Silsbee to Deridder LA April 13 2012

A nice fixer upper

Self portrate while riding

Don (lead) and Wallace (second) battle for cycling supremacy

Welcome to Louisiana sign

To day the ride took us out of Texas and into Louisiana. We were in Texas for 19 days out of 51 on this trip. The country side has changed again. There are lots of causeways over low areas which have bayous in them. There is also a lot more humidity in the air now. The humidity has been steadily increasing as well.

This morning when I got up it was nice and clear, however as the sun came up it boiled the dew off and turned it to a haze which I called fog but Ken corrected me calling it a haze. At any rate I turned on my rear red blinking light for the morning ride. The first 30 miles were down a four lane divided highway which was made of grooved concrete. There was a tremendous amount of tire debris and you had to keep a sharp eye out to avoid it. At the 30 mile marker was a donut shop and sag so we stopped for a donut which was a very nice treat. A couple of miles further down the road we turned onto a secondary road which was quite smooth and only slightly rolling. However there was a lot of logging trucks and the associated bark and wood debris along the road. In some spots there was so much you just had to roll over it as you could no longer steer around it.

Don, Wallace, and myself (the three Canadians) all stopped together for lunch and had a very nice fried catfish and hush puppy dinner. Is that southern or what? A few miles further down the road we crossed into Louisiana where we stopped for photos under the welcome to sign.

It was a pretty nice ride of 73 miles to day. Even better we found that the hotel we are staying in is a very nice place. In fact this might be the nicest accommodations of the trip.
Internet, hot water, nice beds, flat screen TV,air conditioning; WOW this is unbelievable. Bubba is taking us out for supper at some café he has found which he says is very nice. Eat off real plates with real metal cutlery, no paper plates and plastic cutlery. Holy smoke what will happen next??

Terry