Port Arthur → Cameron → Lake Arthur → Opelousas → Denham Springs
This has been a weird and wonderful day.
I cycled south from my motel hoping to find something in Port Arthur proper that would give me a better impression of the place. Unfortunately, it seems like the entire town is extremely spread-out, semi-abandoned and pedestrian-unfriendly. It was a very strange vibe.
I did find a panadería and bought some pan dulces for the ride. I wasn't sure if there would be anywhere to stop before Cameron. Then i rode along the seawall and looped round over the bridge onto highway 82. My heart did a little leap when i realized that i made it. I finally made it. The Atlantic Ocean!
The wind was very strong, but the sun was shining and the road turned out to be far less desolate than i imagined. Although it is basically just a long, straight road through the middle of a swamp, there were a reasonable amount of cars heading back and forth, so i never felt like i'd be stuck out there.
The landscape is really bizarre. It's incredibly flat, and it looks a bit like prairie, but if you look closer you'll see that almost all of it is mud or stagnant water with reeds growing out of it. There are fences, but the fences don't appear to fence in actual fields, they are just weird fence posts poking up out of the bog. Every now and then it opens up to a clear water channel or a sandy beach on the Gulf of Mexico. Even less frequently, there is raised side road leading to a small block of drained land that has a stilt house on it. A real stilt house. Like where the first floor is 2 or 3 meters in the air. Dotted around the place are oil refineries. It's so strange and eerie. I kinda loved it.
I cycled into a few of the communities along the way. They have been utterly wiped out by hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, but some people keep moving back. About half the plots just have a concrete pad, or sad wooden stilts with nothing on top of them. Then the other half of the plots are split between cheerfully-painted stilt houses and RVs - all the better for a quick escape when the next storm comes. There are no shops or restaurants, but some guys have set up informal businesses out the back of a truck selling bait, tackle and ice. I'm not even sure if these communities have plumbing, judging by the portaloos around the place. It really feels like stepping into a third world country.
I was fortunate to have the gale-force winds behind me, because on the short section where i had to turn north to get to the ferry, i was absolutely pummeled by the gusts. But then i was across the ferry and into Cameron, the urban center of the whole region. Cameron has some oil industry stuff, a public library, one gas station, one motel, about 27 RV parks and two guys selling food out of food trucks. Most of the other buildings are falling apart. It feels like the whole community has given up on houses and just moved into RVs for practical reasons.
I stopped at a food truck and got their specialty po' boy, which was cooked shrimp (not deep-fried) with crispy bacon, provolone cheese and some kind of creamy jalapeño sauce. I hate seafood and normally never eat it, but i am going to make an exception for Louisiana because i know it's a big thing around here. All the way up the road i saw trucks pulled over. Their drivers were crabbing or shrimping or fishing for some kind of creepy, crawly, antenna-having creatures in the boggy muck by the side of the road. The po' boy was fine. Not really my kind of dish, but good for what it was, i think. It's hard to tell with all that dairy. The fries were good. I'm glad i got free of that weird corner of Texas where they batter the fries to give them an extra-crunchy outside, which actually just makes them unpleasant to eat because they tear up the roof of your mouth. These were normal, fat, European-style fries.
Then i booked into the motel. I suspect i could've camped anywhere along the beaches outside of town, or called into every RV park in town to find one that allowed tents, but the wind was so strong i think it'd just be a miserable evening. The motel was another weird thing. It's like... half perfect. It's twice the price of any motel in a bigger town, because it's the only place in town, and i suspect mostly home to traveling oil industry folks where the company foots the bill. And it feels like it has all the stuff that a motel should have - large screen TV, microwave, fridge, air conditioner... but then you notice it doesn't have any lamps, only the overhead light. And there's no phone. Or, at least, no phone plugged in. There is a cardboard box that says "hotel phone" on it, as if they're still setting up the room.
I walked down to the gas station to buy a beer and ended up in the busiest line i have ever seen in a gas station in my life. Again - only gas station in town. Only place in 20 miles where you can buy booze. Every oil industry and construction worker and RV-living local was in there picking up an ice cold beer for dinner. Some were picking up pizza too. I opted to go to the other food truck, which also had burgers and po' boys. I asked what they could do quick, and they gave me one of their specialties - french fries with Creole seasoning, topped with diced breaded chicken tenders, topped with Frank's hot sauce, and ranch dressing, and shredded cheese, and pickled jalapeños. I feel like i ate about 3 days worth of sodium and a gazillion calories in one sitting, but that's all there is, i suppose. When you don't have any "real" restaurants in town, and you don't even have a supermarket, just a gas station, your only option for calories is junk. Just coat the stomach for the booze. Back to work again tomorrow.
The whole place is really weird. It feels like a town that's still under FEMA jurisdiction or something. Like a refugee camp, or an informal settlement... a shantytown. But, somehow, people seem to be cheerful and friendly despite it all. I guess if you live out here you need to be resilient, because everything you know gets (literally) blown away every year or two. It's weird, but i kind of like it. I almost wish i had an RV so i could camp out here for a week and get to know the locals.
