Today was a rather gloomy day on a number of fronts.  We left our room at 8:30 and drove to downtown Baton Rouge to see the state capitol.  Although it wasn’t open yet, we got a chance to snap a few photos and the kids recognized it as being very similar to North Dakota’s skyscraper capitol.  Driving through Baton Rouge’s nearly-deserted streets was interesting, and we think we’ll want to return to Louisiana someday.  As we crossed the very wide Mississippi River, we decided a Great River Road trip would be perfect.  As we crossed the river today, we imagined that some of the corn in the barges might have been grown on our farm.

From Baton Rouge, we zoomed east on I-10.  The raised road through swamp land was interesting.  (Is there a technical name for a road on stilts?  Bridge? Causeway? Something else?)  We saw fields of rice and sugar cane and passed trucks carrying both commodities along the way.  For us, it is very interesting to see varying types of agriculture, and if we’d found the right opportunity, we’d have turned off onto a road and watched the southern farming operations in action.

Instead, we turned south at Sulphur.  We have a morning at the beach planned for later in the week, but concern about weather led us to detour for a while so we could at least do some shell hunting.  From Sulphur down to Holly Beach was about 30 miles through bayou land and the Creole Nature Trail.  We saw alligator crossing signs, fishing or trawling boats, and not much else along the way.

On our map, between Holly Beach and Johnsons Bayou there was a picnic area symbol.  We thought we’d stop and eat lunch at this park area and then walk along the beach.

Instead, at Holly Beach we found a sobering surprise.

There were maybe a dozen colorful houses, raised up an entire story of the ground.  Paved streets were laid out with stop signs and street signs.  A sign pointed to a convenience store with all the necessary items.

The surprise was in what wasn’t there.

Block upon block of Holly Beach had foundations of houses that once were there.  RV’s sat on lots in some areas, but most were deserted.  An occasional porta-potty dotted the landscape.

It reminded me a lot of old Hibbing, Minnesota, the town that moved south a few miles in the early 1900’s, leaving behind streets and foundations but no life.

Those of us who live in the north hear about hurricanes and their destruction, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the devastation Ike left behind a year and a half ago.

We drove farther west, past other small communities that had faced the same fate.  Some houses were being rebuilt.  Some were lived-in, but still had boarded up windows.  Some had simply been vacated.

We never did find our picnic area.  Instead, we stopped at the end of a street, ate our lunch in the car, and donned our winter coats for a walk on the beach in the 44-degree air.  Yes, it was cold even for us.  It’s unusually cold for this area of the country.

The kids had fun finding shells, and each picked up a small bagful.  Debris also littered the beach, and large chunks of concrete, bricks, and other remnants of the old community form a sea wall now, separating the homes from the beach somewhat.

It wasn’t a very pretty sight to see.

Down the road in Johnsons Bayou, I noticed the ample number of swings on the school playground before I noticed that the concrete school building was in ruins.

Other than a few homes here and there, and these communities that are now so changed, the only other things on the landscape were operational sites for oil companies.

As we neared Port Arthur, Texas, we heard a sound from the car, and three of us asked simultaneously, “What was that?”  A few miles later we found out as the tire pressure light came on in the car.  There was nowhere safe to stop along the narrow road, so we limped along for a few miles until there was a gas station.  We pulled in to assess the situation and found that our driver’s side rear tire was completely flat.

Now, a flat tire on vacation might seem like a really bad thing, but we’re feeling that we were very blessed with it for these reasons:

• We had just driven 60+ miles with nary a gas station or other business to be seen.  My husband was able to change the tire on a flat, paved, safe surface, the kids had room to move around and play outside, and there were restrooms and snacks available in the convenience store.
• We were only 10 miles from Port Arthur.  A call to AAA gave us the name and phone number of a tire shop.
• The tire shop was next to a shopping area, so we ate an early supper and let the kids browse at toys while we waited.
• We really didn’t have anything planned for today other than driving to San Antonio.  The tire stop put us on a later arrival than we’d planned, but we got in just after 9 p.m.
• We had talked about replacing the tires when we got home.  This saves me the trip, and we now have four new tires to drive on for the rest of our trip. Perhaps most surprisingly, they had snow/mud tires available, and a call to a shop in Minnesota to be sure they’d be decent let us know that they are good northern tires.

And so it is that we weren’t excited about the prospect of a flat, it certainly could have been worse.

We continued on our way, zooming through Houston without any traffic problems.  The drive from San Antonio to Houston was dark and long but uneventful.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings, though, as one of the girls had a fever when we arrived at our hotel.

The kids learned some important lessons today.  We had a good talk about hurricanes and evacuation lanes and how people must have felt to have to flee their homes, not knowing what would be there when they returned.  They learned about flexibility and changing plans and making the best of an unplanned situation.  And they learned that yes, they can indeed fall asleep in the car even if their blankies have been buried under coats in the spare-tire shuffle.

It took us four days, but we finally made it to San Antonio.  Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to get out and explore our destination city.

Note: I’ll have photos of the places we visited in the weeks to come.  At the end of the day, it’s all I can do to write these updates.  Details on our stops will be forthcoming.

Related: Notes from the Road: Texas, Day 3 Notes from the Road: Texas, Day 5

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