So last night, I just didn’t want to do it, so I’ll get both days now. Yesterday’s ride was relatively short and uneventful. But at least I found a camp ground. The highlight of the ride was Buc-ees. Which is evil and in many ways the roadside embodiment of what’s wrong with people, when you dress it all up and try to make it look good. Like makeup on a corpse you didn’t embalm. But I got buc-ees stickers, gas and some pork tenderloin. Not quite an opiate for the masses, but you need a prescription for those.
White Oaks Park in somewhere Louisiana. At least I covered another state. The place was weird. I don’t know exactly how to describe it. It was mostly RV pullthroughs with 4 tent sites with gravel pits for the tents. Which made stringing up my tent kind of weird. I know it sounds strange, but actually gravel pits were very comfortable to sleep on. It was pea gravel and with a sleeping pad on top of it, it actually conformed to my bony body and was almost luxurious.
So as to being weird. One, trucks kept coming through and not staying. There were way more campers than trucks to pull them. There was a small house on the campgrounds, but no signs. no number, no nothing. Not sure if it had anything to do with the campgrounds or not. Also when I got there there was a smoldering fire, reeking of plastic and beer cans. Once again some fuckers cut down a live tree for a fire. This time I just broke up some deadfall and used it for a nice fire and to finish burning off the plastic in the fire pit.
The place had the feel of people living there because they can’t afford a trailer park, i certainly could be wrong, but it felt that way for some of the sites. Also, two little girls tried to sell me a tent. One of them came up and said my tent looked pretty small. She had a bigger one she was trying to sell. There was a little chit-chat as I demured on said tent purchase. The girl tried to work me too, telling me I was tall etc. It later occurred to me that i had seen those little girls playing as I came in, and well it is a school day 🙁
Look if I were going to get killed and eaten in a Louisianna swamp, that campground was the place. I even rigged up an alarm system to my bags. This consisted of my cable lock through the handles, as well as my coffee cup filled with leftover quarters from the hotel laundry. Hey if coins in metal can stop a dog from barking…. I’m just saying.
Today…. it was cold when I woke up, so I went back to sleep. It was still cold an hour later. I planned to hit fairview park, so I didn’t want to dawdle to long. But I didn’t get motoring until 11am, I was just cold and tired and slow. This is a long vacation of a sort I suppose, but this morning it felt like work. Where is the rain that is supposed to get me holed up somewhere for a day of rest?
Well once on the road, my mom once again had a travel suggestion. Blue Bonnet Swamp nature center. I knew a detour would make me way later than I wanted to setup camp, but like I said, I’m tired today – so I stopped. I was the lone visitor and basically they had a bunch of snakes and turtles inside you could see and some very short wildlife sighting trails.
They were cleaning the ball python cage, so I got to say hi to the python. They kept warning me about snakes, until I told the python lady I used to have ball pythons. They had some nice snakes and some cool turtles. Oh and a sticker, score! Maybe it’s in keeping with buc-ees but they had the largest damned stuffed beaver I’ve ever seen. No that’s not a euphemism.
While I only saw squirrels on the nature trail, it was a nice hike. Swamps are prettier in winter due to lack of bugs. Then again it’s hard to sneak up on wild life when you’re wearing squeaky riding boots. I mean you can hear me a mile away.
So after a brief interlude, I ended up here at the Best Western in Covington. I went north of the lake to avoid New Orleans. It is one of my favorite cities on the planet, but doing the city thing is just not what I’m riding for so I skipped it and the traffic. Of course I should have realized route 12 would have all the long haul truckers skipping new orleans as well. Last part of the ride kinda sucked with all the trucks and bad pavement.