2016-March 14, Lake Bistineau flooding

On March 9th, 2016 the area where I live got about 20 inches in 30 hours.  Some places nearby got more and some places got less but where we were that's what we had to deal with.  I live on a bayou and because of that I was greatly concern.  I kept a close eye on the bayou and the weather.  The thing that concerned me was with all that rain in such a short period time is the fact it didn't have time to soak into the ground and thus it was run off which lead to a lot of flash flooding in the area.  I knew it was really bad when I heard they had to close down I-20 in Bossier and Webster parishes due to water coming onto the roads.  All that water had to go some where and its ended up in our lakes and reservoirs.
     My spouse and I also have some property on Lake Bistineau and had heard about all the flooding there.  Our neighbors were telling us they had never seen the lake so high. We were concerned and on March 14th the roads had been open again in areas and due to daylight savings time we figured we had enough time to get down to the lake and back during daylight hours.
    We knew from the news we couldn't go our normal way since those road were still closed.  That didn't really surprise us since last June they got closed to flooding too.  Here's a link to that post.
http://rockhoundingaround.blogspot.com/2015/06/6-14-2015-camp-and-lake-bistineau.html

Here's the one image I wanted to share with you from that period of time.

water over the Lake Bistineau dam June 14, 2015

You can see the water clearly over the dam.  At that time everyone was amazed at how high the water had gotten.  We were impressed too and thought that was the maximum it would get.  But we wrong about that.
(Here's an image of the same area with the flooding during that period of time. )

This is taken from the same area as the very first one, and you can see how much higher the water is now.
We had marveled over June flood because 7 months earlier the lake was at a low. After this things went back to normal and I really regret not getting pictures of that like I had in March when things were at a normal stage for the lake, so you can see how much things have gone up.  But I do have images of when its at a normal level..  http://rockhoundingaround.blogspot.com/2015/03/lake-bisteneau-on-3-28-2015.html

And I have the images of when it was dry last Nov 2014.http://rockhoundingaround.blogspot.com/2015/05/lake-bisteneau-nov-28-2014.html

Now we can't get over it's even higher than it was last June and back then everyone was surprised by the height of that. It's just so amazing - UNBELIEVABLE!
I'm going to show some pictures of the flooding compared to the drought just so you can get an idea of the magnitude of the water we're dealing with.

First off when we drove up to the house we couldn't even get to the house due to the inlet being so high.

But our neighbor has a road to his place that is on the other side of our house that we knew we could probably take to get to our place since we could see it above the water when we looked over at it.
So we tried it and was able to finally get onto our property.  By using a stairway that connects our places. 

Here's another view of the inlet being so full. 

 This is what it looks like when it was dry

 

But what we were mostly concern with was to see if the house had flooded and so far it hasn't.

 Here's the image we're usually looking at when we sit on the porch.
In  this one you can't even see the water. but look at the tree that has the branches close to the ground and the bush.

 Here's the same tree and water up to the bush.

 The house is dry but I couldn't say the same about the boat house.  We've had it flooded before but never like this.
Here's some of the images when it was high and dry.
 

 These are the trees that are to the left of the boathouse.

 And here's what it looks like now.  This I had to take from the neighbors road.

Here it is again, cropped and enlarged.

Here's how my neighbors boathouses look.
When it was dry you can't see the boat house but you can see the dock.

Now here's how it is zoomed in through cropping

And here's my other neighbors boat house that shows how bad things really are.
 Look how dry it was in November

and now.

For my own sake I did take a 32 second video of this area.

Like I said its unbelievable...

Peach blossoms & spring flowers 2-26-2015

I  love looking at this one peach tree and the blossoms on it.  To me its always fascinating to see when they will come out.  This year I got these picture on February 26, 2016.  enjoy.

Peach tree blooming 2-26-2016

 I continued with my walk and saw these lovely flowers too.  I was not expecting to see the azaleas already starting to bloom.  They usually bloom really close to Easter and Easter was a month away.

 Finally when I got home I had to get these images of my Tulip tree.  I was pleased to see it was still blooming like it was.

.

2016 Tulip tree blooming

This year I couldn't believe it when I saw some blooms on my tulip tree in January.I got this picture on January 8th.  It really disheartened me to see it blooming so early.  I knew the bad weather was coming and these blooms would be destroyed.  I especially hated that there was so many buds already on the tree.  These too would be affected by the cold weather and this year the tree just wouldn't be as spectacular as it has been in the past.
 
