The ringing in our old ears lasted through the night but it was the Macklemore Imagine Dragons adrenaline that helped us pump out a blog before heading to the other side of the Pelican State for a shelter-in-place reunion with our Covid 19 BFFs.
In April 2020 we were trapped in Shreveport, Louisiana on Barksdale Airforce Base in a nationwide shutdown. A few concrete pads down sat a very cool Travato housing a retired Air Force couple and their genius of a dog Baxter. While we were trying to get to Montana to take the Road to the Sun, they were freewheeling in their new ride and got stuck like us. We made the best of it with happy hours watching B-52 landings, campfires at the lake, dinners on the pad slabs. It was great getting to know them, so much so that we met up a few weeks later Glacier National Park in Montana to see some sights and have another happy hour. Two years later it was time to reunite at their home in the arch of the Louisiana boot in the heart of Cajun country.
I-10 passes through the largest wetlands in the United States on the country’s third longest bridge. The Atchafalaya National Wildlife Region looks wet and wild, hot and buggy and someplace we’d like to drop our jacks to explore. This time we saw it at 55 mph, en route to a more hospitable destination. Instead of a county park 10 miles away, our friends offered up their driveway and 30 amp cable where we enjoyed happy hour on the backyard concrete slab, just like old times. Sometimes you have a natural connection with people and it doesn’t matter how much time has passed. You pick up where you left off, catch up, reminisce and share future plans.
With hugs and let’s meet up again ideas, we moved 30 miles down the road to fuel up and see the In-Laws for breakfast. Mornings in Cajun Country are all about the meat – the cracklin, the boudin, the fried ribs, the fried smoked sausage. Actually it’s all about the deep fryer. What you can’t get at the In-Laws is an egg, or a biscuit or anything remotely resembling a vegetable. The boudin is the closest thing – rice, minced meat, and cheese, rolled in a ball or stuffed in an eggroll wrapper and fried. The smiling server explained each specialty and filled 2 styrofoam boxes and 2 paper bags with assorted fried meats and we were on our way.
With jacked up blood pressure from the salted meat smorgasbord and severely jackhammered, jersey-walled roads behind us, we entered the refined state of Texas. Trading Houston beltway congestion for $20 in tolls on the around the city Sam Houston Parkway, we got a good look at refinery after refinery after refinery.
Leaving the big city behind, we dropped into Brazos Bend State Park. Here Houstonites escape the big city to soak in the ambience of the Texas prairie.
If we weren’t so darn tired from hard partying with our Louisiana kinfolk over the past four days, we’d have loved to explore the lakes, fishing, trails, observatory and nature center at this 5,000 acre coastal prairie. We settled for a leisurely walk on the Red Buckeye trail to see the flowers in bloom and an overlook of the Brazos River before settling into our comfy recliners, cold A/C and 104 over the air TV stations. Nature will have to wait for the Big Bend.