Shrimp Boat Manny's and a trip to the Big Thicket National Preserve

Being in southern Texas I had the desire to taste some Cajun cooking. We had heard about Shrimpboat Manny's that is in Livingston Texas near where we are staying for the month of April.

Dale, Cheryl and Sue and I headed over here for a Cajun cuisine dinner. We ordered a pound of craw-fish for an appetizer for of us to try.

They are heavily seasoned with a hot Cajun sauce. We only ate the tails and it is a lot of work to just get the meat of the tail out and then you end up with less meat to eat than you would get from a large shrimp. Some people suck the juice out of the shell body but none of us were interested in doing that. there also a small bit of meat in the small claw but we did not try that.

For dinner I had a nice sampler that had hush puppies, jambalaya, crawfish etouffee and red beans with rice. It was very good.

*********

The next day we headed to the Big Thicket National Preserve about a 60 minute drive from Livingston. This area is where the glaciers from the north pushed northern plants into the south and where the ecosystems collide and merge.

From the website: "This national preserve protects the incredible diversity of life found where multiple habitats converge in southeast Texas."

There are a lot of nice hiking trails and bike trails.

We all wished we had brought our bikes with us on this day trip. 

The first trail we walked on the mosquitoes were so heavy and we had applied bug spray. Someone had warned us in the parking lot they were bad and they were correct. 

Big Thicket has four insect-eating plants. These are pitcher plants, sundews, bladderworts, and butterworts.

Below is a couple of the hundreds of pitcher plants we saw. 

I wish I could bring some of these plants back to Illinois. 

We had a great afternoon seeing all this diversity.