2021-04-17 Day 37
Our first full day in Louisiana!
Today we left Deridder, LA and are heading to Opalousas.
The first thing I managed to do was to stop and try to take a picture on some cows in a pasture and somehow I spooked them so they all ran away from me!
There is a tremendous amount of logging going on in this area of the country. We saw mostly pine, but I assume other woods are harvested as well. There are many miles of pine woods on both sides of the road.
Shortly after riding past the pine woods, I got a flat tire on my rear tire. Now, seeing that I’m currently the record holder for this trip in flats – 13 flats to date – this would not normally be worth mentioning in this blog. But the flat was spectacular, so I’m including it. Somewhere, I ran across a piece of glass that was not visible as we were riding and it just tore completely through my special “Gator Hardshell” tire like it was paper. A brand new tire ruined in a moment.
The outside of the tire:
And the inside of the tire:
There were also hundreds if not thousands of acres of these shallow ponds with a crop obviously growing in them. I found out later that these are rice fields. And, in addition to the rice, there are Crawdads (also called Crayfish) that are simultaneously grown with the rice. The rice is harvested and then the Crawdads are harvested. Most of the fields had these funny little paddle boats that were used to travel over the field. I’m certain they must have some other function, too, but I don’t know what it is.
Today’s Ride Statistics
88.2 miles