Friday, October 28th

Mighty, Mighty River

It finally had happened: As I was sitting on the bed typing the notes and sipping coffee that even I had to concede was horrible, big raindrops were hammering against the window. Subsequently, I took my time and left the motel only half past ten. By now the rain had stopped, but it was still only sixty Fahrenheit or rather cold. The sky was covered with big, purposeful clouds and it was rather gray and dark.

I left town going west. Outside, there were two, three petrol stations that doubled up as casinos. Given that Louisiana is one of the few states that allows the petrol nozzle to be latched in the on position — in many states you have to stand there and hold it like an idiot, whereas other states forbid self-pumping altogether — this may indeed be a viable way of spending the time while your gas guzzeling monster is fueling up.

Whether it had happened overnight or I just didn’t notice the day before, but I had arrived in autumn. Some of the trees had gone yellow, even red and the odd leaf was blowing across the asphalt.

The center of the pretty little town of Clinton was formed by the bank and the court house in very similar neoclassical buildings across from each other on both sides of the road. The symbolism surely couldn’t be lost on anyone what with so many houses boarded up and for sale.

In Jackson, amidst endless road works, the road was entirely closed for a parade. I didn’t stop to check on it because it was cold and miserable and I forgot to ask the deputy stopping the traffic. Googeling now is hard, too, because of the unfortunate name of the town and the ongoing trial surrounding the demise of a similarly named pop star.

The detour around town sent my by the Dixon Correctional Institution, aka The Prison. Further up was a Historical Plantation Village. So many things to ignore. To spice up things, the detour featured its very own little detour due to more construction works.

With this little difficulty, I finally had arrived by the shores of the mighty, mighty Mississippi river. The atlas suggested that I would have to take the ferry from St. Francisville. But since may this very year there now is the Audubon Bridge a few miles south. Called the “longest cable-stayed span bridge in the Western Hemisphere” by ever-helpful Wikipedia and its missing citations, the bridge is quite impressive with its two tall towers. Pitty, though, as I was looking forward to a ferry crossing of the Mississippi river. From up here, it looked underwhelmingly like any wide river.

Either way, this was as far west as I wanted to go and I turned north. After the town of Morganza, where many light poles where leaning dangerously to the right, the road climbed unto the dams of the flood control system, more specifically the Morganza Floodway. Its purpose is to relieve the river of some water in the event of a major flood by allowing the flooding of the basin to its west. This only so far had to be done twice, once in 1973 and then again this spring.

Besides the road the dam is also used by a railroad line and, lo and behold, driving along I caught up with a train traveling north. Like most North American trains it was quite long and headed by five locomotives. Good thing, too, that I managed to overtake the train as there was two railroad crossings further north.

I left the main highway and followed a smaller road that stayed with the river. It ran north atop a dam. This dam was part of a thing called ORCS, or Old River Control Structure. It controls the flow of water from the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya river and consists, if I counted right, three floodgates and a lock. The road was a bit bumpy at first.

After the orcs, it became a lot better though. It was now rather deserted, delightfully curvy and with no place for the sheriff to hide. This would have been the perfect place to let the Mustang ran free, if one would ever be inclined to do such an irresponsible thing.

The road ended at the town of Vidalida, yet again an unfortunate collection of rundown, small houses. One right turn took me across the Mississippi, into the state by the same name and the town of Natchez. It started with a big visitor right after the bridge. Thinking that I might find a good vista over the river there, I stopped. But there was none, only a boring old concrete visitor center.

Natchez itself consists of lots of parks with a very big intersection of four major US highways. The parks are quite confusing, as one can’t be quite sure when the city will finally end, but they do make Natchez a rather pleasant place. One of the parks is the Natchez National Historical Park, so there must be some history here. Indeed, Natchez is one of the oldest European settlements in the Mississippi area and was the first capitol of the state of Mississippi, before Jackson (not the one with the parade) took over two hundred years ago.

Once I finally do leave town and not just yet another park, the rain is was back, or, more likely, I had finally caught up with it. I followed the big four-lane highway for a bit before returning to the small country roads. Scanning the map for a good place to spend the night, I had come up with Forest. It was by the Interstate for guaranteed motel coverage. To get there, I had about two hours of laid back lanes which would set the arrival time to a perfect five o’clock.

Rolling along, I came through the extremely lovely village of Union Church. Maybe this was due to the gray weather and the autumn foliage. White wooden houses were placed generously apart under big trees with huge lawns to have a pick-nick on. There was, of course, a church and a fire station with an antique fire engine out front. The place emitted a calm that bordered on the unnerving.

Somewhere, I was briefly stopped by the guide car of an oversized transport. I was lucky as it was just turning off the road. The dumper truck they were carrying was about four times the size of a normal truck, the difference in size emphasized by it sitting on top of a regular road transport. But there was not just some mining operation. Just outside the village of Pinola, an old oil well was doing its characteristic dance.

After failing to find the right road, I came up north one town to early. I decided to cheat and take the Interstate for the remaining ten miles. But this particular bit turned out to be a road construction site and I had to travel the ten miles inside a big convoy.

I was prepared to forgo the normal motel in favour of a hotel downtown, but Forest turned out not have a center. Instead, it had a real drive-in restaurant amidst some other chain stores instead. So I gladly picked a chain motel by the Interstate exit, knowing that I didn’t miss anything.