and the route back…I was in charge of the days back and my sister was in charge of the days to. This whole trip would take us around a day and a half to accomplish. The route would take us through six different states and we would see all the glory that America had to show.

We traveled through Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. We made five states in one day and the last day to get there was only half a day and not more. We made our stop before we hit land into Louisiana so we took rooming at hotel. This hotel was only a half block to a block away from an olive garden restaurant. So we thought it a good idea to take and have a meal at the olive garden for once. We were there in the restaurant for maybe an hour to an hour and a half…my sister and grandma had one type of spaghetti while I had another type of spaghetti.

We then went back to the hotel and right to bed so we could wake up in time to leave the exact time we did when we woke that morning. We may have slept in a bit and had a good breakfast before we head out on the road again. Around afternoon we made a parking spot at another hotel, one that we would be staying in for about three days. We unpacked and made ready to visit my uncle and his family, it took us about half an hour to arrive at the drive and let me tell you that it was a nice landscape. He lived in a trailer and the whole family had a small inflatable pool in the yard. We got out of the car and walked up to the door, one of my step cousins may have heard us pull in and realized that someone was here because my aunt came to the door.

We spent the whole day hanging with each other and getting to know each other more and more. On about the second day we all went out to Morgan City to a little Chinese restaurant where the food was not at all great. We then drove to a small neighborhood to a little fenced in area. This fenced in area held some of what Louisiana used to be like along with some critters. The name is Swamp Gardens. It is a home to alligators, beavers, beaver/rat marsupials, turtles, one evil chicken, two river otters, two bears, the tallest sycamore tree left, a boat house, and a couple areas of swamp.

I was sad that the alligators where asleep and that the bears where not totally awake. We spent the last day fishing in a bay, we kids went out and explored around the area the adults were fishing at. We saw nests where the alligators made the eggs safe from harm. We went back to see what all the adults had caught and found that they caught some good eating of fish. There was even a king crab who was royally p.o. at us.
We asked what they had to use to catch the crab and they told us that it was the crawdad’s. so we thought about catching our own crab and walked about while thinking. There was a boy about the age of 11 who was playing with something in the water. We walked up to him only to find he was crab fishing, something that we wanted to do…so we made friends with him and saw that he was using an old cage made specially for crab fishing. All that was needed was bait…I ran back for a crawdad and ran back to have it into the cage and the cage lowered. We sat there waiting for what seemed an hour, and ended up pulling the cage out to see no crab or crawdad in the cage.

By that time it was time to leave and time to get our things ready for our long trip home. All together that is what we did. If you ever go to Louisiana never swim in the water or you will lose a limb or die from a snake bite. At night always have your head lights and never wear sunglasses or you may hit a bear. There are no deer in Louisiana there are around 400lbs to 1300lbs all together.