Leaving the comfort of the hotel in Donaldsonville was really difficult. We hadn’t stayed at a hotel in nearly a year, and the comfort and privacy were awesome. This particular hotel even had a decent breakfast included with our room rate – hardboiled eggs, toast, biscuits and gravy, fruit, cereal, coffee, juices, etc., so we ate well before leaving. We had also been incredibly productive the night before – we got nearly all of our emails caught up, did some needed research and route mapping, uploaded photos and blogs, got our laundry done, and we each luxuriated in long hot showers. The storms continued unabated until well after we turned out the lights, which wasn’t until about 2 a.m., and we were incredibly grateful to not be out in all that rain and lightning and thunder.
Once again, getting to bed so late made it very hard to get up and get going in the morning, but we were out the door and riding away by 10:30. We were able to get on Hwy 70 immediately, and followed it all the way to Morgan City. The scenery was great; we saw red-winged blackbirds flying among the wildflowers – mostly Brown-eyed Susans – and later on among the ever-present sugarcane. The sky was overcast for a big part of the day, and we had tailwinds for much of the first part of the day, which allowed us to make good time. Things got a lot prettier as we headed south on 70. Everything was flooded from the high river levels and spillways being released, and the number of birds was breathtaking. We saw any number of black -crowned night herons, great egrets, blue herons, and we even saw a Louisiana tri-color heron. For a short section after Paincourtville, we even had shade trees overhanging the road.
By Pierre Part we were really beginning to feel the heat. We stopped for some food and a bathroom break, thinking we just might be able to make it all the way to Morgan City. The rest of the day got fairly grim at this point. We started into some really noticeable headwinds, and we started getting really tired. We did have the good luck to ride next to the Belle River, and that provided some nice views. The water level continued to be really high, and at one spot it covered one of the lanes of traffic. We were lucky in coming through here when we did, as shortly before, the entire roadway was flooded. The heat and humidity got worse through the day, and there was absolutely no shade, and no place to pull off and take breaks. We did see a couple of campgrounds but they weren’t the kind we wanted to stay in. We kept wanting to make Morgan City, because we had finally realized that it was Memorial Day weekend, and if we didn’t get a spot today to stay a couple of nights, we’d probably have a lot of trouble finding anyplace for the next few days. We hung in there, putting our minds on neutral so we wouldn’t think about how miserable we were, and our bodies on automatic, so we could just keep riding. We did make it all the way to Morgan City (43 miles!), to Lake End campground, and got one of the last sites available.
Lake End campground was quite an experience. We arrived about 6:15 p.m., after being on the road from 10:30 a.m. The line-up to get into the park was really impressive – pick-up trucks, campers, RVs – you name it – hauling jet skis, boats, electric golf carts, everything you can imagine – and they were lined up in both directions waiting to get into the park. Being on bikes, we didn’t have to wait! We skirted everybody and headed right for the tent area. The choices weren’t too encouraging, although the park itself was just beautiful. We finally picked a spot on high ground – many sites here were flooded as well – right next to the water spigot and the bathhouse. Turned out to be a terrible choice, as people used the water spigot all day, all weekend, and the water worked its way to our site right away, never mind everybody cutting through our site to get to the spigot and the bathrooms. Ah well…
We managed to get our tent set up and hopped back on the bikes to get over to wait in line to pay. By the time we got back, we just barely got showers before the line-up started, and we were so tired we crawled into the tent right away and ate cold chicken and cold french fries left over from our lunch many hours before. Both of us had some serious mosquito bites and nasty heat rash, so we just read quietly till we fell asleep, glad as could be that we had made it all the way to the campground, and very proud of ourselves that we had ridden that far. Be sure to look at our photo albums to see the housing, the roadside views, and pictures of the high water.
Signing off from Lake End Campground, Morgan City LA