FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA – A Melody D. Scott Serial Story (Part 2)

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Whatever pre-existing businesses may have been around are no longer present. A plethora of pristine new strip centers, fast food, McDonald types and malls are under construction.  I’d say all that money we spent on Louisiana is being used to build a brand new outlying city.

Tues. Sept 21

Over the mighty Mississippi that is probably ½ mile wide at the I-10 bridge sort of takes my breath away and I’m really happy we’re not in a covered wagon.  Of course most wagon trains started west in St. Louis, MO.  Like my grandmother’s.  Darrel notes that under every black cow in the pastures is a pure white bird.  He thinks they’ve been assigned to each other and can’t work independently.

And again we’re on a double two-lane bridge over swamplands for miles.  Another flying adventure for me outside Lafayette, LA.  Apparent tidewater due to the high water marks on the bridge pillars shows just how high the surge arrived over our heads on the bridge.

I wonder if there have been many crashes as cars have run over the short concrete barrier fence into the drink.

Ha! Whisky Bay! of the Oueae Bayou.  Don’t try that out loud.  I wonder some more how one crossed this watery woodland before somebody made a Key West Bridge over all the swamp and rivers.  Canoe?  It’s still a 20 mile water world with tree tops.  A scenic byway turnoff for Morgan City makes me think of Ingrid Clark, who has family and friends there.  We stopped at McDonalds and I had my first McGriddle and listened to a Cajun conversation we couldn’t understand.  But everybody was incredibly nice.  Pancake wrapped eggs?

Well, here’s all the gasoline in the world in Westlake, Louisiana.  Reckon the gas stations next to the holding tank yard charge $3 per gallon?  Cracking plants stand in every direction and we’ve gone from greenway to freeway to Industrial area.  A few fringe trees remain standing and line the road--the old I-10 I remember from the beer can days--that is the airstream motorhome we had some years ago and had travelled this way.

We see above-ground cemeteries that I’d forgotten.  After the steep Calcasew Bayou bridge tall enough for a Carnival Cruise Ship to slip underneath, somebody ironed out the road again.  And we’re in casinoland in case we feel rich and want that feeling to dissipate.

And here we are on another lighted raised bridge into Texas, with a massive concrete star greeting us in Orange.  A little gaudy billboard, “stripper bar for emergency I-­10 blues."

Only in America.  Lucky us.

Darrel isn’t getting over the “World famous outhouse, 262 miles--You Can Hold It.”

Interestingly, the monsoon, Houston, I-45 and the construction projects all hit at once.  Must be a tropical storm out of the gulf to provide us with so much drinking water.  We opted for a toll road to save our hides which took care of the construction trucks at least.

Abby (little dog) got big eyes and hid in her kennel.  I wonder if I could fit in there with her.  It was kind of like being strafed in a hurricane.