But i will move on. I don't think i'm tough enough to cycle east along 82 right through the bayous all the way to the Lafayette suburbs. I'd likely want to overnight at least once along the way, but i'm not sure about backcountry camping in the middle of a swamp. Apparently there is a store in Pecan Island, but even if i can get water and camping tips there, i feel like it's too risky. I don't know enough yet about how to survive in this kind of environment. The mountains, forests and plains are places i am familiar with. I know how to stay safe. But this environment is very alien for me. So instead i will head north - not quite to the I-10 "line of civilization", but perhaps cutting east on 14 instead, where i think i have found a campsite that accepts tents.
Either way, it feels like i really started having an adventure again. It's so different here.
-o-
Louisiana got less interesting when i got further north.
I headed east, first, through more of this bizarre swampy marshland where everything was reeds, then turned into the heavy wind up north. The road felt even more swampy up there, like a long causeway over a boggy oilfield. I saw my first gator - roadkill on the shoulder. It was big and scary. Later on i saw two live ones - one who crawled into the water soon as i spotted him on the opposite bank, and another not 10 feet from me sitting in the water under a tree by the side of the road. I squeaked "holy shit" and it scared him into the deeper water. These creatures are fast and frightening.
Heading north i encountered an unexpected bridge that rose up out of the water to cross... more water. I guess perhaps there's a dredged shipping channel or something? The whole environment was so bizarre.
But then, after the bridge, there was more solid ground. And it started to look a lot like southeast Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Flat. Watery. Annoyingly too many trees. I stopped at a gas station to get lunch. It was another snack bar type place. I got a BBQ pork po' boy and fries and it was mediocre. So far Louisiana ain't doing much for my theory that food gets better the more south you go, because all i've eaten to date is food as bland and uninspiring as up north, just with Buffalo sauce on it. And that's basically the food of western New York, so...
Anyway, i pressed on till i hit highway 14 and could turn east again. It was nice to have a sorta tailwind again. But also the nor'westerly has blown clouds overhead, and brought some cold weather down from Canada. I mean, i'm still in shorts and a tank top, but it's not comfortably warm any more, and tonight it's forecast to drop down to 9 degrees. Fucking shitty winter weather. This is not what i came to the Gulf Coast for.
Then again, i also didn't come here for boring boggy fields, and another stupid fucking asshole whose off-leash dog chased me down the road. After that brief section where it almost felt like i was on another planet, now i just feel like i'm in watery Texas without any tacos.
Anywho, i checked into an RV park on Lake Arthur, snuck my tent into a better spot, then an RVing family came by and parked right in front so now i won't get any morning sun anyway. Oh well. I guess it was too good to be true, to hope i could get a cool spot on Halloween weekend.
-o-
I just got invited to some crab and shrimp stew cookup the RV park owners were doing, but i was literally eating my first tortilla as he asked. I guess i missed the chance to have some down home Louisiana cooking, but i don't like being forced into social situations like that. Like... I dunno, several people have invited me to join them for dinner or drinks on this journey, but i've always refused. Being pushed into socializing would turn this from a holiday into work. Even when i make my own choice to socialize, i'm usually only interested in doing it in neutral spaces like clubs or bars, where there is no obligation to stay for any period or to stick with the same person. I really hate being pressured into social situations, and i find it so awkward that people even make the suggestion, thinking they are being nice, because now i'm forced into saying no, and now that might be offensive too. Ugh. It's the worst.
This is one of the reasons i still haven't made use of Warm Showers, which is a homestay service for bike tourers. Some tourers travel across the whole world and never pay a cent for accommodation because they stay for free in people's houses who are on the service. But i find the whole concept so awkward. Being forced to socialize every night, to sing for my supper, that is exactly like work. My sole motivation to work in the first place is so i can actually be free in my free time, not to work some more. If Warm Showers was a true gift economy, i would be able to camp in people's yards without ever talking to them. It's not a gift when the price is social interaction.
This is why i will never be a real backpacker, hitchhiker, vagabond etc. Those guys will go miles out of their way for "free" things. They believe that they're living outside of the system or undermining the system by not working. But really they've just replaced working for money with working for no money. Flying a sign, fishing, hunting, trapping, dumpster diving, gas jugging, busking, begging, blagging, finding all the free meals for homeless in town, searching for a discrete place to camp where the cops won't evict you... That's all work. It takes a lot of time and energy. From my perspective you're better off just doing a little bit of paid work - even at minimum wage - so you can afford to actually live freely in this garbage fire society that's turned almost every part of the land into so-called private property.
I have to say, i do really miss the west, where places to legally camp alone for free or cheap are plentiful.
-o-
Ah, Halloween, i forgot how much of a big deal Americans make of it.
I am currently sitting in an Opelousas city park waiting for their Trick-or-Treat Trail to end, so i can set up my tent. One of the reasons i headed up here instead of a more country RV park was to maximize my chances of finding a spot, thinking a bunch of people would've escaped town for the weekend. I didn't think that in town they'd also be doing things. I gotta say, a Trick-or-Treat Trail is kind of a neat idea - get the kids dressed up and walk them through the park, where local businesses have set up free candy booths and Halloween displays to feed the kids and advertise to the parents.
