#2: [04-Mar-01]

21-Feb-2001 -- On my way back home from Cajun country (and several days too early for Mardi Gras!) I took the opportunity to visit two confluences near my route. The first, 32N 93W, is just east of the Red River valley near the town of Creston. I left Interstate 49 at Natchitoches (in which only the N and the a are pronounced like you would expect them to be) and drove through flat river bottom as far as Black Lake. There, the land gets hilly and the farmland gives way to pine. I took LA 156 east from Creston to Wagner Loop, a dirt road that appears to be used heavily for logging. Large tracts of clear-cut former forest alternated with stands of pine, with a little hardwood interspersed.

I wound around on the red clay road, watching the GPS, until I came to a newly-cut logging road leading due east toward the confluence point. I walked downhill until the GPS read 93.00000, and found myself 284 feet north of the point. Here, I finally understood the advice to take a compass when confluence-hunting. In my home grounds, where trees don't grow, it's easy to dead-reckon to a spot a few hundred feet away. Not so in thick woods infested with blackberry stems covered with thorns! I worked my way into the woods maybe 100 feet, and took Picture #1 down the little creekbed in the general direction of the right spot. Then I thrashed back to the road to take Pic #2 of the eTrex on the unretouched RED soil and Pic#3 of the logging road I had walked in on. Picture #4 is a view across Black Lake, near Creston. My guess would be that all those uncut trees in the lake produce a fine habitat for lost fishing lures.