Craving Adventure

Early on last week I was sitting at my desk just looking at random places around us on Google maps… Productive right? It was a slow day at work so I had to do something to entertain myself! My husband and I have been craving camping or at least something outdoors that doesn’t consist of walking around New Orleans drinking/looking at the same things we always do. Especially with the great weather we’ve been having! Unfortunately the camping we know of and have been doing all our lives isn’t really a thing here in Louisiana… When I moved here from Oregon about 3 years ago, people would talk about camping and I would get SO EXCITED! Only to find out they were camping in actual houses… Houses that were nicer than any I have ever lived in. Your “camping” house has an elevator? Okay, lame.

Anyways, I came across a place called Kisatchie National Forest. I clicked on it and the first thing I saw was a tent and a fire, an actual tent?! Yep, this is where we are going. I didn’t care that it was going to take us 3 hours to drive there for the weekend. We needed this. Our dogs needed this. It was going to be great!

Clark Creek for the WIN! After doing a little more research on Google Maps, I gave my husband an ultimatum. It was the French Quarter Fest here over the weekend, so I texted him, “Would you rather day drink/go to the FQF… OR go hike this awesome trail that’s 3 hours away and camp out somewhere on the side of the road?” Of course he chose the fun route, all he did in Oregon was hike! We were both skeptical about the “hiking” here… There aren’t any mountains, what are we going to hike? But the pictures on the website of Clark Creek had several waterfalls, boulders, and trails.

Saturday morning at 5:00 am, we loaded up the car with 2 puppies and headed north to find some hiking on the Mississippi/Louisiana border. We had a cooler full of yummy snacks, water and good tunes, ready to go! Another benefit of leaving so early is the traffic, or rather lack thereof. The weather was mid 50’s, we had the sunroof open, windows rolled down and cute puppy heads hanging out sniffing all of the new smells, it was wonderful! We pulled up to the trail around 8:55 am, had a little potty break, ate a couple hard boiled eggs and just took it all in. Once our backpacks were full of water, dog food, snacks and some Jack Daniels, we were off!

They had a nice “beaten path” trail you could take all the way through for an easy walk but Andrew, being the man he is, likes to make his own trails! Which I agree, that is way more fun! It took us around 4 hours to get back to the car, however you could easily cut your time shorter if needed.

OH MY GOODNESS! This place was beautiful! The creeks, the little waterfalls, the cliffs you can climb up, SO MUCH FUN! This was the puppies first time hiking EVER and they loved it and did so good! Great place to bring your dogs (oh yeah, or kids) and just have a picnic, relax and enjoy the scenery.

Afterwards, it was time for us to find a spot and set up base camp. By that I mean our car. We both envisioned pulling off the main road and finding this nice shaded spot by some water (which you can easily do in Oregon) That didn’t work. We drove to Baton Rouge, cruised around to a couple parks, ate some food, drank some beer, and finally found an empty parking lot surrounded by trees. We laid the back seats down, with two comforters underneath us, set up my phone so we could watch It’s Always Sunny and nap with the puppies at our feet. It was so nice! We got back up around 8:30 pm, took the dogs for a walk, squatted in some bushes to handle the business. We talked about driving home that night, but decided that we were already here and if anything, we would wake up early in the morning and go back home. It wasn’t that we weren’t having fun, it was our bed. Jeep Liberties are not very big lol and if you throw in two puppies that that both like to sprawl out, our space started shrinking quickly. We have been talking about living on the road for about a year now and what type of vehicle we’d want to do it in. We both agree that a Jeep Liberty is not the one. Check out our photos from the trip below! We’d love to hear your feedback and stories from some of your hiking trips!