The cold snap that has hit the country, certainly didn’t spare the gulf states. We woke up to 26F, and although we were cozy in the trailer, our tanks live on the outside, uninsulated.
You know you’re not South enough when you have to worry about frozen shiz.
That’s the point of this whole experiment, I guess….moar South.
We do have tank heaters, though to be honest I think it’s just a button with a light to make you think something is happening.
The day warmed up pretty quickly, however, so I emptied the tanks and we were on our way by 9:30am.
We didn’t get very far until Lisa had to do a zoom call with a prospective customer, so we stopped at a really pretty and expansive rest area where she could sell our wares, while I meandered with the dog and made tuna sandwiches for lunch.
Alabama, you’re prettier than your marketing team lets on.
As soon as we crossed the state line into Mississippi, the roads unimproved as did the scenery.
The piney forests that span all the way from North Carolina through Georgia, Florida, and Alabama gave way to more deciduous trees and kudzu.
Imaginary political lines are very powerful things indeed.
Mississippi eventually turned into Louisiana where the drivers are what changed. Louisiana drivers do two very peculiar things. 1 – they all cut you off while passing you, by turning into your lane as soon as they have overtaken you from either direction, and 2 – every few miles someone is suddenly pulling off onto the shoulder.
I assume that in Louisiana people are getting flat tires or breaking down at an alarming rate, making me paranoid that my own number was coming up very soon, and that therefore we must leave the state as quickly as possible to avoid such a fate.
But not before stopping in Baton Rouge for some lunch.
We parked in the hobby lobby parking lot behind a car that looked like it was waiting to complete a drug deal, and walked to the best vegan food establishment in town, that just happened to share a parking lot with a strip joint.
How bad can it be?
Best, rice and beans….ever, actually, and this, coming from a self appointed rice and beans arbiter of rice and beans hate.
By this time Lisa is such a pro driving with the trailer behind us, that she has the seat leaned way back, one hand on the wheel, and the other around my shoulder, singing along to Wilson Philips on the tape deck, er Spotify.
“Some day somebody’s gonna make you want to turn around…”
Baton Rouge rush hour has nothing on her.
As we drive on, I notice that every single bridge in Louisiana has the sign “Bridge Ices Before Road” which of course my road brain then rewrites as “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”, and I end up humming the tune hundreds upon hundreds of times.
Sick of that particular song, I eventually take the last driving shift, prying her hands off the steering wheel, as we roll into Texas.
The first city across the state line is Sulphur, TX, an industrial wasteland that is such a depressing sight that all we could do is make jokes about how the tingle you feel after the rain must mean “it’s working”.
Our destination for the night is a not much farther, Village Creek State Park, a nice forest being encroached on by new housing development.
Although it’s pretty secluded forest, the entrance is now through a suburban community, so it feels kind of odd driving a trailer through cul de sacs and other suburban words.
We back into our spot, drop cash in the envelope, and call it a night.
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