Craig's big road trip

Day 22 - Lake Charles to Waveland
Home
The starting point
Day 1 - Seattle to Yakima
Day 2 - Yakima to Bend
Day 3 - Bend to Mt. Shasta
Day 4 - Mt. Shasta to Oakdale
Day 5 - Oakdale to Tehachapi
Yosemite National Park
Day 6 - Tehachapi to Las Vegas
Day 7-10 in Las Vegas
Day 11 - Las Vegas to Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon N.P.
Day 12 - Grand Canyon to Kayenta
Day 13 - Monument Valley
Day 14 - Kayenta to Telluride
Day 15 - Telluride
Day 16 - Telluride to Glenwood Springs
Day 17 - Glenwood Springs to Idaho Springs
Day 18 - Idaho Springs to Golden
Day 19 - Golden to Amarillo
Day 20 - Amarillo to Tyler
Day 21 - Tyler to Lake Charles
Day 22 - Lake Charles to Waveland
Day 24 - Waveland to Pensacola
Day 25 - Pensacola to Gainesville
Day 26 - Gainesville to Titusville
Day 27 - Kennedy Space Center
Day 28 - Titusville to Clearwater
The finishing point

Tuesday April 22, 2003.
 
To avoid the interstate freeway I headed temporarily west from lake Charles and back across the Sabine River into Texas via highway 90 so I could go around the west side of Sabine Lake and then follow the coastal highway 82 east back into Louisiana and through the wetlands along the Gulf of Mexico.  I wanted to see the ocean again and walk on a beach after so many weeks of being landlocked in the deserts and mountains.
 
This is swamp territory, complete with alligators.  The landscape is flat, with water along both sides of the road in most parts, and the wetlands are a haven for birdlife.  What I didn't expect was the number of oil refineries.  There are offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, visible from the beaches, and the refineries are in stark contrast to the surrounding nature reserve.
 
After walking on the beach for a little while, the dark clouds started zapping the earth with lightning, so I continued my eastward journey to New Orleans, followed all the way by heavy rain.  It rained for many hours, easing up only when I finally parked in the street near the New Orleans French Quarter district later that night.
 
Being an Australian, I'm not very knowledgable about American history, and so it wasn't until this trip that I came to learn that France used to own the whole middle section of the United States between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.  Hence the "French connection" with New Orleans.  It was in 1803 that France sold the whole of her American territory to the United States for US$11 million.  Napolean was an idiot.  This month is the bicentenary celebration of that "Louisiana Purchase" which changed the whole future of the U.S.  It's interesting to consider what the world would be like today if France had not sold that middle section of America to the U.S.   And what if Spain had kept California?
 
I walked around New Orleans looking for a place to eat dinner, having had nothing but a small chocolate bar all day.  I wanted a "New Orleans experience".  I settled for a main course of fried alligator in a Cajon restaurant which had a live jazz band playing.  Alligator - Cajon - jazz - it doesn't get much more New Orleans than that, so I kept going east after dinner, satisfied that I'd seen enough until the next time I can come back with Janet.
 
Leaving New Orleans city in the dark offers little in the way of views, but I knew I was on a very long bridge.  Bridges and elevated freeways are a trademark of New Orleans, being on the delta of the Mississippi River as it is.  That very long bridge took me over Lake Pontchartrain, and soon after that I was crossing the border into the state of Mississippi.
 
Keen to get onto scenic byways again, I veered off onto highway 90 which runs along the Gulf coast.  I settled for the night in a place called Waveland.  From here I can follow the coast all the way into Florida.

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