This year I still did take some pictures to keep track of its blooming.

 I liked the colors of the blossoms and the sky

 But as I feared the blossoms got that brownish tinge to them from the cold weather.

 I had to go out of town for a week and when I came back my tree wasn't doing as well as my neighbors tree.  It was pretty  spectacular.  It amazed me that two of the same type of trees would have a slightly different blooming schedule.  Her tree avoided the freezing weather and that was why it got to be so spectacular.  Mine just has been blooming but over more time.

 That still allowed me to get some good pictures like this one.

 Then we had a couple of really windy days and all the old brownish color blossoms fell off leaving the younger healthy ones.  Here's how the tree looked after the blustery days.

Here are the pictures I took today 2-25-2016

 It's still very pretty and I do love having the tree and seeing it in bloom.  I was right about my concerns because usually the tree is more spectacular than this when all of it is in full bloom at the same time.

I do love watching this tree in Spring.  You never know how its going to look from day to day.

Ghost Walk -Shreveport, LA

I'm a Red Hatter.   One of the activities my Red Hatter friends had planned was to go on a ghost walk in our city.  The walks are done on Saturday evenings in October.  So on Saturday Oct 17, 2015 we went on the walk.  We were doing it just for the fun of it and really thought of it more a history lesson of Shreveport than a  "Ghost Walk".  It started at the court house on Texas street.
I thought it was nice that the guide was dressed up to look like a turn of the century guy.

To me I liked it because it was a walking tour and we were taking the time to really look at the buildings and such in the area. Just look at how pretty the court house is. Our guide pointed out that the top floor used to be the jail and they had hanged people up there and that is why its haunted and was the start of the tour.

 I did like the statue and thought I would get some images of it to but the tour was taking off and  I didn't want to miss anything.

 Most of the pictures I tried to take did not turn out well and I often wondered why I bothered with that.  But the city was pretty at night and I don't get downtown very often so I went ahead and took some images.

To me this was more a tour of the downtown and finding out about things I had never heard about before.  So much has changed over time and I was not a native and never realized some of this stuff.

 With this shot of the street you can see where the cable cars used to run.

And some of the lights used to be gas lights that were converted over. I don't know if these were some of them but they did look pretty to me.

 Most of my pictures were of the quality you see above and nothing really to write about

 I took them because I liked the buildings and the art with them. 

 These building are suppose to be really haunted ones.  But to me they were just nice architecture and stuff you don't see a lot of anymore.

I finally got back to the statue and was able to get some good images of it.

 I did like this one of the generals.

 The one thing I did find interesting was the Last Confederate Flag is buried by the statue. 

This was a ghost walk.  And if you asked me did we see any ghost I would have to tell you actually we did.  At the beginning of the walk we went to a local restaurant. We went down into the basement and heard about the lady in white.  The restaurants basement had the first walk in refrigerator installed and it was right across the street from the morgue and was and undertaker and funeral home.  Bodies were stored there.. The lady in white was believed to be one of those. As we were there I looked around and didn't see anything interesting.  Just a basement, so I was curious why my friend all of a sudden started to take pictures.  Then I felt a chill go through me and I knew why. I was standing next to her and saw them on her cell phone as she took them.  She did nothing to touch them up when I saw them becuase it was just seconds later. 

This is what she wrote on Facebook Oct 22. (I did get Beth's permission to reproduce this here - but this is not  my stuff and is not reproducible ) :

These are the pictures people are asking for. Taken in the Rendall Building on the Shreveport Ghost Walk last Saturday night. Although the building houses a restaurant today, in the late 1800's it was a coffin manufacturing business with a coffin showroom. In the 1880 census J.S. Rendall is listed as an undertaker and possibly conducted funerals at this address.
Through the years, consistent stories of haunting have persisted about the Rendall Building. A "Lady in White" has been seen wandering through the building, and unexplained noises heard during quiet times. In January, 2013, the Ghost Hunters television program investigated the location, recording several EVP's. To the best of my knowledge this is the only photograph ever gotten of the "Lady in White".

 

The walk was worth it. I felt like we did see a ghost.    I don't know if you believe in ghosts or not but I do know I do, especially after having felt this one.