Tearin’ Through the Deep South!
January 9th, 2012 Posted by Jessica. Published under Riding. No Comments.
Since spending Christmas in Gulf Shores, Alabama with Rachel’s family, we’ve now biked across Mississippi and are currently staying with Rachel’s cousins in Gonzales, Louisiana (which is about halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans). It took us seven days to get here, in which we ran the whole gamut of paying for a camp site, stealth camping, and paying for several motels because of an intense cold streak that billowed across the country. Normally I hate shelling out money for a motel, but I refuse to camp in temperatures below freezing. Sure, our Big Agnes Lulu sleeping bags are guaranteed to keep us alive down to 15 degree weather, but I’d rather not shiver the whole night if I don’t have to.
Rachel’s parents gave me the Adventure Cycling Association’s awesome Southern Tier map set for Christmas, so Rachel and I are following that route to California from here on out. Our first day leaving Gulf Shores on December 29 took us on a ferry across Mobile Bay, where we got to see tons of oil rigs. Call me stupid, but I always imagined oil rigs as boats, when in fact they are very much stationary. Rachel and I were both expecting to see tons of oil globules floating across the bay from BP’s disaster in 2010, but this was also not so. The water looked pretty clear as far as I could tell, and we even saw dolphins swimming in the bay. We left Gulf Shores pretty late in the day, so that night we just paid for a lovely campsite at Dauphin Island Campground.
The next day (December 30) we biked across the rest of Alabama and stopped for the night to camp in a church graveyard about two miles from the Mississippi border. It was the Friday night before New Years Eve and we really weren’t expecting anyone to go to church or visit the graveyard. We were wrong on both counts. As I was putting pans away after dinner, we noticed all the lights come on in the church and a woman and a small girl walking through the graveyard. I wasn’t even being particularly quiet (Rachel had to “shush” me several times). So then we were faced with the delima of, “Do we introduce ourselves and say, ‘Hello we’re camping in your graveyard for the evening’ and risk getting asked to leave when it’s pitch black out?”; or “Do we stay in the tent and hope they don’t call the cops and if they find us beg for forgiveness?” We decided to opt for the latter, and even though the graveyard was small and we weren’t well hidden, either no one saw us or no one cared. Regardless, I still had strange dreams about the ghost of Bob Hope coming to get me in the night.
We spent New Years Eve biking 63 miles into Mississippi to party it up in the Wiggins Hampton Inn. And by “party it up”, I mean order a pizza, watch Kathy Griffin make Anderson Cooper blush on CNN, and fall asleep by approximately 12:01am. Bike touring isn’t always exciting adventure, folks! We stayed an extra day at the Hampton Inn so I could start the New Year off right by getting some video editing done (it’s finished! New video up soon, I promise!) and also because the cold temperatures were starting to sweep in.
January 2, we biked into Louisiana. Again, it was supposed to be freezing at night so we shelled out $40 to stay at one of those scary motels where people live there and argue openly in the parking lot very loudly and the deadbolt on your door is flimsy. There were some questionable stains on the mattress, so Rachel and I ended up sleeping (very cozily, at least!) in our sleeping bags on top of the bed. Oh Bogalusa. What a lovely welcome into Louisiana.
January 3 was still in the upper 20s at night, so we stayed at a slightly nicer motel in Covington. It was pretty windy (in the wrong direction) that day, so we took it easy and stopped early so we could use the internet and get some work done.
The next day we biked a very lazy 32 miles to Punkin Park Campground in Hammond. On the way we stopped for lunch at a delicious soul food diner and Rachel had her first real chicken and dumplings. I was pretty glad the weather had finally warmed up enough to camp again. It’s weird, but I’m finding that I sleep better in the tent than in the motels. I also have WAY less allergy issues when I’m camping outside instead of sleeping in a dusty/mildewy motel room.
January 5 we made it to Rachel’s cousin’s house in Gonzales! It’s been great spending the last few days hanging out with Titus and his wife and eating amazing Cajun food (like grilled oysters) and drinking the local beer and trying legit home-brewed moonshine for the first time (not brewed by Spring and Titus, though). Yesterday we interviewed an amazing high school student in Baton Rouge who created a video that went viral about the injustices of child marriages and the importance of education for girls. Gabriella is AWESOME and I can’t wait to edit our interview with her!
Tomorrow we’re going to New Orleans, where we hope to get a few more interviews before we head west for Austin, Texas. Stay tuned for more updates!
