Visit to Baton Rouge

A great treat in our visit to Capitol Lake in the Capitol area of Baton Rouge was the collection of birds on the lake.

This is the state capitol of Louisiana. It was surrounded by two lakes and a pleasant park.

A flock of black coots provided contrast to the predominantly white bird population on the lake.

A model shows the imposing structures, but we were more interested in the abundant bird life in the two small lakes.

The Governor's Mansion is behind Rod.

I enjoyed watching this heron fishing in the shallow water. Below he has made a stab at a fish.

The white pelicans and the white herons were hanging out together. At right is a superposition of four images of a heron taking off.

Along with the stately white herons were a number of their smaller cousins, the white egrets.

The brown duck above and a sizable flock of coots were the only exceptions to the overwhelmingly white bird population on the two lakes.

We parked in the Capitol Visitor Center parking lot and walked out to the Mississippi River where we could see the highway bridge over the river. I love watching tugboats operate, so we spent a bit of time there.

There was continuous barge traffic in both directions on the Mississippi River.

This local tug was handling bargeloads of crushed cars.

As we walked southward along the levee toward the bridge, we passed the USS Kidd, which serves as a museum along with a more extensive museum on the shore.

The above view of the bridge was from the levee just south of it. Besides barge and ship traffic, there were very large grain elevators alongside the river for handling agricultural products.

The return walk along the levee to get the car. Then we headed out for Jeff's in Pearl River. Our trip odometer was at 1387 when we reached there.