Exploring the Creole Nature Trail

Staff at Adventure Point in Sulphur change the spices in the Louisiana culinary corner once every six months. You smell the exhibit long before you see it. It’s Proustian, an aroma that invokes memories of crawfish boils past.

This is one of the many interactive displays in the aptly named educational center and gift shop. Practice grinding boudin while you learn about the holy trinity of Louisiana cuisine. Play the fiddle, accordion, rubboard or guitar alongside piped-in music — your choice, Cajun or zydeco. Listen to birdsong as you study migration routes. All the while, that familiar smell permeates the room. Then you read the Adventure Point Experience Guide and remember what you once deemed a crucial way of life: “Cruising down a long stretch of picturesque roads was your destination. Your journey was your adventure.”

With that in mind, you exit the facility. You start your car and turn south. Adventure Point now in your rearview window, you enter the Creole Nature Trail, a 180-mile loop of roads and spurs that bears many monikers. It’s one of 37 designated All-American roads. It’s “America’s Last Great Wilderness.” It’s “Louisiana’s Outback.” Tucked deep in the state’s southwestern corner, it’s also a place apart, a country within a country, a breadth of beaches, coastal and fresh marshes, prairies, bottomland forest and cheniers that encompass parts of Calcasieu and Cameron parishes and four wildlife refuges, among them Rockefeller and Lacassine.

Food, fuel, and lodging services may be limited along the Creole Nature Trail, but wildlife and unobstructed views are abundant. Matt Young, Director of Public Relations at Visit Lake Charles, notes that the Trail includes 26 miles of Gulf beaches, all less than an hour’s drive from Lake Charles.

Around Hackberry, the petrochemical plant skyline begins to dissolve into a primeval landscape. Expect uninterrupted horizons. Expect more birders than billboards. An abundance of cheniers, those slightly elevated ridges that offer resting spots for migratory species, have made this a birder’s paradise. Roseate spoonbills, American bitterns, gallinules, dickcissels and more than 400 other species pass through each year. This is because the Creole Nature Trail lies at the intersection of two North American migratory routes: the Mississippi Flyway, which covers the majority of Louisiana, and the Central Flyway, which brushes the state’s southwesternmost corner.

Enter this world south of Hackberry at Wetland Walkway in the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge. A 1.5-mile boardwalk traverses saltwater marshes where deer graze beneath darting red-winged blackbirds and hooded warblers. From here, the road continues to the Gulf of Mexico and 7-mile Holly Beach, which has its own moniker: the Cajun Riviera. To the west, a spur provides access to a string of successive beaches, each adding to the Trail’s 26 miles of natural beachfront and the 40-acre Peveto Woods Sanctuary, the first chenier sanctuary for migratory birds established in Louisiana.

East of Holly Beach, board the Cameron Ferry to cross the ship channel and continue toward Rutherford Beach, where options continue. At Oak Grove, you can drive east along a spur toward Grand Chenier and Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, or turn north toward Pintail Wildlife Drive, a 3-mile loop in the southern region of Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge, where gallinules, with their purplish-blue feathers and stout red beaks that evoke the tropics, flutter near congregations of alligators. 

Throughout the Trail, nature thrives among the scars of disaster. In August 2020, this region suffered through Hurricane Laura, the strongest storm to strike southwest Louisiana since records began in 1851. Two months later, Hurricane Delta made landfall at Creole. February 2021 unleashed three quarters an inch of sleet during Winter Storm Uri. Then in May, more than 12 inches of rain flooded the region.

A 10-month succession of such disasters would make any resident feel like she has assumed the burden of Job. Then, add a global pandemic to the list. The era that turned us inside for safety and made expert safe-distancing measurers out of all of us eventually turned us outward. In nature, we began to seek something greater than ourselves.

Located in the Central and Mississippi flyways, the Creole Nature Trail is a paradise for birders and hunters. It contains 26 miles of natural beaches, providing ample opportunity for beachcombing, and its numerous waterways, including Calcasieu Lake, make it a destination for freshwater and saltwater fishing.

“During that time, the Trail was probably the most packed it has ever been,” says Matt Young, director of public relations at Visit Lake Charles. At Hog Island Gully in Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, Young pulls into a parking lot. To his right, a father fishes with his 7-year-old son. To his left, three others check crab lines.

He watches the activity, glancing up at the sound of a truck that travels south along the Trail. “Once people discover it, they keep coming back,” he says, nodding. And you nod with him, knowing that you will too.

DID YOU KNOW?

Of the 37 All-American roads in the United States, two run through Louisiana: Great River Road (designated in 2021) and the Creole Nature Trail (designated in 1996). “To be designated as an All-American Road, a byway must meet criteria for at least two intrinsic qualities that are nationally significant and have one-of-a-kind features that do not exist elsewhere,” states the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. “The road or highway must also be considered a ‘destination unto itself.’ That is, the road must provide an exceptional traveling experience so recognized by travelers that they would make a drive along the highway a primary reason for their trip.”