A new state for both of us!

Denham Springs, LA

Louisiana – It’s the 7th new state for my trailer and my 2nd new state on this trip. And so far I’m liking what I’ve seen. Of course, mostly what I’ve seen is what you can see from Interstate 10 as I follow it along southern USA. I left it for a while when I headed south into Texas, but have now reunited with it.

When I started off this morning from Galveston Island, I couldn’t see much more than 50 feet in front of my nose it was so foggy. It was extraordinarily warm and damp yesterday and I figured we were in for rain, but glad to have the fog instead.

The fog was unfortunate because I took an interesting route first thing this morning. Instead of travelling up towards Houston from Galveston Island, I took a small, free ferry ride from Galveston Island over to Boliver Peninsula, along the Texas coast. And from what I could see, we followed the beach pretty much the whole way along the peninsula before heading north to meet up with Interstate 10. The stilt beach homes on Boliver were built even higher than the ones on Galveston, I’m assuming since there is no seawall protecting them. Some of them had the actual dwelling built on the 3rd floor of the place with a huge deck area on the 2nd level, without any walls. They looked a little odd, until you realized the context.

Then it was not terribly interesting driving until I got into Louisiana. Almost as soon as we hit the state border, the landscape changed. All of a sudden we were right into bayou country. I wasn’t expecting that so far north of the Gulf. I had read that Interstate 10 was raised along this section and I thought it would be just built up earth, but no, it was causeway like, with trees and plants and water on both sides and sometimes just down the middle. For miles and miles. It was quite odd. But beautiful. Would be lovely to be here in the spring when the trees were in leaf but before it got too hot.

West and south of Baton Rouge is “Acadiana” territory. I have to do some more reading because some of what I’ve read said they didn’t come here directly during the expulsion from the Canadian Atlantic provinces, but rather left Atlantic Canada for England and France and then came to Louisiana from France. Others said they came directly. Perhaps it was both. I suspect I’ll have time to investigate that more fully. In any case, the reference to Evangeline on this sign reminded me of the poem of that name written by American poet Henry Wasworth which memorialized this historic event, and which I learned about when I was in Grand Pre in the first month of my North American journey, so long ago! (June 13th to be precise).

Just before entering Baton Rouge, I came over the Mississippi for the first time this trip, and expect I’ll do so several more times before leaving this state and Mississippi. I first saw it much further north on a trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota a hundred years ago. I hope to go exploring along it, north of Baton Rouge after enjoying some time in New Orleans. Or maybe tomorrow.

I drove through Baton Rouge on the freeway to get to the RV Park, and got a couple of glimpses of downtown while dodging transport trucks and changing freeways, but I will go back in tomorrow to see the State buildings etc. It’s supposed to be rainy and cold tomorrow and in fact the temperature has already dropped 5 or so degrees from when I arrived. So I’ll see how the day turns out tomorrow and then decide.

My RV Park tonight is a newish and small KOA. My favourite kind.