Page 1 Only With No Particular Place to Go (Washington w/Al)

I spun around in my front yard trying to see where the crease in the heavy dark clouds might be. I flipped on the weather channel and it was as vague as usual. I figured I'd done all that a mortal could do to prepare for motorcycle riding in Louisiana weather, it being nearly 80F with a forecast of 30F sometime, soon.

In the meantime, Alphonso was loading a handful of little shinny packets into his bike's trunk, a sure sign he'd been to the Stop and Run to satisfy his candy jones. I irreverently revved the little DL 650 in hopes it would snap him out of his sugar intoxication. I wanted to get in a few miles before the weather dropped on us, which I was sure it would.

I picked "north". We would head straight into the menacing blackness singing songs from The Sound of Music. That practice has been known to cut straight through adversity. Weather adversity. Adversity of any kind. Try it the next time you get hassled.

It seemed to have worked as we found ourselves on the banks of Bayou Fusiler, west of Arnaudville, still dry. I had wanted to show Alphonso, who's been away for a while, some of the less known wonders of the area. Of course, being Al, direct descendant of the French explorer, LaSalle, he immediately claimed the Bayou, the dam structure, and all lands draining to this point for France. I've never had the nerve to tell him that some of this stuff is already claimed.



I can hear it now, straight from the peanut gallery, "What kind of history hunt is this"?

As it turned out, it was a damn good one.

Grand Coteau is on one of my routes north. We stopped at the historic Catholic girl's school there for a few shots. I have a whole web page on Grand Coteau I'll link later. Al, said that he saw some cool cows but they weren't there when I went back to look. He gravitates to cows. I haven't figured that one out. Nor the others.





Next, out on Highway 31, I saw this old girl sitting back off the road. She was lovely, though a bit worse for ware, but nothing which rehabilitation couldn't render up. Al just sent me an email and mentioned seeing severe damage to the chimney area.





Meandering a bit, we, more or less, headed to Washington, I called a halt as I was overcome by the aura of our route.




I tell you how Al and I de-biked in Washington, explored a bunch of stuff and visited the spot where the Missouri Pacific Railroad had its section house. That was where Bidstrup St. crossed the rails on a historic overpass. To top it all, the home owner I interrupted from her yard work.....you'll have to wait.