Day 1 : Louisiana is a dump

I am posting this entry from Alexandria, Louisiana.

Because this is a family blog and some readers may have delicate vocabularies I will try to be circumspect in describing my feelings about Louisiana’s place among the states of our union. However, my circumspection will require your imagination.

I want you to start by pretending that the lower 48 states have taken on a human form. This guy/gal would be roughly 2,000 miles tall and 3,000 miles wide (actually, I may have seen this lady in the checkout line at Wal-Mart last week). Thus, if you are standing behind Mr./Ms. America, Florida would be the right leg and California would be the left leg.

OK, have you got that image in your mind?

Good.

Now imagine which body part Louisiana would be (hint: if medical attention is required call a proctologist).

Betsy was a little more delicate, comenting that if Louisiana was small child it would be so ugly the parents would have to hang a pork chop around the kid’s neck to get the family dog to play with it.

I know, I know; we are visitors here and should try to say something nice so I am going to go above and beyond the call and say two nice things about Louisiana.

First, I think Louisiana is a great place because it provides a buffer between Texas and Mississippi.

A second reason I like Louisiana is because - by comparison – it makes Oklahoma seem not quite so bad.

See, that wasn’t so difficult; was it?

Seriously, the only reason we stopped here in Alexandria, LA. (which is exactly the kind of dump you would expect it to be) is because it seemed to be the closest city of much size on a logical route to our real destination which is Natchez, MS.

Natchez is the starting point for the Natchez Trace Parkway which we will use to drive northeast to Nashville over the next two days.

We started out driving east on I-10 with a quick detour to Moulton where we had left some hats at a restaurant on a trip earlier this month. (note to Bill, we got them)

We flew through Houston. And I am not kidding; no bumper to bumper, etc. it was 60-70 mph most of the way. The Katy Freeway now has about two dozen lanes with HOV and toll roads, etc. It is a monument to America’s unsustainable lifestyles but man was it great!!

For lunch we had a nice serendipity with a stop at a Corps of Engineers dam site at the mouth of the Trinity River. They had some nice picnic areas and a small visitor center. The concept there (a 60s era project) is to dam the Trinity to control the flow of fresh water into Trinity bay and minimize releases from Lake Livingston. 

I’d be interested to know what the environmentalist think about it. At any rate it was cool to be right there in the middle of the Trinity’s massive delta.

When we arrived at the motel just before 7 they were finishing up a happy hour in the breakfast room and had a guy pouring from a big pitcher of beer. It turned out we were the only beer drinkers and he let us sit in there for more than an hour finishing off the pitcher.

The nearby Cajun Landing was recommended for supper and we walked over only to discover they closed at 8:30 (we arrived about 8:35).

Fortunately there was a Popeye’s Fried Chicken nearby and we were able to at least get some red beans and rice.

This was our biggest and least interesting driving day and it went better than I expected, but I am glad to have it over with.