ADVENTURE POINT

CVB Gives Tourists Headed Down The Creole Nature Trail A Pleasant

Story By Brad Goins • Photos By Lindsey Janies

Adventure Point is a new venture of the Lake Charles / Southwest Louisiana Convention and Visitors Bureau. Adventure Point is designed to attract tourists and others who are driving down the Creole Nature Trail by its west side.

The informational center will be open seven days a week.

“Adventure guides” will explain the culture of the area to visitors, and in particular, those who are planning to travel on the Creole Nature trail. These guides will be on hand to tell interested parties where they will be most likely to see alligators or impressive, colorful assemblies or migrations of birds on the long, winding trail.

The first thing visitors will see when they enter the new center is a display of a big oak chenier. Marshes, swamps and bayous — as well as the creatures that inhabit them — will be featured in other displays on the site.

There will also be stages on which Zydeco and Cajun music will be performed — not by live musicians, but by pre-programmed instruments. Visitors can take the stage and pretend they’re playing the instruments. To make an instrument start playing, visitors just have to touch it. Visitors can learn how such instruments as accordions, fiddles or rub boards contribute to the distinctive musical sounds of Southwest Louisiana.

Displays on foods and spices will give visitors a good whiff of the aromas of these foods. For instance, the crawfish boil exhibit will, in fact, smell just like boiling crawfish whenever anyone takes the lid off the big black pot.

“It’s a complete sensory experience,” says Elizabeth Eustis, public relations manager of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. And indeed, the introduction of aromas of foods into the informational center is certainly a notch above the technology used in the former informational center on the west side of the trail — a center that was ruined by Rita. That somewhat lower-tech center was top-notch when it came to accessible and entertaining delivery of large amounts of information about the Nature Trail environments and cultures.

“It’s hard to describe [the Adventure Center] in words. It’s something you have to experience,” says Megan Monsour Hartman, senior marketing manager of the Bureau.

As has been noted, the new Adventure Point center will be oriented towards the west side — the Sabine side — of LA 27, which is the highway that winds through the Creole Nature Trail.

There will be additional accessible information in the recently announced Creole Nature Trail tour app. At present, the app delivers the tour in six different languages. The app is “Like the launchpad to the trail,” says Eustis.

This app is free. If you want to get it, search for the term “Creole.”

Eustis and Hartman say that many people wind up on the Creole Nature Trail as they travel south through Louisiana, moving from New Orleans to — eventually — the Creole Nature Trail.

Some of these tourists are certain to be French or Canadian tourists; or tourists from any location at all; who are curious about the Acadian French culture and want to see how it compares with other French cultures.

Others are curious about the exotic wildlife of the Trail area — everything from alligators and nutria to the sorts of birds that draw large numbers of bird watchers to the famed pink dolphin, which you just might glimpse as you’re riding on the Cameron ferry.

The new Adventure Point center is smaller than the regular Convention and Visitors Bureau site on Lakeshore Drive in Lake Charles. Adventure Point is located in Sulphur between Sonic and Stine at 2740 Ruth St.

The Convention and Visitors Bureau is hoping for a good bit of Facebook Likes for Adventure Point. “We want everybody to take a look and promote it through social media,” says Hartman. As the summer months are nearly upon us, this is a good time to do that bit of promotional work.

You can get more info on Adventure Point by going to visitlakecharles.org/ and adding the suffix AdventurePoint; or call the numbers 436-9588 or (800) 456-7952. For info on the Creole Nature Trail, visit creolenaturetrail.org.