Day 4 - End of the Road

Day 4, the final day of this ride, started at 7:15am in Baton Rouge. I slept like a baby most of the night, due primarily to the long day riding from Lake City, but partly due to the great meal I had. I forgot to mention in last night's blog that I was referred to a great little seafood restaurant by the woman working the front desk at the hotel.

She told me to go back toward town to the next exit and then go south through four lights then make two lefts heading back down the access road to the north. The name of the restaurant was the Bayou Bistro. Sounded like a fancy place, but as it turned out it was anything but.

I followed the instructions, including going to the 4th traffic light, which turned out to be about 4 miles too. I turned left at the 4th light and left again on the access road and there it was...a small, unattractive white building with a very small out in front that said Bayou Bistro. Since I hadn't see any other suitable places to eat, I decided to give it a try. I ordered a pan sauteed tilapia with pecans and a shrimp butter covering it...man was that good. I totally cleaned my plate, waddle out to my bike and made my way back to the hotel.

Now, back to Day 4. I was on the road an hour later today, plus I had on long underwear, so I wasn't near as cold as on Day 3...in fact, I was very toasty. By the end of the day, I was burning up...just never had the opportunity to take the thermals off.

Almost immediately after I got on I-10, I entered an area called the Atchafalaya Basin. The highway went sloped up slightly until the roadway was elevated about 30 feet above the ground...or should I say swamp. This "bridge" went on and on for about 25 miles and ended in a real bridge...a steep, high draw bridge over the Atchafalaya River. Very interesting. The elevated roadway/bridge also went over an area called the Henderson Swamp...which actually looked like a swamp. The speed limit on the bridge was 55mph so by the time I got off, I was ready for breakfast. I exited in the little town of Henderson to eat at a Waffle House, where several of the Cajun speaking locals entertained me while I ate.

Back on the road, I continued to pass bodies of water and drive over bridges...just not 25 miles long. Louisiana has some interesting names for its waterways, such as Cow Bayou, Turtle Bayou, Lost River and Old River. They've been a lot less creative for some of their city's names, like Bridge City...at the base of one of the bridges I went over...and Rose City...don't know where that name came from since I didn't see any roses along the side of the road.

At some point along the road today I saw a couple of interesting signs. The first was alerting the traveler of the next exit for Ponce de Leon...wasn't he looking for the Fountain of Youth? Wonder if I would have found it if I had taken that exit? However, if I remember right, de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth somewhere in Florida...not Louisiana. Another sign mentioned the exit for Evangeline...now wasn't that a book or poem we all had to read back in high school? I think that was about someplace in Louisiana. Well, please excuse me if I remember all these things from high school wrong. I wasn't the best student in the school back then.

The last big city in Louisiana I went through was Lake Charles. For the last 20-25 miles coming into the city all I saw were billboards advertising the many casinos and resorts in and around the city. Not having a lot of extra money to blow in a casino, I passed on by and crossed the Sabine River...the river that divides Louisiana from Texas. The bridge was huge...so huge that I had to stop and take a picture of the approach. Good thing Sharon wasn't with me because she would not have liked it one little bit.

After crossing the river, I decided to pull off at the Texas Visitors Center. I spent a few minutes taking pictures and walking around the center before getting back on the road headed toward Beaumont. I stopped in Beaumont for gas and then got back on the road. A few minutes later I saw something fly up behind me and realized my right saddlebag was open. I quickly made my way over to the right shoulder from the far inside lane and came to a stop. Upon inspection, I my hat and my notebook were gone. What I had seen flying around was the notebook...I guess. I turned the bike off and started walking back up the shoulder to see if I could find one or both of the items.

I figured I'd have more success finding the notebook than the hat but after walking about 100 yards or so back up the highway...with cars and trucks whizzing by at 70+...I didn't see anything. I decided to get off the highway and go up the other side to get to the on ramp I had just used. Once I entered the highway from the same on ramp, I made my way over to the left shoulder and drove very slowly...with my turn signal on...looking for my hat and notebook.

It's amazing how much trash can be found on shoulders of a major interstate...I had a hard time weaving around everything. Just when I thought I'd have to give up, there right in front of me, on the shoulder, was my hat. I stopped and put the hat in the saddlebags and continued to look for the notebook. By the time I made it back to the point where I had exited the highway to make the u-turn, I had not seen the notebook. I had already wasted at least 30 minutes so I decided that the notebook was gone forever and I got back on the road headed for home.

Other than having to endure horrible road conditions in and around Houston, I had no other problems to speak of. I pulled up in front of Sharon's office 15 minutes short of 8 hours since hitting the road this morning...not bad considering how many times I stopped today. My mileage total at the end of the day from West Palm Beach to College Station...1,265 miles!

Before I complete the blog for this trip, I wanted to mention the various smells I experience along the way...as I invited you to do in the introduction but had not mentioned it any. It's interesting riding a motorcycle because you can easily smell everything around you...things you just don't notice riding in a car with the windows rolled up and the A/C on high. During this trip, the smells that stood out were both good and bad, such as the smell of freshly mowed grass, the smell of rain, the smell of someone cooking BBQ, the smell of welding, the smell of new tar on the roadway, the smell of fiberglass, the smell of a dead animal along the side of the road, and then there's the ever popular smell of a pulp mill.

It was another interesting trip for me...lots of new and interesting things to see...and smell. I was ready to get home...as usual. One of these days I want to make a trip where I don't feel obligated to cover so much ground in such a short time. I'd love to make a trip with no particular place to go and no particular time to get there...now that might be interesting. Until next time, this is Papa Jax signing off.