Day 89 - Cotton Candy
Trip Start
May 19, 2008
1
91
161
Trip End
Nov 08, 2008
New Orleans,
Louisiana,
United States
Friday, August 15, 2008
After passing through the city of Alexandria which has terribly signed roads we left Highway 71 and took Highway 1 which was a more scenic route and took us closer to the Mississippi River. On this road we passed two more crops. One, which is very tall and looks similar to maize, we think is sugar cane. And the other one is similar in size to black-eyed peas but doesn't have the flowers of b.e.p.'s. Mel thinks it may be cotton but we're not certain. There also appear to be a lot of flooded fields possibly as a result of burst river banks we think
An Early Start
. Further down the road we had to stop at some road works and as we were next to a field of what we suspected to be sugar cane, we asked one of the workers what it was. Sure enough it's sugar cane. We crossed over a river which had branched from the Mississippi and also drove alongside a bayou from the Mississippi, but it wasn't until we approached the State Capital of Baton Rouge that we crossed the Mississippi proper. It's huge!
The plan for today had been to get to a state park campground within 1-2 hours drive of New Orleans. Then tomorrow we would only have a short drive to the KOA campground in New Orleans where we plan to stay and therefore would have the best part of the day to chill out around their pool. However, as it was only midday when we arrived in Baton Rouge, we decided to press on and go straight to the KOA.
As we travelled towards New Orleans the sky got greyer and greyer, until eventually as we arrived on the outskirts of the city the heavens opened. On the outskirts we passed several oil refineries and also, even this close to the city, swamps. Although both things were at first surprising, when you think about it there should be no surprise at all
Baton Rouge
. The Gulf Of Mexico is a major oil producing region in the US and as for the swamps, the city of New Orleans is built on one great big river delta. The KOA was easy to find and we were soon settled onto our pitch right by the pool. Shame about the weather! Oh well, there's wi-fi, so you lot finally get something new to read! We've also checked out the mystery crops on Wikipedia. The short one similar to black-eyed peas is cotton, and what looks like dead maize is actually sugar cane. They set fire to the plants before they harvest them to kill any venomous snakes that may be hiding in them and burn off any dead leaves.
Miles travelled: 237
Total miles travelled: 8796
Days on road: 69
States visited: 15
National Parks visited: 11