This is the second Saturday Do that i accidentally crashed.
I left Lake Arthur (the lake) early in the morning, after getting sidetracked talking to the park owner and another camper who both fell over themselves trying to help me find another RV park that would allow tent camping. The owner said i could use her as a reference for one of several other parks where she knew the owners if i had any trouble. It was all very helpful, although i had already done my due diligence the night before and pretty much had my plan worked out. Still, good to have backups.
After the chat, i picked up a big stick to go back up the road to Lake Arthur (the town), because i knew there was an off-leash dog on the way. Sure enough, it came out barking again. This time i yelled at it and that seemed to be enough to scare it off. Although, i hate yelling at animals, or people, so i don't want to make a habit of it.
I passed through a bunch of nondescript small towns in nondescript countryside, until i got to a large-ish town called Crowley where i planned to get lunch. I was sitting on the sidewalk, looking exasperated at my phone, because all the lunch options sucked... when an older couple stopped and asked if i was okay. I said i was fine, and just looking for somewhere to eat.
Then a weird thing happened. The wife called her husband for 10 bucks. He said he only had a 20, and she said that'll do, and then she gave it to me. She said i should go down the street where there was some street festival thing and go eat there. I was like... Uh, okay. Then she asked about me. I talked a bit about my tour, and asked them their story which was basically they were Texans, RVers too, but have a second house in Louisiana.
Somehow the wife found an opening to evangelize. I don't know exactly what i said, but i think it's when i mention i'm on the road with no particular goal that flicks these folks into conversion mode. She was like "well, i'm not gonna preach at you, but..." and then proceeded to preach at me for the next 10 minutes. "Your life will always have a hole until you realize that the hole is filled by the Lord, and it's the Holy Spirit that will come inside you and fill that hole, and He will guide you through life when you are lost," and on, and on, and on. Then: "Can i pray for you? I'd like to pray for you right now." Like. What the holy Jesus fucking fuck? Who just up and prays for strangers like that?! It's wild, like full-blown cultish born again Jesus worship all up in your face. I mean, thanks for the cash, but lordy. I took down their number and promised to call when i realize that a) i have a hole in my heart and b) i need Jesus to fill it.
Then i went down the street to eat gumbo.
Turns out the thing was a gumbo cook-off. 10 dollar entry, eat as much as you like. Soda 1 dollar, booze 3 dollars. There was a zydeco band playing tunes. It was a real down homey Cajun party vibe. The gumbos were in categories seafood and non-seafood, homemade and jar. I tried all the homemade ones and one jar, at which point i decided homemade was much better and i went back to my favorite for seconds.
Admittedly, i am not much of a gumbo fan. In fact, outside of fried catfish, Louisiana Creole and Cajun food has always disappointed me every time i ate at Louisiana-themed restaurants in the big cities. And - just like BBQ - eating it in the region it's from tastes pretty much exactly the same. Which is to say, lacking in texture, lacking in heat/spice, lacking in freshness, just kind of... soft, salty, bland nutritional filler. Except i was still hungry after because it was mostly meat and soup and not enough rice, so i ate a Clif bar too, which was much more satisfying. Still, at least i can check another thing off the list of stuff "you have to try when you go to X" and then never need to bother eating again after that.
After Crowley i continued the very unremarkable ride up to Opelousas. The road from Church Point to Opelousas is an absolute fucking shitshow. It's sealed, technically, but it's so potholed and busted up that the ride feels like going over speed bumps the whole way. So it was even worse when dogs charged out to chase me. For fuck's sake, man.
There were a bunch of rice paddies along the way, which might've been interesting if they were flooded or at that pretty yellow stage, but most of them were just plowed so, eh.
Anyway, i made it up here. The event ends at 6, which is now, and the sun sets shortly after. I already talked to the very busy park ranger who was trying to wrangle the bajillion cars that had parked all over the show and blocked out the road and she said it's fine if i set up, she'll come around after it's calmed down. Seems like it'll be around 7ish. I will eat some food while it's still light then set up.
-o-
Around 8pm the ranger rolled around and said that she talked to her boss and staying here was on them, but i could only stay one night. She said that they used to allow tent campers but now it's RV only, so normally i wouldn't be allowed to stay but seeing as i was already here they'd let it go and not charge me for the spot.
The south (including Texas) is so fucking frustrating to tent camp in. My evenings lately are taken up by a couple hours of trying to find a campsite that allows tents and my daytime routes are dictated by where that one, sole place turned out to be. It means i can't really detour to see any interesting sights or make a spontaneous decision to go elsewhere.
They just hate tent campers down here, i think. It seems to be associated with "unsavory elements", as if the only people who would lower themselves to camping in a tent instead of an RV must be criminals or (perhaps) homeless bums who will stink up the place. But by not providing anywhere legal for people to camp they're just encouraging stealth campers who are much more likely to skip showers and drop garbage and shit in the woods because there is no other option. Not providing a legal place for people to sleep literally creates criminals out of ordinary people who just need to perform a basic bodily function. It's depressing, and might hint at an explanation why the west coast keeps getting more and more homeless migrants.
