The Last of Louisiana

Tomorrow we cross into Texas, so I thought this would be a good time to sum up my last week in the great (but very hot and humid) state of Louisiana.

We left New Orleans last Sunday and biked into Baton Rouge. We stayed at a church gym for two nights, and that was really fun. They had basketball hoops and balls and almost our whole group played countless games of knock out (a high paced bball shooting game - so fun). We built in White Castle, a town outside of Baton Rouge on Monday. I was part of Team Truss (a group of girls who picked up all the trusses and put them on the top of the house to be nailed in. It was really hard actually, but really fun. After all the Trusses were lifted to the roof I got to get up on the roof and nail them in. I like working on the roof a lot even though it can be a little scary at times. It was nice to be working with a branch of Habitat again at a more organized build site.

On Tuesday we biked out of Baton Rouge and made our way to Melville. The morning on the way out of Baton Rouge was great! We got coffee, biked around town a bit and went to the State Capital Building (which was a beautiful sky scraper). We got to go up to the tower and look down onto the Mississippi river. Melville was a really small town, and we stayed in the civic center there. We stopped on the way in to get 1 dollar sno balls, which are essentially snow with sugary flavored syrup on it - so good after 60 miles in the heat on a really scary busy road (there was actually a point we a cop escorted us over a 4 nile bridge because there was no shoulder and he, a cyclist as well, had actualy gotten hit on it before).

After Melville we went to Alexandria. The ride into Alexandria was much calmer, but I am learning to hate some of LA pavement jobs. The road we were on was really bumpy. We stopped at a small side of the road store on the way and had coffee and talked to the owner a bit. She was really nice and it was crazy how she knew every other person who came into the store while we were there. There seems to be something really cozy about small town life.

On Thursday we biked into Natitoches (spelling?) - its pronounced Nackitash but is spelled realy oddly. Natitoches is where Steel Magnolias was set and filmed - I havent seen that movie but now I realy want to. Its a pretty cool small and historic town founded originally in 1714 (2 years before New Orleans making it the oldest permenant settlement in the Louisiana Purchase) by a French Canadian making his way from Mobile Alabama to Mexico.

It was first a fort on the Red River. When we were on our way into town we stopwd at a life size replication of the fort which was pretty cool. The ride that day was excellent on a well paved road with some rolling hills and beautiful scenery. We had lunch at Magnolia Plantations, and although the main plantation home wasn't open we did get to see the slave homes and the cotton gin.

Today we biked a short 34 miles (the shortest day of the trip by far) into Pelican LA. Pelican is pretty much a camp town which none of the locals on Natitoches have ever heard of. The ride was okay but SO HOT because we spent the morning hanging out in Natitoches and didn,t get on the road until 11:30 or so.

One every important note: my odometer for the trip hit 1000 miles on the way into Alexandria!! Exciting.

I'll try to update more regularly in Texas, but BnB life is so busy that it is really hard to keep up!