Neville, Barbara and Ray after breakfast and ready to leave from La Place, LA.

Crossing the Mississippi on the ferry at Reserve, LA.

The old plantation of 29 (or was it 27?) Oaks, now an inn and restaurant. The admission was $8 a person for our age group, so we didn't take the tour.

Two young ladies enjoying the festivities at the St James Parish bazaar.

The food was good and included roasted chicken, crawfish stew with peas, potato salad and rice -- and beer.

View of the St. James Parish bazaar.

Started from: La Place, LA [Elev: 0m (0 ft)]
Ended at: Baton Rouge, LA [Elev: 15m (50 ft)]
Distance traveled today: 136.2 km (84.6 mi)
Average speed: 23.7 km/h (14.7 mph)
Elapsed Time: 8.0.0 (hh.mm)
Max speed: 46.9 km/h (29.1 mph)
Staying at: Holiday Inn, Baton Rouge, LA [tel. 504-343-4821 Rm. 125]

Distance traveled so far: 1186.1 km (737 mi)

Last Modified on 5/9/98 at 3:50:25

Day's Narrative: Yesterday I rode up US 61 north of La Place and discovered a ferry across the Mississippi about 9 miles up the road at Reserve, LA. It runs every 15 minutes 8 am to 5 p.m. 7 days a week. Cost is $1 per vehicle, $0.25 per pedestrian. Taking the ferry was far superior to Connie driving us across the river to drop us off on the west side of the Mississippi. In that area the only way across the river was on an interstate, where bicycle riding is frowned on by the authorities.

I picked up Neville & Barbara at their hotel at 8:00 am in downtown New Orleans and we drove out to La Place to have breakfast. We got off about 9:30. Today's ride was going to be a short one (about 60 miles) since we had driven 20 miles out from New Orleans already. We were not in any real hurry to get away, because we would get to Baton Rouge easily by 3 p.m. or so. You will note the casual expressions in the photo taken of us before we started.

We got to the ferry about 10 and discovered that we were classified as "pedestrians", and only had to pay $.25 each.

The road up along the levee was really nice. The traffic was light and slow.

At noon we rounded a curve in the road and came upon a bazaar and fund raiser of some kind for the St. James Parish (In Louisiana a county is called a "parish."). It couldn't have been better timed. We were starved and wondering when we would get to a restaurant.

Neville and Barbara got roasted chicken dinners, and I got crawfish stew with peas, rice and potato salad. After lunch we looked at the map and discovered that the 30 miles we had ridden had gotten us less than one-third of the way to Baton Rouge. The twisty , winding road following the river was at least twice as long as we had thought and that if we continued on it we would have to ride probably more than 100 miles to get to Baton Rouge. We discussed the problem and decided to ride to the road away from the river, which went straight to Baton Rouge, and use it for the rest of the day's ride. Even doing this it looked like the ride would be about 80 miles, much more than any of us really wanted to ride.

The people have been very friendly and every time we stop several people ask us where we came from and where we are going. Neville remarked that he had more people talk to him today than talked to him last summer during the part of his ride from Washington to Minnesota.

As we got closer to Baton Rouge we tried to call Connie with the cell phone several times but were unable to get an answer. We got to the motel about 5:30, very tired, having ridden 85 miles. It appears that Connie's cell phone doesn't work anymore -- it doesn't recognize any signal.

Tomorrow's weather is supposed to be a little cloudy, with a slight chance of a shower. Tuesday we plan to lay over in Natchez and recover from the pain caused by a winter of inactivity. Tuesday the weatherman is predicting rain. Not bad timing, eh?

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