-o-
Waking up today i had a bit of the stealth camping experience, and it sucks. I pitched my tent after sunset. Stayed inside it all night because the bathrooms in the park were out of order. Broke camp before sunrise. My fly was soaking wet from the condensation and there was nothing to be done.
I was at the gas station to visit the bathroom and get a hot coffee by 8am. The temperature outside was 8 degrees. I was waiting for the local legendary eggs and rice by 8:30am. I ate a beignet while i waited. Then had another one after. I never had a beignet before, but they're basically a donut with a thick layer of icing sugar on top. Similar to the Dutch oliebol. They're okay. Eggs and rice, on the other hand, now that was a magnificent feed. Not very culinarily complex, but extremely satisfying. There was loads of rice, but somehow every bite still came with just enough scrambled egg or bacon to give it a salty, fluffy kick. Plus acid from the Crystal hot sauce, let's go! By far the best thing i've eaten in Louisiana and the best breakfast i've had on the trip so far.
And then disaster struck.
My phone has been beaten up since the start of this journey. First it had some cracks, and on humid days it'd lose touch response in parts of the screen. Then it got more cracks, and each day a little more glass flaked off. A few days ago it really started falling apart, as a blueish purple spot started to grow. Each town i've been in for the last week or two i have been checking the Best Buy stock online to see if they have a Pixel, but none of them do. Nobody can do overnight delivery anywhere i have visited so i just figured to keep going until i got to a city where they had one in stock. But this morning the purple spot started spreading.
It spread over the top of the keyboard, then up the screen. I very quickly removed the PIN lock from the phone, backed up my launcher and set photos to back up over mobile data, in anticipation of a total failure. It totally failed. I was riding blind. No map. No mail. No camera.
The good news is that i knew i just had to follow 190 to get to Baton Rouge. The other good news is that the trip was extremely fucking boring and there was nothing to take a photo of anyway. Although those viaducts over the swamp look cool as hell when you see photos taken of them from above, when you're actually on one it's just a concrete semi-tunnel where you can't stop and can't see the view either.
I stopped at a gas station near Krotz Springs when i saw a large, looming bridge. And then some random dude popped up and offered me a lift across the bridge. He explained that the bridge itself was okay, but after the bridge there was a 6 mile viaduct with no shoulder at all where there are a lot of accidents. He said he was a local firefighter and that he'd rather take 10 minutes to help me across than get called in for a 4 hour accident cleanup. Apparently he's helped cyclists across before. I took him up on the offer, and got a nice little fast-forward.
I made it to the Mississippi a bit before 2. I know it was before 2, because a bit later on cycling through a residential district i heard a church bell strike twice. I like that the churches in Louisiana have bells, like in Europe. It's pretty useful when your phone is defunct. Baton Rouge was where i really missed the phone. Not just because i badly needed directions to Best Buy, but also because there was an epic Exxon oil refinery along the river that was extremely photogenic. Alas, no photos.
Eventually i made it to Best Buy. Nowhere else to buy a phone was open on Sunday, at least that i saw, but then i didn't see much except for residential districts. I also didn't see a single white person till the Best Buy parking lot, after cycling through town for nearly an hour. It's so strange in these southern cities, it's as if white people just hide in their houses all day long. Nobody walking, nobody biking, nobody sitting on the porch. Plenty of non-white people doing that. I most only see white people in gas stations, restaurants and big box stores. It's really odd.
I got a phone, not a Pixel, and going back to Android 10 and its pathetic lack of proper gesture support makes me cry. Not being able to share the wifi over hotspot sucks too, as i discovered when i went to Starbucks specifically for the purpose of setting my shit up, but then my laptop wouldn't connect to their garbage fire wifi, and i couldn't log on to my Google account on the new phone because i couldn't do two-factor on the old phone, but because i couldn't log on to Google i also couldn't download the app i needed to activate my new SIM card, so i didn't have a cell connection either, and i just wanted to scream.
Eventually i gave up and cycled three sides of a square to get to the next interstate exit without getting on the fucking interstate and booked into the KOA. Fuck my life because today sucked. Clearly, as i type this, i have gotten the new phone working and the SIM activated. But it's after midnight and i am tired for real. This part of Louisiana is awful for cycling. There are only two or three places to cross each river or swamp, and they're all extremely busy bridges with no shoulder (or a potholed to shit shoulder) and drivers who don't give a fuck about hitting a cyclist. I had several very close calls today.
Although, typing this up, at least i had a good breakfast and a friendly firefighter to help me along. The sales person in Best Buy was great too, as were the people i asked for directions along the way.
So far Louisiana is good people, mostly mediocre food and utterly abysmal roads. Landscape was amazing in Cameron parish and boring everywhere else. I think i'll just bust ass out of here soon. There are a couple state parks along Lake Pontchartrain and then it's out to Gulfport, Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola. Not sure if it'll be a highway of doom or a string of epic beaches, but either way i really hope they have tacos. Dude, Walmart here doesn't even have Tajin. There are so many things i wish i'd bought in Texas before crossing into this weird state where they sell pickled quail eggs and hard liquor and fishing tackle at every gas station but God help you if you want a taco.
