Day 184: Zipping across Louisiana.

When we were still in the panhandle of Florida, we decided that, for the first time, we will try to plan a route and itinerary back to California. We knew that if we didn’t at least try to have some ideas of where to go and how long to stay, we would certainly miss my commitment of being in California for a work meeting. Our original plan to be back to California for Ava’s 6th birthday in January was missed by a more than 2,600 miles on the opposite side of the country. We love having that kind of flexibility but sometimes you just have to answer when work calls.

As we woke up in this huge parking lot on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, we were kind of uninspired to explore. We are still dealing with a bit of last night’s post Mardi Gras parade hangover so we opted to skip Baton Rouge for another trip. Hopefully we will be able to come back here and spend more quality time with the city in the future.

One of the things Marlene originally wanted to see is a plantation tour. There are several plantations around here so we looked up its general vicinity and thought that we can at least drive by to see if it’s worth stopping. Unfortunately we only saw fields and trees along the river route we took so we kept going.

We did get to see some more floats getting ready for another parade. We probably should get out of their way so we don’t get stuck behind them on our way out.

We got back on Interstate 10 and started heading towards Lafayette. We drove through this part of I-10 3 years ago in the middle of the night so we did not get to see anything.

These beautiful puffy clouds are wonderful to look at but they don’t help us in the solar charging department. We are looking at a few consecutive days of parking lot living so let’s hope it doesn’t get too cold at night so the furnace doesn’t drain our batteries.

Our original plan was to make it to Lafayette for the night and possibly meet up with someone who we’ve been interacting with online. Lane and Krista live in Lafayette and have two beautiful children. Lane makes daily videos on his YouTube channel and found us through there when we were making more frequent video posts. They aspire to hit the road with their kids and we were going to meet up for ice cream in Lafayette when we came across.

As we were headed west down I-10, we got numerous suggestions about a visit to Avery Island. We had missed it during our last visit through here and nearly forgot again this time around. You may or may not know that Avery Island, Louisiana is where the famous Tabasco Hot Sauce originated and every bottle that is distributed around the world still comes from there. We made a last minute decision to head south towards it and found a Walmart at the nearby New Iberia, LA to spend the night.

It has been awhile since we have done 2 consecutive Walmart nights. This is also one of the longest legs of our travels since South Dakota. Tomorrow we should have a nice day of sightseeing.

Tonight, the girls enjoy a little movie night on the portable DVD player.

over and out,
dan