Wednesday, May 18, 2016

We crossed the Mississippi River today.  After leaving Houston this morning, we drove to New Orleans.  Here's a tip - between Houston and New Orleans, there are no rest stops.  It's not too far between exits that have gas stations, fast food restaurants or truck stops, though, so I guess the states just didn't see a need for rest areas.  We were surprised to see a lot of picnic areas in Texas, and safety rest areas.  Not sure why they are called safety rest areas but that's what the signs said.

It was a pretty drive here, lots of oak and pine trees along the road.  It was heavy overcast most of the way, but no rain to speak of, and the sun came out just before we got here.  A truck kicked up a rock yesterday, resulting in a windshield chip, so we spent an hour and a half in a glass repair place this afternoon.  I was searching for motels while we waited and the one with the best price was located in Westwego, a suburb of New Orleans,  Never having heard of it, I asked the woman working in the office about it.  She said to not stay there and to avoid all of east New Orleans because it's not safe.  She also recommended areas so we are in Metairie (a suburb) for the night.  A young woman came in to pick up her car, and said, as she was leaving, "it will be nice to not have a couple of bullet holes in the windshield now."  That statement sure raised our eyebrows.  We aren't in Idaho anymore.

We crossed the Atchafalaya Basin on the way here.  Many many bayous, rivers, swamps, and lakes.  The water table looks like it's about six inches below the ground.  I looked on the map and this Basin drains into the gulf.  It was between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, and went for a long ways.  There is one point on the freeway where the road is on pilings for 18 miles.  I can't imagine how long that construction must have taken.  We also saw a number of fields, for lack of a better word, that looked like rice paddies, but I'm not sure that's what they are.  They had strings of what looked llike bobbers making a grid.   We speculated about freshwater shrimp or clams, maybe.

Louisiana gets the prize for having the most cops so far.  State troopers, sheriff vehicles, city cops, we saw them all, and a number of them had people pulled over.  And no wonder, the local residents seem to think speed limits are only a suggestion.  Stella missed the large cardboard box that was in our lane but couldn't avoid the big wad of paper packing material.  It must have wrapped around the axle because it made an awful flapping sound.  I watched in the rear view mirror while it tore off in big chunks until it finally got disentangled from the car.  I don't think the guy behind us appreciated that very much.

The humidity is about 70 percent here which is not as high as I thought it would be.  All the rivers are brown here.  That's hard to get used to coming from Idaho.  And bass fishing seems to be the thing to do.  No dead animals on the freeways since before Houston.