Day 217-21 March 5-8, 2017 New Iberia and the trip to Jennings, LA

A waitress in New Orleans said, " If you want to give God a good laugh, tell him about your plans."

The "plan" was to head 60 miles west to New Iberia on the 5th, stay two days (which were predicted to rain) to get laundry and chores done and then head to Lake Charles. We knew scattered rain was in the forecast, but figured if we got an early start, we would miss most of it. During breakfast, we looked out at the wet pavement and had second thoughts. Sixty miles is at least a 5 hour journey. Five hours in the rain sounded like no fun, so we changed plans and stayed put for the next three days.

Rested and dry, we started off this morning ready to be in Jennings. Shortly into the ride we came to a road closed sign. Apparently, a bridge was out. We decided to take our chances and continue. We lucked out and were able to get through. Very helpful since there was not a good work around that did not add extra miles to our day.

For some reason, farm animals tend to think we a fascinating. They stare as we go by as if to wonder what the heck that is passing us by.

 We passed acres of flooded land. At first we thought it might be rice, and then perhaps fish since so many water birds were on the water, but then we came across this scene below. Since there were two guys sitting in a pick up next to the pond, I asked what they were farming. After a series of misunderstandings (I don't speak Spanish and they spoke very little English) I realized that the ponds were growing crayfish. Indeed there were at least 20 large net bags in the back of the truck packed with writhing crustaceans. As it turns out, Louisiana is the number one producer of crayfish in the USA. When we were in Arkansas several years ago they claimed to be the biggest producer, but alas, they were wrong.
(If you want to hear a diatribe on why living in Arkansas is a horrible idea, just bring it up when you see us next, we'll be happy to rant)

As a bit of an aside, we saw many, many houses with high steeply pitched roofs like the one pictured. John thinks it is a fashion choice. My guess is that the roofs are built that was as part of  a passive cooling system. If you can illuminate us, please do.

John had routed us around dirt roads adding 4 miles. I was convinced that the road in question was not dirt and pestered him into taking the Google path.

I was wrong. Not only was the road not paved, it was newly graveled and nearly impossible to traverse. We stayed on it until the first turn off and headed to RT 90.

The day ended up to be 67.8 miles long due to another bridge outage and another dirt road. Ahhh, what does not kill you makes you stronger, or something like that.

Tomorrow we head to Lake Charles to spend the night at a casino hotel. Wish us luck, we'll let you know if we break the bank.