I cycled south from my motel hoping to find something in Port Arthur proper that would give me a better impression of the place. Unfortunately, it seems like the entire town is extremely spread-out, semi-abandoned and pedestrian-unfriendly. It was a very strange vibe.
I did find a panadería and bought some pan dulces for the ride. I wasn't sure if there would be anywhere to stop before Cameron. Then i rode along the seawall and looped round over the bridge onto highway 82. My heart did a little leap when i realized that i made it. I finally made it. The Atlantic Ocean!
The wind was very strong, but the sun was shining and the road turned out to be far less desolate than i imagined. Although it is basically just a long, straight road through the middle of a swamp, there were a reasonable amount of cars heading back and forth, so i never felt like i'd be stuck out there.
The landscape is really bizarre. It's incredibly flat, and it looks a bit like prairie, but if you look closer you'll see that almost all of it is mud or stagnant water with reeds growing out of it. There are fences, but the fences don't appear to fence in actual fields, they are just weird fence posts poking up out of the bog. Every now and then it opens up to a clear water channel or a sandy beach on the Gulf of Mexico. Even less frequently, there is raised side road leading to a small block of drained land that has a stilt house on it. A real stilt house. Like where the first floor is 2 or 3 meters in the air. Dotted around the place are oil refineries. It's so strange and eerie. I kinda loved it.
I cycled into a few of the communities along the way. They have been utterly wiped out by hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, but some people keep moving back. About half the plots just have a concrete pad, or sad wooden stilts with nothing on top of them. Then the other half of the plots are split between cheerfully-painted stilt houses and RVs - all the better for a quick escape when the next storm comes. There are no shops or restaurants, but some guys have set up informal businesses out the back of a truck selling bait, tackle and ice. I'm not even sure if these communities have plumbing, judging by the portaloos around the place. It really feels like stepping into a third world country.
I was fortunate to have the gale-force winds behind me, because on the short section where i had to turn north to get to the ferry, i was absolutely pummeled by the gusts. But then i was across the ferry and into Cameron, the urban center of the whole region. Cameron has some oil industry stuff, a public library, one gas station, one motel, about 27 RV parks and two guys selling food out of food trucks. Most of the other buildings are falling apart. It feels like the whole community has given up on houses and just moved into RVs for practical reasons.
I stopped at a food truck and got their specialty po' boy, which was cooked shrimp (not deep-fried) with crispy bacon, provolone cheese and some kind of creamy jalapeño sauce. I hate seafood and normally never eat it, but i am going to make an exception for Louisiana because i know it's a big thing around here. All the way up the road i saw trucks pulled over. Their drivers were crabbing or shrimping or fishing for some kind of creepy, crawly, antenna-having creatures in the boggy muck by the side of the road. The po' boy was fine. Not really my kind of dish, but good for what it was, i think. It's hard to tell with all that dairy. The fries were good. I'm glad i got free of that weird corner of Texas where they batter the fries to give them an extra-crunchy outside, which actually just makes them unpleasant to eat because they tear up the roof of your mouth. These were normal, fat, European-style fries.
Then i booked into the motel. I suspect i could've camped anywhere along the beaches outside of town, or called into every RV park in town to find one that allowed tents, but the wind was so strong i think it'd just be a miserable evening. The motel was another weird thing. It's like... half perfect. It's twice the price of any motel in a bigger town, because it's the only place in town, and i suspect mostly home to traveling oil industry folks where the company foots the bill. And it feels like it has all the stuff that a motel should have - large screen TV, microwave, fridge, air conditioner... but then you notice it doesn't have any lamps, only the overhead light. And there's no phone. Or, at least, no phone plugged in. There is a cardboard box that says "hotel phone" on it, as if they're still setting up the room.
I walked down to the gas station to buy a beer and ended up in the busiest line i have ever seen in a gas station in my life. Again - only gas station in town. Only place in 20 miles where you can buy booze. Every oil industry and construction worker and RV-living local was in there picking up an ice cold beer for dinner. Some were picking up pizza too. I opted to go to the other food truck, which also had burgers and po' boys. I asked what they could do quick, and they gave me one of their specialties - french fries with Creole seasoning, topped with diced breaded chicken tenders, topped with Frank's hot sauce, and ranch dressing, and shredded cheese, and pickled jalapeños. I feel like i ate about 3 days worth of sodium and a gazillion calories in one sitting, but that's all there is, i suppose. When you don't have any "real" restaurants in town, and you don't even have a supermarket, just a gas station, your only option for calories is junk. Just coat the stomach for the booze. Back to work again tomorrow.
The whole place is really weird. It feels like a town that's still under FEMA jurisdiction or something. Like a refugee camp, or an informal settlement... a shantytown. But, somehow, people seem to be cheerful and friendly despite it all. I guess if you live out here you need to be resilient, because everything you know gets (literally) blown away every year or two. It's weird, but i kind of like it. I almost wish i had an RV so i could camp out here for a week and get to know the locals.
