Louisiana Bayous

Day 50, Mile 2435

Crawfish boil - Yum!

We cycled a long meandering route through Louisiana this week, trying to stretch the state out as much as we could.  After crossing the Sabine River, which divides Texas and Louisiana, we headed south and down to the Gulf Coast, which was ravaged by both hurricanes Rita (2005) and Ike (2008).   We were not particularly aware of its impact before arriving in the area.  To the locals, everything is “before” or “after” the storms.  While there has been much rebuilding, for every house that stands (usually on 20 foot stilts), there are three driveways that go into an empty cement pad which used to hold a house, but is now just vacant land.  The communities are 1/3 of their previous size, and are almost completely without any businesses to this day.

Houses on stilts at Holly Beach, Louisiana

Humans may have been negatively impacted by the storms, but the swamps, marshes, and coast all seem to be thriving.   Water was ever present on our tour through the state, with marshland and canals taking off in all directions.  Birds, frogs, and turtles were abundant; we saw one bobcat, but our favorite was spying 49 alligators in 2 days.  From huge ones (10 feet long) to little baby ones, they were all fascinating for a couple from the north to see! We stopped to chat with a family having a crab boil and they just happened to have a pet baby alligator:

Baby alligator

But the real reason we were stretching this section of our tour out was to experience the Cajun culture.  Of course, that means food!  Amy insists that I remind people that we are usually eating macaroni and cheese and oatmeal type meals, but on this section we threw the budget out the window and ate!  We were invited to a crawfish boil with a family in the “town” of Cow Island.  While crawfish look like little lobsters, eating their tails was more like eating shrimp cooked in cayenne.  We were able to sample shrimp Po Boy sandwiches, fried catfish galore, frogs legs, boudin, fried pickles (wow!), varieties of crab and shrimp, jumbalaya, and a couple different kinds of gumbo.  We also got to a Cajun dance hall to dance to zydeco music. 



BIG Alligator!

And then, of course, are the people. We were asked a couple times if people from Louisiana are the friendliest people we’ve met.  I quickly learned not to tell them that Texans were also really friendly.  We must look skinny or something because people kept giving us food.  From the couple who took us out to dinner for our first gumbo, to the lady who, without telling us, paid for our lunch near the banks of the Mississippi, and left before we could even thank her.  We were allowed to sleep through a big gulf storm in the halls of a Baptist church in Hackeberrry, and were invited to spend 2 nights in an antebellum mansion in St. Martinsville.   There is just something about looking like a bike rider, rather than someone enclosed in a car, that opens us up to strangers.  Riding is almost always good, but these interactions with people who we will never see again will leave us with our longest and best memories.

Dock into the bayou

We crossed the Mississippi River today into the state of Mississippi and will be traversing the state for the next week on our way to Tennessee.  Check out the map below this entry.  Now it looks like we’re getting somewhere.