Bayous, rice and Baton Rouge

I’m not sure whether to be relieved or insulted when the New Orleans porter says he has seen more luggage than ours. He's grimacing and straining to haul our laden hotel trolley through the door. But these guys are working for tips. He’s just trying to be polite. Our luggage is spectacular. We’ve been on the road for four months now. We are not travelling light. Packing the car is a science in which Bruce’s expertise is now worthy of a PhD. We tip the porter and say we’ll try to do better next time, leaving him looking puzzled as we drive off on our adventures.

New Orleans is a city of exotic above-ground cemeteries and they flank the motorway as we zoom out of town. The traffic is dense and terrifyingly aggressive. Witless speeding all around us, pushy drivers whizzing heedlessly past. I thought San Francisco had the worst drivers in the US. Wrong. New Orleans takes the idiot horror prize. They drink all the time in New Orleans, jests Bruce unfunnily.

The Big Easy looks like the big sprawl now, Over canals and drains, under overpasses, past billboards advertising road accident lawyers. Why am I not surprised?

Along raised roads over bayous. Gators down there, says Bruce. Cypress pines, lush water weeds which look like super cress, the car going racka-racka-racka over the roads’s bumpy expansion joints.

PBS radio is discussing the ghastly Trump phenomenon. Could Hitler could happen again?

Egrets and herons are grazing in the lush swamp. Palmettos now in the cypress tree mix. It is gorgeous out there. And here comes the vast expanse of Lake Ponchartrain. It looks like Lake Alexandrina on steroids. Giant electricity pylons take loops of wire across the shallow water.

The Atchafalaya Natural Area is identified as we hit dryish land again along with a hoarding for Clay Bond, Urologist. Huh? He’s not a lawyer?

Vultures circle overhead. And here’s a lawyer hoarding. Synchronicity, we laugh.

We’re on the hurricane evacuation route. It includes a massive outlet mall and a sprawl of every food outlet there is. Whoosh. We’re past it, looking at a massive and grotesque fun park of tubes and tracks and slides and loops of watery entertainment. Water parks are an in thing these days, it seems.

Three huge white crosses signpost the Bethany Christian School. The town of Siegen, then Hammond. The road adds two lanes, more traffic and nasty cement barriers. These are the outer burbs of Baton Rouge. It is famous home of the Louisiana State University.

We want to take a look so we swing onto an exit road. The Aussie voice of our Siri Google goes mad telling us to take roads back onto the plotted course. She’s positively frantic. We take mercy and turn her off to look at the city of Baton Rouge, wonderful murals, churches, Florida Street pleasantly leafy with crepe myrtles. A dragon fly comes to play with the car, flitting ahead of us and swirling around over the bonnet. It seems to characterise this unhurried town.

There’s a cathedral with a big spire and a casino. Nice holy dollar partnership. No mighty high rises in Baton Rouge. It’s a big sky town. City workers are out and about, seemingly all of them adorned in lanyards. We pay our respects to the city’s dramatic architectural star turn - the Capitol building. It is starkly confronting. An extreme statement of male power?

We veer off to look at Baton Rouge’s Spanish Town which is characteriseed by narrow streets and darling little houses with decorative porches. Live oaks wearing tresses of Spanish moss make it all very pretty.

We cross the mighty Mississippi looking out for signs of the last flood and seeing none. And, under a dove blue sky, we take off on our way along Route 10W.

Rubbish collection is happening on the median and verge. More prisoners, we suppose. And then, suddenly the traffic evaporates and we are on the open road.

It’s a world of swamp versus agriculture. Neat rows of young cotton crops, waterways, raised road over lakes and rivers, boats and fishermen out there, cypress pines, birds on mud flats, stumps rising from the water. Cypress boles, says Bruce. It is a primitive tranquility, a timeless eerie beauty.

Suddenly the traffic is with us again. It is fast and impatient and scary. There’s a huge intersection with a casino and truck stop cafes - and a lot of trucks to go with it.

Hunger strikes. We pull in to a Maccers for a quick bite. Yep, the old Southwest grilled chicken salad again.

Back on the road.

More agriculture. Sugar cane crops. Crops of lawyer ads asking if you have been in a truck wreck. Oh, I hope not. But it sure seems likely on this road.

Opelousas. Another amazing American town name. Lafayette, a common name it seems. I see churches and and more churches out there.

And back into flatlands with ploughed fields, sugar cane, rice. These are rice paddies! Well I never.

A few cows, a lazy settlement starring Pentecostal and Apostolic churches.

Farmland. Rice fields dry, rice fields green. Broad acre crops.

Another town called Roanoke, not a bit like the one we visited in Virginia.

This is flat land. Flat, flat, flat.

Roadside hoardings advertise casino concerts and slots.

Horses in fields, Rice, rice, rice, sugar, rice.

An empty hoarding asks for an advertiser. We think of phoning Alabama’s Alexander Shunarah who must hold the world record for hoardings.

Broad-acre sugar crops. Rice, rice, rice. More rice.

Hoarding: Town of Iowa - home of the great rabbit festival. Hmm. Who knew?

Heavens, An abandoned water park. Not surprising. It seems to be in the middle of nowhere.

But habitation must be near. The hoardings are multiplying: Best crawfish. Blackjack, Blue Dog Cafe, lawyer…

The road gets another lane. Traffic intensifies.

Swanky farmlands with neat white fences.

Lawyer ad. Sugar cane. Injury lawyer, lawyer, injury lawyer, oh look at that ad for Governor McKernan. Talk about movie star good looks.

Here’s a commercial strip ahead.

Sign: Seeing problem? Let the doctor take a peek-at-choo.

And here’s Lake Charles, petrochemical and educational Louisiana city sprawled mercilessly around the banks of vast Lake Charles. This city's great claim to fame is as the most humid city in the USA. Yep. A real headliner this one.

And here’s the very nice Courtyard Marriott, our destination for tonight.

Come on, luggage, let’s unpack again.