But i will move on. I don't think i'm tough enough to cycle east along 82 right through the bayous all the way to the Lafayette suburbs. I'd likely want to overnight at least once along the way, but i'm not sure about backcountry camping in the middle of a swamp. Apparently there is a store in Pecan Island, but even if i can get water and camping tips there, i feel like it's too risky. I don't know enough yet about how to survive in this kind of environment. The mountains, forests and plains are places i am familiar with. I know how to stay safe. But this environment is very alien for me. So instead i will head north - not quite to the I-10 "line of civilization", but perhaps cutting east on 14 instead, where i think i have found a campsite that accepts tents.
Either way, it feels like i really started having an adventure again. It's so different here.
-o-
Louisiana got less interesting when i got further north.
I headed east, first, through more of this bizarre swampy marshland where everything was reeds, then turned into the heavy wind up north. The road felt even more swampy up there, like a long causeway over a boggy oilfield. I saw my first gator - roadkill on the shoulder. It was big and scary. Later on i saw two live ones - one who crawled into the water soon as i spotted him on the opposite bank, and another not 10 feet from me sitting in the water under a tree by the side of the road. I squeaked "holy shit" and it scared him into the deeper water. These creatures are fast and frightening.
Heading north i encountered an unexpected bridge that rose up out of the water to cross... more water. I guess perhaps there's a dredged shipping channel or something? The whole environment was so bizarre.
But then, after the bridge, there was more solid ground. And it started to look a lot like southeast Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Flat. Watery. Annoyingly too many trees. I stopped at a gas station to get lunch. It was another snack bar type place. I got a BBQ pork po' boy and fries and it was mediocre. So far Louisiana ain't doing much for my theory that food gets better the more south you go, because all i've eaten to date is food as bland and uninspiring as up north, just with Buffalo sauce on it. And that's basically the food of western New York, so...
Anyway, i pressed on till i hit highway 14 and could turn east again. It was nice to have a sorta tailwind again. But also the nor'westerly has blown clouds overhead, and brought some cold weather down from Canada. I mean, i'm still in shorts and a tank top, but it's not comfortably warm any more, and tonight it's forecast to drop down to 9 degrees. Fucking shitty winter weather. This is not what i came to the Gulf Coast for.
Then again, i also didn't come here for boring boggy fields, and another stupid fucking asshole whose off-leash dog chased me down the road. After that brief section where it almost felt like i was on another planet, now i just feel like i'm in watery Texas without any tacos.
Anywho, i checked into an RV park on Lake Arthur, snuck my tent into a better spot, then an RVing family came by and parked right in front so now i won't get any morning sun anyway. Oh well. I guess it was too good to be true, to hope i could get a cool spot on Halloween weekend.
-o-
I just got invited to some crab and shrimp stew cookup the RV park owners were doing, but i was literally eating my first tortilla as he asked. I guess i missed the chance to have some down home Louisiana cooking, but i don't like being forced into social situations like that. Like... I dunno, several people have invited me to join them for dinner or drinks on this journey, but i've always refused. Being pushed into socializing would turn this from a holiday into work. Even when i make my own choice to socialize, i'm usually only interested in doing it in neutral spaces like clubs or bars, where there is no obligation to stay for any period or to stick with the same person. I really hate being pressured into social situations, and i find it so awkward that people even make the suggestion, thinking they are being nice, because now i'm forced into saying no, and now that might be offensive too. Ugh. It's the worst.
This is one of the reasons i still haven't made use of Warm Showers, which is a homestay service for bike tourers. Some tourers travel across the whole world and never pay a cent for accommodation because they stay for free in people's houses who are on the service. But i find the whole concept so awkward. Being forced to socialize every night, to sing for my supper, that is exactly like work. My sole motivation to work in the first place is so i can actually be free in my free time, not to work some more. If Warm Showers was a true gift economy, i would be able to camp in people's yards without ever talking to them. It's not a gift when the price is social interaction.
This is why i will never be a real backpacker, hitchhiker, vagabond etc. Those guys will go miles out of their way for "free" things. They believe that they're living outside of the system or undermining the system by not working. But really they've just replaced working for money with working for no money. Flying a sign, fishing, hunting, trapping, dumpster diving, gas jugging, busking, begging, blagging, finding all the free meals for homeless in town, searching for a discrete place to camp where the cops won't evict you... That's all work. It takes a lot of time and energy. From my perspective you're better off just doing a little bit of paid work - even at minimum wage - so you can afford to actually live freely in this garbage fire society that's turned almost every part of the land into so-called private property.
I have to say, i do really miss the west, where places to legally camp alone for free or cheap are plentiful.
-o-
Ah, Halloween, i forgot how much of a big deal Americans make of it.
I am currently sitting in an Opelousas city park waiting for their Trick-or-Treat Trail to end, so i can set up my tent. One of the reasons i headed up here instead of a more country RV park was to maximize my chances of finding a spot, thinking a bunch of people would've escaped town for the weekend. I didn't think that in town they'd also be doing things. I gotta say, a Trick-or-Treat Trail is kind of a neat idea - get the kids dressed up and walk them through the park, where local businesses have set up free candy booths and Halloween displays to feed the kids and advertise to the parents.
