November 23

Another fine day. Warmed up enough for me to ride in shorts and T shirt, by noon, for the first time since I left the Haas-Cienda. I’m in St. Landry parish, which declares itself the heart of Cajun country. There are stands of hardwoods, undergrown with sawtooth palmetto and interspersed with pools of muddy water: I take these to be bayous. But mostly what I've seen is highways, straight and flat, or curvy and flat, and huge farms. The roads, as everywhere else I've been from Richmond south, are lined with small frame houses, trailers, modest, and mostly new, brick houses, and 250,000 to 500,000 dollar homes. The big houses are closer to the towns, for the most part, but occasionally form enclaves of exurbia.

I'm in a motel for the fourth straight night. It has been too cold, or late, or dangerous, to camp. After I checked into the be-and-breakfast in St. Francisville I went for a walk through the city park next door, which would have been a good place to camp. And the mayor of Simmesport, whom I met in his hardware store where I got some Gorilla tape to repair my kitchen's cover, has offered his city's parks to cyclists on the Adventure Cycling route. And there is a campground five miles back on the route that I would have stayed in tonight, but the office was closed 'til three, at 1:30, and I'd as soon keep riding and pay 20 dollars more for a motel room. There is camping available in a city park here in Opelousas, but there are too many unfriendly and rough-looking dudes around. I've become a wimp. Those cold mornings did it.

If the weather warms up, as it looks like it might, I will keep pushing west to the Big Bend, and then to Ojinaga, and then southwest to Chihuahua. But if it gets cold again, I'll head south to Corpus Christi, but still going as far west of Houston as I can.