LOUISIANA

Sailed across the Texas border into Louisiana on Janary 16th and noticed two things almost immediately: Louisiana is impressively wet, and impressively littered.  The roads bridge swamps and rivers mile after mile; sometimes the roadways are elevated structures apparently built in the '30s to cover areas of shifting waterways that run for ten miles or so.  Railways often run at high elevations as a matter of course, over both land and water, to avoid having to keep changing structures and elevations for the shifting waters.

Where the roads are built on the ground they are elevated and banked like railroad grade beds, rising above swales perpetually filled with water and trash. 

I spent my first Louisiana night in a rest stop, convenient for truckers but not so convenient for RVs.  There was a nice visitors' center with four (!!) helpful clerks to serve me coffee, and a sheriff who appeared to be more or less permanently posted to the site.  I scared the hell out of him.  He was sitting in his squad car watching what appeared to be either a TV show or a video in the growing twilight, and I cautiously moved towards the line of site to his open window to ask him whether it was permissible to spend the entire night.  Not cautiously enough.  About five feet away, I said "Excuse me," and he jumped like a cat when the dog sneaks up on him.  The way he snapped the picture off made me think it was just possible he had a little porn going, but maybe not.  Maybe he'd had some bad experiences with people sneaking up on him or maybe he wasn't allowed to watch TV on duty.  At least he didn't pull a gun on me.

Turns out you can spend twelve hours at LA rest stops.  So, along with twenty-three big rigs, all of whom competed to see who had the loudest generator, I spent the night.  With the smell, noise and vibration, I felt like I was on a salmon fishing diesel boat.  A lot of them kept their engines running all night.  I asked a driver about that the next day; he nonchalantly told me that it was not an unusual custom and didn't use very much fuel.  It explains why I was the only RV.

Louisiana is more humid than Texas, obviously, and has millions of acres of rice under cultivation (it's the third largest producer among all the states).  The land is more or less level, which contributes both to rice production and the savage damage caused by hurricanes and flooding.  It's also a gritty producer, with oil pipelines under the swales and railroad tracks and marshaling yards winding among cement batch plants and construction equipment.  Some of the towns have names I can't help rolling across my tongue, like Natchitoches and Opelousas. 

I wonder why Texas doesn't buy or borrow water from Louisiana, which has a plethora.

Houses along much of the roadways are up on piers or stilts, but not every creature is chary of the water.   At one point, I saw flocks of ducks in the sky numbering in the thousands.  Egrets fish in the swales and bayous, oblivious to the traffic and litter.  Fishing is both a great sport and a means of sustenance for many residents.

Two other corporealities attract attention: it seems that every FM station of any power broadcasts religious counsel exclusively, and in some of the neighborhoods I drove through I swear that every other home had one of those portable basketball hoops with the water or sand filled base.  I never saw so many hoops in my life, and believe me, I look for them.  Never saw anyone shooting, though.

Along the highways between cities the railroad tracks follow, off at a short distance.  Trees, tracks, and trash--that's what you get.

I stopped for the night at a lovely place called  Chicot State Park.  Nestled in the pines, Chicot was a rolling platform for lakes, with RV spots and cabins high on stilts as well as tent camping.  There were perhaps five campers in the 100+ sites.  I had an entire section, with lake access and a platform with a grill and picnic table, for myself.  Lots of wildlife--whitetail deer with HUGE white rumps, red foxes, and, to my everlasting delight, armadillos!

NEXT: BAY SAINT LOUIS