This is the second Saturday Do that i accidentally crashed.
I left Lake Arthur (the lake) early in the morning, after getting sidetracked talking to the park owner and another camper who both fell over themselves trying to help me find another RV park that would allow tent camping. The owner said i could use her as a reference for one of several other parks where she knew the owners if i had any trouble. It was all very helpful, although i had already done my due diligence the night before and pretty much had my plan worked out. Still, good to have backups.
After the chat, i picked up a big stick to go back up the road to Lake Arthur (the town), because i knew there was an off-leash dog on the way. Sure enough, it came out barking again. This time i yelled at it and that seemed to be enough to scare it off. Although, i hate yelling at animals, or people, so i don't want to make a habit of it.
I passed through a bunch of nondescript small towns in nondescript countryside, until i got to a large-ish town called Crowley where i planned to get lunch. I was sitting on the sidewalk, looking exasperated at my phone, because all the lunch options sucked... when an older couple stopped and asked if i was okay. I said i was fine, and just looking for somewhere to eat.
Then a weird thing happened. The wife called her husband for 10 bucks. He said he only had a 20, and she said that'll do, and then she gave it to me. She said i should go down the street where there was some street festival thing and go eat there. I was like... Uh, okay. Then she asked about me. I talked a bit about my tour, and asked them their story which was basically they were Texans, RVers too, but have a second house in Louisiana.
Somehow the wife found an opening to evangelize. I don't know exactly what i said, but i think it's when i mention i'm on the road with no particular goal that flicks these folks into conversion mode. She was like "well, i'm not gonna preach at you, but..." and then proceeded to preach at me for the next 10 minutes. "Your life will always have a hole until you realize that the hole is filled by the Lord, and it's the Holy Spirit that will come inside you and fill that hole, and He will guide you through life when you are lost," and on, and on, and on. Then: "Can i pray for you? I'd like to pray for you right now." Like. What the holy Jesus fucking fuck? Who just up and prays for strangers like that?! It's wild, like full-blown cultish born again Jesus worship all up in your face. I mean, thanks for the cash, but lordy. I took down their number and promised to call when i realize that a) i have a hole in my heart and b) i need Jesus to fill it.
Then i went down the street to eat gumbo.
Turns out the thing was a gumbo cook-off. 10 dollar entry, eat as much as you like. Soda 1 dollar, booze 3 dollars. There was a zydeco band playing tunes. It was a real down homey Cajun party vibe. The gumbos were in categories seafood and non-seafood, homemade and jar. I tried all the homemade ones and one jar, at which point i decided homemade was much better and i went back to my favorite for seconds.
Admittedly, i am not much of a gumbo fan. In fact, outside of fried catfish, Louisiana Creole and Cajun food has always disappointed me every time i ate at Louisiana-themed restaurants in the big cities. And - just like BBQ - eating it in the region it's from tastes pretty much exactly the same. Which is to say, lacking in texture, lacking in heat/spice, lacking in freshness, just kind of... soft, salty, bland nutritional filler. Except i was still hungry after because it was mostly meat and soup and not enough rice, so i ate a Clif bar too, which was much more satisfying. Still, at least i can check another thing off the list of stuff "you have to try when you go to X" and then never need to bother eating again after that.
After Crowley i continued the very unremarkable ride up to Opelousas. The road from Church Point to Opelousas is an absolute fucking shitshow. It's sealed, technically, but it's so potholed and busted up that the ride feels like going over speed bumps the whole way. So it was even worse when dogs charged out to chase me. For fuck's sake, man.
There were a bunch of rice paddies along the way, which might've been interesting if they were flooded or at that pretty yellow stage, but most of them were just plowed so, eh.
Anyway, i made it up here. The event ends at 6, which is now, and the sun sets shortly after. I already talked to the very busy park ranger who was trying to wrangle the bajillion cars that had parked all over the show and blocked out the road and she said it's fine if i set up, she'll come around after it's calmed down. Seems like it'll be around 7ish. I will eat some food while it's still light then set up.
-o-
Around 8pm the ranger rolled around and said that she talked to her boss and staying here was on them, but i could only stay one night. She said that they used to allow tent campers but now it's RV only, so normally i wouldn't be allowed to stay but seeing as i was already here they'd let it go and not charge me for the spot.
The south (including Texas) is so fucking frustrating to tent camp in. My evenings lately are taken up by a couple hours of trying to find a campsite that allows tents and my daytime routes are dictated by where that one, sole place turned out to be. It means i can't really detour to see any interesting sights or make a spontaneous decision to go elsewhere.
They just hate tent campers down here, i think. It seems to be associated with "unsavory elements", as if the only people who would lower themselves to camping in a tent instead of an RV must be criminals or (perhaps) homeless bums who will stink up the place. But by not providing anywhere legal for people to camp they're just encouraging stealth campers who are much more likely to skip showers and drop garbage and shit in the woods because there is no other option. Not providing a legal place for people to sleep literally creates criminals out of ordinary people who just need to perform a basic bodily function. It's depressing, and might hint at an explanation why the west coast keeps getting more and more homeless migrants.
