A Full Day

It is not entirely dry in the morning, but the sun is out at least. I eat breakfast and pack up my stuff and drop Caroline's key off in the mail slot, since she left early in the morning. I have to take I-10 for awhile to get out of the urban sprawl, so I make my way there and ride it towards the edge of Texas, whereat I jump on 73 which brings me down to 82, a road that runs right along the Gulf of Mexico in Texas and Louisiana. Driving down the road, the scenery is interesting and unique at this point: refinery towers and plants across every part of the horizon, massive rusty tanks, and dirty rock and trash littered beaches. It's really not the most beautiful area, but I begin to see residential houses here and there, residential houses that are pretty nice, pretty big, and up to 20 feet off the ground on stilts. They seem like vacation homes, and I don't know why anyone would want to wake up to the sight of a gas refinery on vacation, while risking flooding and tropical storms, but that is their business I suppose, not mine. I am running low on gas and I start to keep my eyes open for any small town or settlement that would have a gas station. It seems like I am just on a stretch of road that has little besides refineries, which I'm sure have plenty of gas but don't seem open to the public, random stilted mansions and occasional RV communities along the shore. It's difficult to be alert for a gas station with all the bugs I am getting pelted with too. This road has the heaviest blasts of bugs I have yet experienced. They seem to come in swarms, appearing to hang in the distance of my vision for just a second before they dip and spiral and zoom at me at a million miles an hour. I am reminded of that old Windows screensaver where it looks like you are in space and stars are just streaming past. I think it is called "lightspeed" or something. These bugs splat all over my helmet and my jeans and my jacket, and a lot of the time, those that hit my helmet don't just leave their guts, but stick there, so I have to turn my head to one side or the other so that the wind will push the wings or torso or whatever is left of these things out of my line of vision. Once in awhile I get a dragonfly, which are about four times the size of these multitudinous black bugs, and they surprise me because instead of simply splatting against me, dragonflies make a serious cracking sound when they hit my helmet, or an almost painful thud when they hit my chest. The black bugs are non-stop though. If I am not riding through a cyclone of them, then they come at me one by one until I reach another swarm. By the time I run out of gas just as this side of 82 dead ends into a ferry that brings me to the other side, I am absolutely painted with bugs. The ferry operator waits as I scoot my bike onto the ferry and closes the ramp behind me. She tells me that there is gas on the other side, which is a great relief because I don't feel like walking around to find a gas station, and carrying back a tiny bit of gas in a bottle of fuel additive that I emptied and sloppily filled at the pump just to get my bike far enough up the road to fill it completely like I did just before I got to San Francisco in Petaluma.
I push my bike off the ferry and there is a refinery type place just to the right, but they don't sell gas, I am told by the operator on this side. The place just up the road may though, she tells me. Looking at the next place, it's not very far, but it feels a lot farther when I am pushing my bike the one-fifth of the mile it takes to get there. I turn down the dirt driveway and and try like an idiot to operate the intercom to ask to get in to get some gas. You don't have to hold the button, a voice from the speaker tells me, you can just talk. I fill my tank and have a chat with a jolly round young man with a thick Louisiana accent. Love bugs, he says these black things that I am dressed in are called. Man-made bugs, he says, by some scientist somewhere. I can only assume he means genetically engineered. This place is one of the only refineries that sells gas he also tells me, so I feel like I really lucked out. I pay, happy at not having to hike around to fill my tank, and get on my way again. Not long out, I stop to take a photo of the road and contemplate the darkening clouds in the sky. I decide not to put on my rain suit which turns out to be a horrible decision in about five minutes when the rain starts dumping. I stop and get my suit on over my wet jeans and jacket and slowly continue down the road. I am trying to get to a state park that has a campground and is just outside of St. Martinville. The rain is always off and on, and a couple times I get conned into taking off my rain suit just to have to put it back on again. I make my way among a bunch of smaller roads towards St. Martinsville once I get off 82, and just before I hit town the rain really starts pouring and I spot a strip mall that has a covered walkway along the front I can get some shelter under. As I am waiting to make the left turn, an oncoming truck splashes a chestful of water that weighs about 50 pounds onto, which is just fantastic. I sit under the shelter, in front of a empty store space for over an hour and watch the rain fall.
The rain finally lightens up enough for me to get back on my bike and continue on. In no time I am in downtown St. Martinsville and I start following signs to the state park I have been planning on camping at. I know that there will be a stretch of gravel road for about eight miles before I get there, and as I am driving out of town to find it, I consider whether or not I really want to set up a wet camp on wet ground and spend a wet night that will turn into a wet morning.
I turn around and head north out of town towards I-10 where I know I can find a cheap motel. I get up to Breaux Bridge and can't find anything that I deem cheap enough, so in the recently recommenced rain, I get on the freeway and head east. I get off at the next exit and the Holiday Inn Express is even more expensive than at the last exit, so I continue on. Eventually the rain lightens up and I can pay attention to some of my surroundings. I drive past a crazy sprawling swamp where the water looks thick and brown and there are random tree stumps sticking out in almost a grid pattern, and just beyond that the forest begins to take on the deep thick green look that the south is known for. There is moss dragging the branches down so that there is almost a wall blocking the inner forest. Where I can see through though, it is surprising how light and open it is inside for how dark green and heavy the outer edge looks. At one point as I glance over I can see a few deer nibbling on leaves, and I am glad that they are doing that instead of jumping into the road and killing me. I get to West Baton Rouge and check into a Motel 6, consistently the cheapest motel you can find. I lay out all of my wet things as best as I can, and I enjoy a hot shower and then head out for a delicious meal at McDonald's. A major drawback of traveling is that it is difficult to eat well, and as such, I find myself eating shit like McDonald's. Although their vanilla shakes are just incredible.