East of the Mississippi

Another milestone in our eastward journey today - we crossed the Mississippi River on the Audubon Bridge. Apparently this is a new bridge since WomanTours did this trip 2 years ago. It used to be a ferry crossing, which would have been kind of fun too. Early in the day we had crossed another bridge over the Morganza Spillway. That bridge was 3.5 miles long and the 4-lane highway had no shoulder. To overcome the potential for becoming roadkill we formed a small peloton of riders and had a vehicle ride directly behind us with flashers on.

We were largely out of the land of rice & crawfish farms today. We passed by more conventional agriculture (although the only crop I recognized was corn), cattle and many non-farming rural properties. Very pretty, although still very flat until we crossed the Mississippi at which point I needed to start changing gears again to get up and down the rolling hills.

It was a long and hot day. Very humid but thankfully mostly overcast and the thermometer didn't get much over 30C. I had to wait about 45 minutes for the bridge-crossing peloton to form and then had to stop to sample a "poboy" sandwich in Morganza. We rode 97 miles today from Lafayette LA to St. Francisville LA. A few people topped up the mileage to make it a century - a first for some of them! Our group is staying at two historic B&Bs tonight and for our rest day tomorrow (pictures below). I'm at the Butler Greenwood B&B which is a plantation home from the 1700's. It is still in the same family (7th, 8th, and 9th generations are living there now) and over the years they have built a number of lovely cottages around a pond to serve as the guesthouses. It's a great place to put my feet up and catch up on things.