Louisana Drive - Day Two

(Back Blip)

Unfortunately, my lower back decided to start spasming like mad this morning. It was so painful that I didn’t feel I should drive, so L took over. I’ve had this happen before but this was probably the worst. It gives me a whole new respect for those who suffer from back pain on a permanent basis like my mum.

We drove south on the freeway (90) towards the coast. We came off at Franklin to start our drive back north again, along more scenic back roads.

Franklin is a very pretty, historical town. The main street is lined with huge (probably oak) trees which are liberally draped with Spanish moss. They create a very dramatic effect; a spookyish atmosphere when it’s dark and a wonderfully cool, dappled street when the sun is shining.

We meandered back up through various small towns. For some reason, about 50 of the houses in a couple of areas had been TPed. This is a phenomenon that I’ve come across since moving to Texas. When the mood takes someone (usually a teenager, but we know some ‘adults’ who do it too) to prank someone else, they throw rolls of toilet paper so that they unfurl like streamers over trees in the prankees garden. Needless to say, the higher streamers are almost impossible to remove so they stay there until there’s been enough really heavy rain to bring them down. There must have been a high school event going on to have spurred that number of TPed houses in those areas. The papered trees were rather reminiscent of the trees with Spanish moss in them and with Halloween coming up, we felt they added an extra element of decoration.

We took a detour at one point, to Jefferson Island (actually an old plantation rather than an island). There was a beautiful tropical gardens there. We spent quite some time photographing everything that moved or swayed, trying to get to understand our cameras a bit more. We got loads of photos that we really liked and struggled to choose one for today. At one point, we followed the path around to some red flowers (sorry, I’m obviously not a gardener) being sprayed by a tall portable sprinkler head and as the water was moving around to them, I took the shot that I’ve chosen to blip. The water droplets created a fascinating (to me) snowy effect around the flowers.

We spent so long in the Gardens that we just took the freeway back from there to Lake Charles, where we were staying at a casino hotel. Louisiana has a few casinos that cater to the neighbouring states that don’t allow them. We stayed at this one when we were trapped for three days earlier in the year and they sent us an offer of two free weekday nights so we couldn’t really refuse.