Louisiana Hiking Trail Finder

This site is designed to provide quick, organized access to informative Louisiana hiking websites. Hiking enthusiasts like you have created excellent web pages on Louisiana hiking trails -- then posted those pages on free web servers -- only to be ignored by search engines. The purpose of this site is to provide a way to find these personal hiking pages, and make your research easier.

• Barataria Preserve A section of Jean Lafitte National Historic Park & Preserve, Barataria has 8 miles of hiking trails through natural levee forests, bayous, swamps, and marshes. National Park Service website.



• Driskill Mountain High Point in Louisiana, also located near the spot where Bonnie & Clyde were gunned down. A helpful narrative describes how to avoid getting lost seeking this high point, which apparently happens quite often. On the AmericasRoof.com website.



• General this is an excellent laundry list of virtually every public hiking trail in Louisiana, from major outings to nature loops. Page is run by John M. Crochet of Lake Charles. Normally, we're not wild about laundry list type pages, but this is a good one.



• General Louisiana Hiking Club site. Lots of information...one of the best "club" sites out there.



• General page of 8 or 10 key hiking areas in state parks, wilderness areas, etc. Includes very helpful information, maps, photos and more. From the trailmonkey.com, which is a darn good general site.



• Jean Lafitte National Historic Park & Preserve here's the National Park Service website. Not much info on hiking opportunities; we're working to find a better site. If you know of one, please e-mail rick(at)slackpacker(dot)com.



• Kisatchie Bayou this is a boating site, but has good bayou map and some trail information as well. Good site designed, maintained, hosted by Frank Dutton Web Design.



• Poverty Point National Monument Located in northeastern Louisiana, this park commemorates a culture that thrived during the first and second millennia B.C. Poverty Point contains some of the largest prehistoric earth works in North America and is managed by the state of Louisiana. This link goes to the NPS website, which is, well, what it is.



• Wild Azalea Trail description, gear tested, all sorts of details. This is a neat site maintained by Ernest B. Engman (Trail Name: SGT Rock) who has a tongue-in-cheek military theme to his website. Fun! We like his motto: "Pay attention you dirt bag sissies, I'm here to make you a REAL HIKER!"

Son of a gun.

Mention Louisiana, and even the most avid hiker conjures images of Cajun cooking, wild parties, beads and exhibitionists, all to a raucous Pete Fountain/ Al Hirt/ Doug Kershaw soundtrack. It's just one of those places where one tiny aspect of the experience is so outrageous it overshadows a much larger and more diverse whole.

If you would like to see what Louisiana really has to offer, I'd check out Louisiana: Off the Beaten Path by Gay N. Martin and Carolyn Kolb. I like this volume particularly because it is so easy to remove yourself from the hubub of the Big Easy, yet be back in time for a great meal. (Let's keep our priorities straight, ok?)

Normally I'd recommend a trail guide at this point, but in fact the links above and the Off the Beaten Path book will do the job for you. By the way, you can pick up a clean used copy of that book on the amazon link above for less than two dollars as of this writing. The book I absolutely, positively recommend reading prior to your visit is Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast by Mike Tidwell. If ever a writer managed to capture the weirdness, color, vibrancy and earthy simplicity of Cajun existence, this is it. Read it, and you'll be instantly transported to this otherworldly lifestyle.

While the Cajun Coast vanishes before our eyes, we can only hope that more of it is preserved for future generations than the visceration that befell Louisiana's antebellum era. If you are interested, you might take a copy of The Pelican Guide to Plantation Homes of Louisiana by Susan Cole Dore. The nice thing about this book is that it will save you a lot of time so that you might spend more of it, uh, well, eating.

-- Rick Bolger

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Want to add YOUR Louisiana hiking page? It's free, it's easy, and there are no strings attached. Please click the "Submit a Site" button, above left, for instructions and complete information.

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