Oh Lucinda

"...now I'm after that back highway

and the longest bridge I've ever crossed

over Ponchartrain."

 

No lie, I generally have a Lucinda Williams song running through my head.  I have loved her voice ever since my brother Doug told me her recording of Passionate Kisses (she wrote it, after all) was better than Mary Chapin Carpenter's cover.  So when I started looking at routes through Lousiana and Texas I knew there were a couple of towns we had to breeze through and a couple of lakes to cross.

 

"...I'm going to go to Slidell

and look for my joy..."

 

I thought Lucinda was born in Slidell, Louisiana, but she just sings about it; she was born in Lake Charles, which she also sings about.  Slidell is an eastern suburb of New Orleans - we drove through and got on I-10 only in order to pick up the bridge, south to north, across Lake Ponchartrain (no desire at all to tour New Orleans which we could see off to our left-we're just not city-folk).  So the "longest bridge over Ponchartrain" is 23 miles long - in the middle you lose sight of land on both sides.

 The causeway road drops out in Mandeville,

 

"...Mama lives in Mandeville.

I can hardly wait until

I can hear my zydeco

And lassiz le bon ton roulette..."

 



See what I mean? Lyrics, all the live-long day.  We drove across Lake Charles, entered East Texas around Beaumont (The Night's Too Long) got tangled in some Houston-bound traffic and escaped via a County road that turned into a Farm Road, saw some lovely Texas farms and lakes and stopped for the night in Huntsville.  This part of Texas is very nice, a bit hilly and lots of trees.  I would travel this route through this gigantic state again.  It gets rather dull and dun-colored west of Abilene, orange dusty fields full of wind turbines and/or oil/gas drills.
 

Excuse the squashed insects on the windshield.  Texas has bugs the size of chickens.

We headed for Roswell, New Mexico, making it the second time we've stopped there for the night on trips west.  We must feel drawn there for some reason -- ooooh, spooky! This photo below was snapped on our way into town.  Notice that strange silvery, elongated cloud just above the horizon? Hmmmmm???

 

Actually it is such a crazy-ass town with green space monsters painted on nearly every building and a spaceship in front of the McDonald's, and an alien tiled into the floor of our elevator.  We had to be in Salt Lake City by the following evening, so we stepped up the pace a bit, still primarily state roads, and diagonalled our way through New Mexico and Utah.  We buzzed through Moab which we had plans to return to with Jamie and the girls on the following weekend.  So gorgeous through that area.

 

So wonderful to see them all again.  I've realized I haven't posted any updates of the grandkids lately, so here is a preview.  Last summer, Evie and Bella:

 

 

Halloween, Evie was a zebra,

 

Isabella was some sort of huntress, I guess.

 

Christmas photos:

 

Evie's last year dance photos.  This year she's into jazz and soccer.

 



 

 

And the Vermonters!  Marcus and Ruthanne at Disneyworld in March of this year:

 

 Ruthie, Marcus and their friend (pink shirt-I forget her name).
 

 

Back soon.  --cds



Road Trip, Anyone?

I have decided to refer to our recent absence from Florida as our unintentional road trip.  Yes, we had plans to travel to Utah to visit Jamie and the girlies, and yes, we intended to drive (as we always do), but when James suggested we try to avoid all interstates and seek out the backroads and byways, the traveling there and back again got a bit more interesting (and longer naturally).  Here is a preview and map of the journey:

James probably knows the exact mileage, but that means nothing to me -- I need the visual.  From Lakeland, we drove state and county roads north through Florida following the Big Bend Scenic Byway -- very pretty.  This is along the roadway in Apalachicola:

Apalachicola was also the home of a store that I have been searching for ever since I moved south.  My first Piggly Wiggly store!!  I was so excited.  I mean how cool would it be to be able to say, "I need to stop at the Piggly Wiggly for some milk and bread."  Some people have all the luck.

 

We stopped for the night in Biloxi, Mississippi, right along the beach.

Biloxi is an odd sort of beach town these days, post-Katrina.  Driving west along Beach Boulevard, we passed lot after empty lot.  Sometimes a brick or stone wall remained, but mostly the only things left on the lots were huge old live oaks and For Sale signs.

Bye bye Mississippi.  On to Louisiana and my obsession with Lucinda Williams.  --cds