As decided previously, I left the motel in Slidell around 9:30am and went straight to the Interstate 10 to start a pretty long ride to Houston – around 600km in total. The two cities I had planned to check out on the way were Lafayette and Baton Rouge. The city names were mostly what caught my attention, because I had (and still have, actually) no idea what things of interest these cities could have. I suppose doing a bit of planning and research before a trip can help in avoiding blind trips to cities you have no idea about; obviously that has not been so much my modus operandi.
I did a first stop around 10am to refill the tank. For the note, the average gas I used for the whole trip around the states has been around 43mpg. I was usually using closer to 50-65mpg on small roads and within cities, and 35-40mpg on the highway at a speed between 60 and 80mph (and yes, I think Texas is the only state I saw that has a speed limit of 80mph!) – and sometimes a little above that when passing.
I reached Baton Rouge around 10:45am and the GPS led me to some isolated and totally uninteresting place that should have been the city center. Since I had not seen any particular buildings, I thought the city was mostly a dormitory city so,I left and went back to the highway and crossed a bridge over the Mississippi river with a view of… tall buildings, not so far from where I had stopped. Too bad, I had missed it. I thought about returning while crossing the long bridge, but desisted. Like beaches, buildings are just buildings; seeing downtown Baton Rouge would probably not mean as much as doing some real tour of whatever the city had to share. Done. Case closed. Next!
For the note, the road between Slidell and Houston was, in fact, even worse than before New Orleans and the number of long bridges (or elevated roads) over swamps and tiny rivers were even bigger. At one point (yet that could as well have been before New Orleans), it was like crossing a lake with trees growing right in it… Amazing, in fact! Except the road, of course. If I could have stopped, I would have, but there was no place to do that so, I kept going, and going, and going… Amazing and boring too.
I reached Lafayette around 11:40am. Lots of small streets. I came to a point that was supposed to be the city center (there was the town hall as far as I remember), but it was pretty empty and not really charming. Well, time to move… Next!
In fact my belly was starting to complain a bit (hey, I had no breakfast today – again!) so, I decided to stop at the first exit after Lafayette and went to a Burger King. Yeah, I know, pretty healthy food during that trip… City name was Scott, LA. Totally forgettable, but the burger was as predictable as a fast food burger is – edible.
I left around 12:45pm, but stopped again, half an hour later, for more gas. It’s not like bikes suck as lot of gas, but a tiny 14L tank can be some annoyance. Next bike, I’ll get a 40L tank (which will probably last less than my tiny one, LOL).
I think it’s on this day (not really sure where exactly but that’s not so important) I met my first mattress on the highway. The first and only one, hopefully! The highway at that point was using 3 or 4 lanes and I was in the second one from the left when I saw the car not far in front of me giving a brake and shifting slightly to the right; and then the mattress appeared, right in the middle between the fastest lane and the one I was in; probably twin size, possibly queen size, but lucky enough not king size. So I quickly checked my mirror, shoulder-checked, and moved to the lane on my right to be as far as possible from the mattress when passing it. There was no car close behind me, so it was useless for me to switch on my emergency signal. I just hoped nobody would hit the thing as there was nothing more I could do (pretty sure a car driver would call 911 to mention the mattress and risk of accident, which is pretty hard to do when riding a bike anyway).
I stopped again around the city of Orange, right after entering Texas for the second time during this trip, to refill again and take a little restroom and coffee break; it was a bit before 3pm.
At 4:34pm, my bike asked for more (that thirsty little thing…) and I was almost in Houston, so I took the opportunity to book a room at Motel 7 (yep, not a Motel 6 this time, yet the 7 was in fact inferior to a 6…), which I reached 30 minutes later, after missing the right exit and doing a few U-turn on parallel parkways…
After a long shower (that was quite a long ride, as I mentioned earlier), and transferring and recharging my devices, I went to a local steakhouse where I got a huge beer.
I know, it doesn’t really look huge in the picture. The following one showsit better…
Back at the motel, I checked what were my options for the next day and opted for a visit to the NASA Space Center in the morning, before leaving Houston for Austin in the afternoon.
