Biking, hiking and swamp tours get visitors in the great outdoors that's South Louisiana.
Bike Along Tammany Trace
Louisiana’s only rails-to-trails conversion, Tammany Trace spans 31 miles along five waterfront communities on The Northshore across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. They include Abita Springs, Covington, Lacombe, Mandeville and Slidell, all of which sport great accommodations and excellent dining. Several of the towns’ trailheads are near shops, restaurants, breweries, attractions and bandstands, allowing you easy access to explore each destination. For analog bikes and e-bike rentals or tours, visit Brooks’ Bike Shop, which has locations in Covington, Mandeville and Slidell.
Kayak The Northshore’s Many Waterways
On The Northshore, you’ll never be more than 15 minutes away from a source of water, including Lake Pontchartrain, the Tchefuncte or Bogue Falaya rivers, and Cane Bayou … and there are plenty of kayak opportunities as well. For self-guided kayak experiences, Bayou Adventure offers paddling rental kiosks inside Fontainebleau State Park, and locally owned Kayaks To Geaux delivers kayak rentals anywhere in St. Tammany Parish. If you’d prefer a guided paddle, Canoe & Trail Adventures has been servicing The Northshore for more than 45 years and offers both daytime and twilight wetland tours guided by Louisiana master naturalists.
Hike Acres of Trails
St. Tammany Parish is home to more than 80,000 acres of wildlife refuge areas that can be explored via hiking trails, boardwalks, recreational areas and more. The state’s most-visited park, Fontainebleau State Park, offers 2,800 acres with trails that include huge moss-draped oaks, ruins of the 1829 Bernard de Marginy sugar mill, and views of Lake Pontchartrain in Mandeville. Other impressive sites include Lacombe’s 15,000-acre Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. It features pine flatwoods and a coastal marsh that’s home to hundreds of bird species, including the rare red-cockaded woodpecker, as well as bald eagles and wading birds. You can also visit the host venue of the Great Louisiana BirdFest, Northlake Nature Center, to meander through ancient pines and hardwood forest along Bayou Castine in Mandeville.
Explore Honey Island Swamp
An activity that makes you know you’ve truly been to Louisiana is a swamp tour, and no one does it better than Cajun Encounters Tour Company. Based in Slidell, they’ll take you out on a two-hour guided experience to learn the history, folklore and ecology of Honey Island Swamp. As a member of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy, the tour company shows the swamp without impacting the environment or its diverse species, which include alligators, wild boars, raccoons, a variety of birds and other creatures … all of which you’ll get to see up close on a tour.
Dine on Louisiana Wild Seafood at Certified Partners
You’ll want to keep your eye out for restaurants that have the Louisiana Wild Seafood Certified stamp of approval. The program guarantees that seafood products labeled “wild-caught” are from Louisiana. In Slidell, visit Kenney Seafood Market & Restaurant, which has been providing the freshest Louisiana seafood for more than 50 years. The restaurant and market have become the go-to spot for fresh, fried, blackened and boiled seafood including crawfish, oysters, shrimp, soft shell crabs and trout.
To learn more about visiting The Northshore and to plan a trip, visit https://www.visitthenorthshore.com/.
This blog post was written with information supplied by Mindy Bianca Public Relations and Visit the Northshore.
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