Lake Charles, Lousiana
January 5, 2003
Well, we took the backroads down along the Mississippi River all the way down to Lousiana. Mississippi was quite interesting, lots of cotton fields, and those odd strange trees sticking out of the river everywhere. For the most part, everything was extremely extremely rural!! Until we got to Greenville Mississippi and oddly found the first Chinese restaurant in quite awhile. My Filipina girl wanted to get some asian food, so we went. The whole area was quite suburbian like or something, all Wal-Marts and such, as much as I don't want to admit I like that stuff, it was nice to get out of the rural south and into the modern offererings along our way.
Eventually we made our way down to New Orleans and wandered around the French Quarter. It was quite a party on a Saturday night, filled with bars and music and people everywhere. Bourbon Street is the heart of the action, but it spills out everywhere. My girl Flor got some beeds thrown down from the famous French-style balconies. I guess they were preparing for Mardi Gras (wink).. A fun time.. the downer was to save on parking, I parked at Harrah's Casino which offered free parking for 30 minutes of play, and of course I lost more money than what parking would have cost.
The following day, we went into Bayou country all along the very southern areas of Lousiana. We saw alot of swamp land, some boats in the swamps, and "Swamp Tour" signs everywhere! Lots of references to cajun this-and-that, alligators, and the like. The backroads opened up alot more interesting things, and I saw alot of those famous Lousiana cemetaries where everything is above ground because the area is below sea level.. (if they did bury them underground, the sea water levels would push the corpses back out again).. intereresting..
By nighttime we were headed to Lake Charles, which is an extremely famous Lousiana town (in my mind) because of what I perceived as having a decent Vietnamese population. I assumed that because of books by Robert Butler Owens who is from Lake Charles and his extensive writings about hte Vietnamese community in Lake Charles. Upon arrival though, i was disappointed to see that it was mainly a very industrial port town, and what Vietnamese were there were largely hidden.
After Lake Charles we'd be heading fast to Texas and saying goodbye to the Voodoo casting spells of back Bayou Cajun-style Lousiana.
TEXAS!!:
January 8, 2003
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