Time in Saddle: Approx 5:50
Distance for the Day: 89.38 miles From Pierre Part To Norco
Accumulated Trip Distance: 3296.38 miles
Altitudes: Starting/Ending 308’/270’, Highest: 374’ Accumulated: 141’
Speeds: Avg: 10.3 mph, Max: 15.6 mph
Weather: low 70s to upper 80s and somewhat humid
Expenditures: $8
Got up at daylight. The homeowners never did show up; maybe this was a vacation home for them. I packed up quick, and took off by 7am. Within the first two hours along this long, mostly traffic-free road, I saved the lives of four turtles, one of which was as big around as a dinner plate. These guys get it in their tiny little heads to try crossing the street, so I picked ‘em up and put ‘em back in the swamp. Other than that, it was a kind of nasty travel day. I took a long route to get to New Orleans to try to see more of the region and the Mississippi, but only got to see interminable levees along long, circuitous routes.
The levees, themselves, were always ‘private property,’ and could not be ridden on. To add insult to injury, the roads were mostly two-lane with no shoulder, and from mid-to-late afternoon were crowded with commute traffic coming out of huge plants; there was so much traffic, the plants had to supply their own traffic control people to allow their employees to exit their parking lots; I did get to see a few nice old Colonial plantation houses, and for most of the day, the roads were smooth and traffic-free; and I even got another quick lift across the Mississippi River on Hwy 70 in the early afternoon. I got to the town of La Place in the late afternoon, and found a local who
was able to advise me on the best, fastest route to New Orleans; this would be Hwy 61; they also let me know about a couple of good places to hang my hammock for the night several miles along the highway. I found them, picked one, set up and had a good night’s sleep, much needed after two previous nights of not much sleep. I set up my hammock between two trees; I’d lost a couple of lengths of spare hammock hanging ropes, but hanging from one of the trees I wanted to tie to was a nice rope someone had left there; I was able to retrieve and use it to hang my hammock! The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, indeed! Oh, somehow during the day, I managed
to wipe the memory on my cyclometer, so I not only have to manually calculate this day’s mileage, I also have to manually calculate the Trip Distance from now on. Bummer. But, the good news was: I had a nice place to hang my hammock; I successfully fooled the gazillions of mosquitoes with the “walk away” trick, so with a single exception, they didn’t get inside. I called Auntie M and instructed her how to extract the SD card from my dead CC Witness (it held all the albums I copied to listen to on this trip); I’ll have her forward it to me when I find a good place for her to forward it, to. I slept from about 8:20pm peacefully and well the entire night.
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