[Continuing my sister Linda's notes from Natchitoches, Louisiana, August 1982]:
We pull out of Natchitoches at 12:20 on a hot day. . . The Southwest is nothing in temperature/humidity comparison.
Marksville [Indian] Mounds off 452/Rte. 1 just past Marksville Middle School. Hopewell Period, circa 300-600 A.D.
Along the Old River. Fort DeRussy (no sign). Gas is cheap in this area. Stop for ice cream cones (.90).
At New Ground on way to cross levee. St. Francisville Ferry across MISSISSIPPI RIVER. Cottage Plantation.
Port Hudson, last Confederate fort to fall on Mississippi [right after Vicksburg]. Sign: "Locked In after 5:00." We left at 4:59. Nice Louisiana girl was just as confused as us -- no visitor center, no other signs. 650 acres of The Twilight Zone. Area was privately owned, maybe it's just being developed. Cooler and rainy. Saw two forts (one aptly named Fort Desperate).
Heading between Baton Rouge and New Orleans on Hwy. 10. Heavy rainstorm, big booming thunder. Getting into swampy [indecipherable] cedar tree area -- swampy like our vision of the bayou country (not like bayous further northwest -- rivers).
On a long, long causeway. It all reminds me of St. Stephen and Kingstree, South Carolina.
Inside city limits, looking for a place to stay. Fountain Bay Club Hotel for $28.00 on Toulouse.
[To be continued . . .]
Today's Rune: Partnership.
4 comments:
I've been that route many times. I once saw an elephant a quick stop on that stretch outside Baton Rouge. Never knew what the story was with that. It always rains in that area.
My old man once had a car with windshield wipers that would freeze up. They froze up whilst in a rainstorm on the Baton Rouge expressway. That keens the senses.
That sounds pretty familiar to me.
I approached NO for the first time from GA MS and AL so I may have been that route as well, but I don't remember rain and thunder. Truth is memory is fading as I age. That may be a good thing.
"The Southwest is nothing in temperature/humidity comparison."
You got THAT right! The heat is bad enough, but turn that into sponge-like conditions & it becomes hell. I still have problems breathing down here, the air's so "thick." <:(
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