Zachary, LA

The hotel in Opelousas was certainly an adventure. Hap, why is the floor and carpet all wet?? Why is the water IN THE TOILET HOT? Diane, how do you know the water is hot in the toilet? Because when I sit on it, I feel heat. Try it! I guess you're right! That's interesting! When we woke up in the morning we intended to get an early start for no other reason than to get out of the hotel room. We packed up and then discovered a flat tire on the trailer. And the owner of the hotel kept walking by the room to see if we were out. By the time we (or Hap) changed the tire, the owner was standing outside the door, waiting. I'm not sure what time check out was but it was only 10am when we walked out the door. We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast before heading east on Rt 190. The weather was beautiful, sunny and 70 degrees. Rt 190 was nice for riding on. Most of it was four lane with a nice berm and not much traffic. The wind was blowing in our faces of course. I thought the prevailing winds were supposed to be west to east? Whassup with this? In Krotz Springs we stopped at a Dollar Store to buy some laundry detergent. We crossed a big bridge over the Atchafalaya River. Coming up to it, the bridge looked like it went straight up. But it wasn't that bad. See the picture above. In Livonia we stopped at a gas station for some cokes, bananas and peanut butter. Then we turned north on Rt 78 to head up to New Roads and the ferry across the Mississippi River. The road up to New Roads was a beautiful two lane road. And the tailwind was nice too! We stopped at a DQ only because Hap wanted to try out their new Chocolate Cherry Blizzard. He gave it an outstanding rating. We called Jim's Place Campground for directions. When we arrived there, we found that Jim's Place was actually a Bar/campground/RV park/fishing pier/party central/Mardi Gras float building area. We pitched our tent by the river and headed to the showers. Let's just say....I didn't take my shoes off or touch the walls! But the water was wet and warm. For dinner we went into the bar for some pizza.

This morning we got up very early for us, about 7:30am to pack up. Today is Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras and after seeing the partying from last night, and seeing the partying starting before we left we really wanted to get on and off the road before it got too late. We also discovered that in New Roads they have two huge Mardi Gras parades. The first one started at 11am. As we rode through New Roads we rode through the parade route, which was already starting to fill up. You can check out some video at www. youtube.com/outbikin of our ride. Later on the news we heard that 17,000 people were in New Roads today for the parades. Glad we got out of there. We had about an 8 mile ride to the ferry across the Mississippi River to St Francesville. We stopped at the post office for our mail that our postman, we'll call him George, had sent to us. Then we got some breakfast. I called a hotel in Zachary to make sure that we had a place to stay before leaving town. The girl at the hotel said you are going to have to detour because a bridge is out. Uh oh. She wasn't sure where the detour was so we stopped at a gas station. I went into the gas station to ask about the detour. The first girl I talked to couldn't find St Francesville on the map........Maybe she couldn't see past her FOUR inch fingernails. She said yes the bridge is out you are going to have to go all the way around here to get to Zachary. I said can't we just go across this road? No, you can't get to that road. Then she called for back up. Bobby. So where do ya'll wanna to go? Zachary. Oh, to get there you need to take this road and go all the way around......but what about this road......no, you can't get.....So are there detour signs?? (says me). Yes, there are by the .....plant (couldn't understand that part)... You know the .....plant? We're not from here, we're from Ohio....oh sorry...then you need to go all the way around......can we get through the detour??? Oh, sure you can just ride around the detour and continue on south down Rt 61 (where we wanted to be!) So after a 15 min. conversation I discovered, yes there was a detour, but we could ride around it. Then a delivery guy came in.....Bobby says to him "Hey Buzzsaw these people are from OH and they are riding their bikes back to Ohio!". Buzzsaw answers "tonight?" OK time for me to go......................We got on Rt 61, got to the detour, talked to the sheriff who was routing traffic through the detour and said can we just ride across the bridge? He said, "You might be able to!" You might?? What does that mean? What if we can't................we took our chances and headed south to the bridge. When we got there two TV stations were there filming the bridge that was still there but was ready to fall in. When we left the bridge we had quite a ride down Rt 61 south. The wind was really blowing, in our faces of course. It also seemed very hot and humid. We discovered when we got to Zachary that it was 83 degrees and winds were out of the south at 35 mph. Well, no wonder! We checked into a nice, new, clean Best Western! I got the laundry done, and Hap replaced the rear cogset that had been shipped to us. It sure is nice to be in a clean place! You know I don't mind wearing the same clothes for this year, but I refuse to wear dirty clothes.

Tomorrow we are headed to Hammond, LA to meet up with a friend of Hap's from his days at Purdue! Later.