Cannon's Fish & Pecans

A match made in Louisiana.

Walking in Natchitoches

We walked from downtown Natchitoches to the Fort Saint Jean Baptiste in heavy humid heat only to find the gates closed. (According to their published schedule, they should have been open.)

At least we got to see some cool old houses on our walk.

The gates are closed. :(

Mama's Oyster House

Get me off the freeway

After a long morning on the freeway, we're passing the option to take Interstate 49 south to New Orleans. Instead we're seeking Louisiana Highway 1 so that we can see something more than freeways and grass and trees.

Deflated

The hitchhikers look a bit deflated

We found traveling on a Sunday, the day after the 4th of July, to not be all that exciting. The only establishments we found to be open were chain restaurants and stores that we could visit at home. After skipping out of our hotel before sunrise and failing to find not-a-chain breakfast options, we finally gave into our hunger and grabbed a quick breakfast at a Corner Bakery Cafe in Arlington. The day was quickly turning into a day of driving to get through Texas as quickly as we could.

Driving through Texas often provokes me to wish I had a Holtzman drive to fold Texas out of the way and instantly move from New Mexico to Louisiana.   I was hoping that one of our hitchhikers might be a Navigator and be able to help us bypass Texas. Neither of them would admit to having the hardware or intuition to get us to the east side of Texas any faster than our Ford was carrying us. As I questioned our guests and as our time in Texas wore on, they seemed to slowly deflate. Perhaps I should have gotten them some coffee when we stopped.

Given that we could not bend space, we chose to bend the rules of this trip for just this day: we got on Interstate 20 and zoomed through Texas as quickly as we could. Perhaps, some time in the future, we'll return to Texas for the purpose of exploring Texas itself. This time, Texas was mostly in the way.

Approaching the Louisiana border