From the computer in the front office of the Ville Platte, LA Best Western:
Yet another totally beautiful day; hard to imagine a nicer day, unless the wind would be so kind as to visit our backsides! Fat chance of that!! At least it wasn't too strong today. 50 degrees this morning when we left DeRidder and 75 when we arrived at Ville Platte 80 very flat miles later. Nary a cloud to be seen. We started mostly in woods, but before long we climbed up a few feet, then crossed a river and entered...rice paddy country! Acres and acres of artificially flooded very flat land. Any doubts concerning the crop were quickly erased by the names of the farms.
Which reminds me of something I've meant to mention for a couple of days--egrets!! In the last three days we've seen more egrets than ion the remainder of our lives! They especially like the rice fields, but we've seen hundreds of them lots of other places. We also saw dozens of black birds today the general size and shape of egrets hanging out in rice paddies. Juvenile egrets? I have no idea. We also saw hundreds of great big thistle plants with purple blooms. Kathy should post a picture of one. Much more impressive than any thistle I've seen up north, and they are so numerous it seems to me they ought to be the state flower. Some are four feet tall!
Our route took us through two small towns, Oberlin and Mamoa, and combned with Ville Platte one thing that is patently obvious is that Louisiana is a much poorer state than Texas. This isn't so clear in the country, where the farms look about the same (though Ponderosa-sized estates are few and far between here), but the towns look much older and much poorer. We've also entered the land of Piggly Wiggly grocery stores, a great name, and Kathy should have posted a picture of our first stop at one for lunch today. Our new approach to eating on the road--in the absence of a passable restaurant--is to eschew convenience stores if possible and hit the largest grocery we can find.
Some of the roads here also reflect less money being available for highway maintenance, and we did about 10 of our 80 miles today on roads we both hope to forget as soon as possible--not because of the traffic (nil), but because the pavement delivered jackhammer-like blows to our arms and butts every four or five feet. Still, most pavement has been quite nice so far.
A big dilemma awaits us tomorrow. We have to cross two big rivers soon, the Mississippi and the Atychafalaya. The Mississippi crossing is on the route at a ferry at St Francisville--no problem there. But our route crosses the other one via a bridge at Simisport, but this takes us about 50 miles out of the way. The alternative is another ferry crossing much more in line with the route at Melville, LA, but it's not clear if the ferry there is operating!!! Even the city police I called this afternoon aren't sure, and the Louisiana Dept of Transportation website is none too clear either. We have to figure it out in the morning. It will make a day's difference in our ride whether we have to ride up to Simisport then head to St Francisville the next day, or can take the ferry at Melville. Stay tuned...
As we approached Ville Platte this afternoon (a Sunday) we came upon a field with at least a hundred pickup truck/horse trailer combinations parked together but only a few people and horses milling about. Then about a mile later we caught up with at most a dozen people on horseback riding right down the middle of the road. Around the next corner we found the explanation--a great big party, or hoe-down, or hootenanny, or whatever the right term is, in another field. Apparently everyone drove their horses to one farm, then rode their horses to the party on down the road!!
We got lucky for dinner tonight. This is the heart of Cajun country--not exactly the best diet for vegetarians, but just as last night we lucked into a great Thai restaurant, tonight we have a dandy Mexican joint right next door. This blog is definitely Margarita-influenced!!
Doug
I Love it--there was a Piggly Wiggly in my Mom's home town in Virginia. We always referred to it as "Going to the Pig" to pick up groceries. Would have loved to see pictures of the hoedown---could just be a family reunion.
ReplyDeleteElla
I'm pretty sure if you had pulled into that hoedown, you'd have been fed better than you've eaten in a long time (probably would've had to take anither day's rest form all the excelent home grown / home cooked food!)
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