Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana

Mobile Bay Alabama is a transition point from beach world to industrial world.  On the ferry to Dauphin Island from Fort Morgan oil platforms are visible in all directions, and from here until TX the petro-chemical industry everywhere, above ground and below (pipelines).  I  camped underneath a beach house on Dauphin Island with the 4 other cyclists.  The beach was surprisingly nice, but I suspect the site and sounds of the oil rigs dotting the horizon keep most of the tourists in FL.

Oil rig from the Dauphin Island ferry in the Mobile Bay.

I rode into Biloxi without a plan and a kind stranger took me in. Outside of a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Gulfport, just west of Biloxi, Angie, asked me where I was heading and after a quick call to her husband, Eddie, I had a place to stay, along with a hot shower and a meal.  I didn't realize that Hurricane Katrina even hit MS until Eddie and Angie mentioned the damage to their house.  Turns out the area between New Orleans and Biloxi was the hardest hit.  Riding through Biloxi I noticed the bare and undeveloped beach front and thought maybe it was just a depressed city.  In fact, it was completely devastated by Katrina and 8 years later still not back to normal. Riding on HWY 90 to New Orleans there are many empty lots with nothing but concrete slabs.

Whenever I told someone I was heading to New Orleans they told me to be careful.  I am not sure if they were referring to the crime issues or the dangerous roads, but the roads are most definitely dangerous for bicycling, and probably driving.  I found NO to be a bit overwhelming.  It is the most diverse and wild US city I have ever seen and the 3 nights I spent were not enough. I rode through the Garden District, Audubon Park, and explored Carrollton where I stayed with a WS host.  A  friend from UConn now living in NO, Katie G, took me out to the French Quarter one night.  We took the trolley car, someone threw me Mardi Gras beads, we drank from a balcony overlooking Bourbon St. and went to several bars with live music.  So I think I got the highlights, but  I am sure I could spend weeks exploring there.  Next time I will bring a full suspension mountain bike though.  Many of the roads are horrible, on par with many third-world countries.

I gave myself two days to ride to Baton Rouge, thinking I would take my time and enjoy the scenery riding along the Mississippi River levee.  I didn't realize this is the industrial backbone of the US, known as Cancer Alley.   The river is lined with enormous industrial facilities that use the river to move materials on giant barges and ships.  Grain elevators, oil refineries, sugar mills, aluminum processing plants, and who knows what else, make the air smell something like driving behind a diesel truck with a dairy farm on one side and a paper mill on the other.  Near the aluminum facility everything is coated in a layer of rust colored dust.  Chevron, Shell, Valero, Exxon, Dow, Cargill, all the big names are there. 

 

Riding River Rd. along the east side of the Mississippi.  How scenic!

Big barges, ships, and oil refinery on the river

About half way between NO and Baton Rouge I stopped for the night in a small industrial town called Gramercy.  I stayed with a nice family, Chad and Susan, that took me out for dinner and gave me a tour of the town.  They have a great tradition here.  For miles along the levee they build massive bonfires, which they light on Christmas Eve to show Santa the way to town.

A few days before Christmas

Photo on Christmas eve courtesy of my WS host Chad

More of the same industrial hell riding up the river to Baton Rouge, but with some more towns and old plantations mixed in.  The Louisiana State University campus dominates Baton Rouge to the south, and a giant Exxon Mobil takes up most of the north end of the city.  Urban decay (empty old buildings and parking lots) is a problem downtown, but there is an effort to revitalize and the one night I was downtown there were a number of young people out and about. 

That night, Mark, my WS host, and I  stumbled upon a live tribute concert at the Manship theater for Tabby Thomas, a legendary Baton Rouge bluesman.   There were some great performers,  and I didn't realize how big some of the names were until later.  My favorite was a guy named Tab Benoit.  Not until I got to Lafayette did I find out Tabby Thomas' son is Chris Thomas King, the guy that plays Tommy Johnson in O' Brother, Where Art Thou?, and does that great version of Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.

From Baton Rouge I crossed the river and rode to Cajun country, which is southern LA west of the Mississippi.   I found the Cajun people and culture to be delightful.  Prior to this trip I never really understood what the Cajun thing was all about.  I guess CT schools don't emphasize this part of US history so much (or maybe I wasn't paying attention).   Here is the relevant wikipedia link for the details: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians

The people are wonderful, down to earth and kind. The music is lively and unique, and Cajuns really like fishing and hunting so there is never a shortage of food. Chris and Jane, friends from UConn, now live in Thibodaux, so I stopped there before heading up the west side of the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest swamp in the US, to Lafayette.  Chris came up to Lafayette to show me around town and took me out to the Blue Moon Saloon, the spot in Lafayette for live music and dancing. Also where Chris and Jane met.

I ended up spending nearly a week in the Lafayette area with a sore knee, which turned out to not be such a bad thing.  Chris's friend, Billy, welcomed me to stay at his place, and I bumped into a WS hosts in the area, Regina, that took me out for a canoe trip up the Bayou Teche and invited me to dinner with her family.  She also introduced me to boudin, the Cajun sausage.   I went back to the Blue Moon another night and saw the great local Cajun band, Feufolle.  The dance floor was packed with all ages of people from 18 to 80.

Leaving Lafayette I did a short day to test the waters with my knee and felt OK.  The next day I had a strong headwind and the pain returned.  About 15 miles from Pecan Island, my next WS destination, I stopped for a break.  A woman in a pickup truck pulls off the road ahead of me says "hey darling" as she opens the bed of her truck.  Turned out to be Juanita, my WS host. Her friend saw me struggling over the bridge so Juanita decided to come pick me up.  In the truck she had a banana, granola bar, fresh squeezed OJ and a beer.

Juanita is a character.  An angel with lots of energy, which she needs every bit of.  She has 7 dogs, chickens, horses, cows, and outside cats.   When the hurricanes come everything gets loaded up and moved inland. They lost their house in 2005 when Rita hit.  She has two twin sized air mattresses and lets cyclists stay as long as they want.  Her husband works long hours for Halliburton over an hour drive away and only comes home on the weekends.  Juanita enjoys the company of the cyclists and says they are always good people.  There is never a shortage of food:  biscuits, bacon, eggs, oysters, shrimp, beef jerky, dirty rice.  I missed duck by one night.  I met 3 other cyclists the two nights I spent, one of which showed me a couple things about bike fit that made my knee pain go away.

Shrimp, dirty rice, and salad dinner with Juanita and Kerri

Oyster dinner with Elise, David, and Juanita

Juanita, Mikey, and Me

Juanita's herd.  I slept on the floor in the middle.

There is not much on route 82 for over 100 miles but endless marsh, some oil industry  stuff, a couple small towns, and hunting camps.  I happened to be there the last weekend of duck hunting season, so things were particularly active and jovial.  I was planning to camp at Holly Beach, a small cluster of beach houses and trailers in the area known as the Cajun Riviera.  Before Hurricane Rita, there was a convenience store and a bar, but that was never rebuilt.

The rode west on route 82 through the marsh

I was expecting to sleep on the beach and eat PB and banana for dinner, but I lucked out.  A few Holly Beach people were having what they called a "boucherie", which from what I understood involved slaughtering a 300 lb hog at 5AM, making sausage all day, and partying all night.   When I rode by they invited me over and told me to grab a plate.  They had a table full of food and offered me all the sausage I could eat:  regular boudin, blood boudin, smoked sausage, some kind of sausage stuffed inside the pigs stomach.  I tried a little of everything.  They even gave me a hot shower and a bed to sleep in.  A great last night for me in Louisiana, where I got nothing but love.

Making boudin at the boucherie