-o-
Waking up today i had a bit of the stealth camping experience, and it sucks. I pitched my tent after sunset. Stayed inside it all night because the bathrooms in the park were out of order. Broke camp before sunrise. My fly was soaking wet from the condensation and there was nothing to be done.
I was at the gas station to visit the bathroom and get a hot coffee by 8am. The temperature outside was 8 degrees. I was waiting for the local legendary eggs and rice by 8:30am. I ate a beignet while i waited. Then had another one after. I never had a beignet before, but they're basically a donut with a thick layer of icing sugar on top. Similar to the Dutch oliebol. They're okay. Eggs and rice, on the other hand, now that was a magnificent feed. Not very culinarily complex, but extremely satisfying. There was loads of rice, but somehow every bite still came with just enough scrambled egg or bacon to give it a salty, fluffy kick. Plus acid from the Crystal hot sauce, let's go! By far the best thing i've eaten in Louisiana and the best breakfast i've had on the trip so far.
And then disaster struck.
My phone has been beaten up since the start of this journey. First it had some cracks, and on humid days it'd lose touch response in parts of the screen. Then it got more cracks, and each day a little more glass flaked off. A few days ago it really started falling apart, as a blueish purple spot started to grow. Each town i've been in for the last week or two i have been checking the Best Buy stock online to see if they have a Pixel, but none of them do. Nobody can do overnight delivery anywhere i have visited so i just figured to keep going until i got to a city where they had one in stock. But this morning the purple spot started spreading.
It spread over the top of the keyboard, then up the screen. I very quickly removed the PIN lock from the phone, backed up my launcher and set photos to back up over mobile data, in anticipation of a total failure. It totally failed. I was riding blind. No map. No mail. No camera.
The good news is that i knew i just had to follow 190 to get to Baton Rouge. The other good news is that the trip was extremely fucking boring and there was nothing to take a photo of anyway. Although those viaducts over the swamp look cool as hell when you see photos taken of them from above, when you're actually on one it's just a concrete semi-tunnel where you can't stop and can't see the view either.
I stopped at a gas station near Krotz Springs when i saw a large, looming bridge. And then some random dude popped up and offered me a lift across the bridge. He explained that the bridge itself was okay, but after the bridge there was a 6 mile viaduct with no shoulder at all where there are a lot of accidents. He said he was a local firefighter and that he'd rather take 10 minutes to help me across than get called in for a 4 hour accident cleanup. Apparently he's helped cyclists across before. I took him up on the offer, and got a nice little fast-forward.
I made it to the Mississippi a bit before 2. I know it was before 2, because a bit later on cycling through a residential district i heard a church bell strike twice. I like that the churches in Louisiana have bells, like in Europe. It's pretty useful when your phone is defunct. Baton Rouge was where i really missed the phone. Not just because i badly needed directions to Best Buy, but also because there was an epic Exxon oil refinery along the river that was extremely photogenic. Alas, no photos.
Eventually i made it to Best Buy. Nowhere else to buy a phone was open on Sunday, at least that i saw, but then i didn't see much except for residential districts. I also didn't see a single white person till the Best Buy parking lot, after cycling through town for nearly an hour. It's so strange in these southern cities, it's as if white people just hide in their houses all day long. Nobody walking, nobody biking, nobody sitting on the porch. Plenty of non-white people doing that. I most only see white people in gas stations, restaurants and big box stores. It's really odd.
I got a phone, not a Pixel, and going back to Android 10 and its pathetic lack of proper gesture support makes me cry. Not being able to share the wifi over hotspot sucks too, as i discovered when i went to Starbucks specifically for the purpose of setting my shit up, but then my laptop wouldn't connect to their garbage fire wifi, and i couldn't log on to my Google account on the new phone because i couldn't do two-factor on the old phone, but because i couldn't log on to Google i also couldn't download the app i needed to activate my new SIM card, so i didn't have a cell connection either, and i just wanted to scream.
Eventually i gave up and cycled three sides of a square to get to the next interstate exit without getting on the fucking interstate and booked into the KOA. Fuck my life because today sucked. Clearly, as i type this, i have gotten the new phone working and the SIM activated. But it's after midnight and i am tired for real. This part of Louisiana is awful for cycling. There are only two or three places to cross each river or swamp, and they're all extremely busy bridges with no shoulder (or a potholed to shit shoulder) and drivers who don't give a fuck about hitting a cyclist. I had several very close calls today.
Although, typing this up, at least i had a good breakfast and a friendly firefighter to help me along. The sales person in Best Buy was great too, as were the people i asked for directions along the way.
So far Louisiana is good people, mostly mediocre food and utterly abysmal roads. Landscape was amazing in Cameron parish and boring everywhere else. I think i'll just bust ass out of here soon. There are a couple state parks along Lake Pontchartrain and then it's out to Gulfport, Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola. Not sure if it'll be a highway of doom or a string of epic beaches, but either way i really hope they have tacos. Dude, Walmart here doesn't even have Tajin. There are so many things i wish i'd bought in Texas before crossing into this weird state where they sell pickled quail eggs and hard liquor and fishing tackle at every gas station but God help you if you want a taco.