Once Around on a Bicycle
Louisiana may be the "Sportsman's Paradise", but if your sport is bicycling on their roads, stay out. It's a poor state that doesn't have the money to build shoulders on their major roads and bridges. I realized this early in the state. Here, in Lake Charles, I considered trading up to a more substantial vehicle. You can never be too safe in the Deep South.
If this is Iowa, where are the corn fields? Actually, this is a small town in south-west Louisiana. It's not even pronounced the same as the state. Still, I'll include Iowa in my list of states visited.
Rayne, Louisiana - Frog Capitol of the World. That's making the best of a bad situation. If you can't eliminate a problem, claim it as your own. Rat Capitol, Skunk Capitol and Locust Capitol are still unclaimed. The town did have a very impressive mural depicting its early days. There's not a frog to be found in the mural. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
In the center of Louisiana is a swampy area that is crossed on elevated roadways. I took this first picture just after Henderson on the 20+ mile section of Interstate 10 that's elevated. A few minutes later a state policeman pulled me over, checked for prior bicycling offenses, and then kicked me off of the Interstate. Althouigh there were no signs at the entrance ramps, it is apparently illegal to bicycle on an Interstate road in Louisiana. The second picture shows the road that he kicked me onto. 18 miles of gravel alongside a levee with no services. I ran out of water before I hit the next paved road. That road, like I-10, was also a four lane elevated highway, but it had no shoulders. That was a fun 7 miles, squeezed between speeding tractor-trailers and a cement railing. Thank you, Louisiana.
This was the only portion of Louisiana that I enjoyed cycling. The Tammany Trace is a bike path that goes for 20+ miles near the north shore of Lake Pontchatrain. I just wish it was longer.
After two months cycling through the interior of the US, this is my first sight of coastline at Pass Christian, Mississippi. That was the longest period that I've been away from water on this trip. I was a happy camper this day.
In Biloxi they have a lighthouse built in the median strip of a four lane highway. I'll bet the lighthouse keeper here isn't quite as lonely as his counterparts in other lighthouses. The conditions are less harsh, too. He's only 50 feet from from a Slushee machine.
I just had to take a picture of this restaurant in Biloxi. If there is such a thing as the Bombay Bicycle Club, they are a brave group of cyclists. I limited my cycling in Bombay to the airport parking lot. That was scary enough for me.
This is one of the many bridges that I've been crossing along the Gulf Coast. Since leaving Louisiana the shoulders on the roads and bridges have gotten wider and safer. This is the bridge to Dauphin Island, Alabama, a summer resort at the mouth of Mobile Bay.
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