Willy Salts to Toledo Town

Breakfast at the Clover Grill

We start the day right with a fantastic breakfast at The Clover Grill, which our bartender recommended the night before. I had an omelet with blue cheese and onions with a side of tater tots. It was ridiculous how good it was. Exploring the French Quarter by day was a lot more enjoyable, but it's unbelievably hot and we're sweating on the riverfront as a passing train keeps us from getting back to the rest of the city. There's a steamboat offshore, and a souvenir shop selling butt burn hot sauce with a donkey on the label.

Off to Baton Rouge via I-10, with a stop at the biggest Whole Foods I've ever seen for lunch and camping groceries. We're on I-49 for a while and we're both passing out, bored by the interstate and exhausted from last night's binging. We're stopping every 60 miles or so, drinking one energy drink after another, which is only exaggerating the stifling heat. Half of every bottle of water ended up on our heads, in our jackets, and in our helmets. Stopped for gas in Bunkie, and we sure aren't in Florida anymore. The landscape seems to slowly be changing. A guy in a shirt with the sleeves ripped off and a trucker hat is chatting us up about the bike, and how he doesn't even fit so much stuff on his Electra Glide.

Back and forth what to do, interstate or scenic, one way there's no scenery to help us stay awake, the other way we're on the road longer. The decision sways to scenic and it's really pretty at first then becomes increasingly backwoods. Tiny roads, all woods, pretty but scary. It feels like we're the first people down these roads in years. Feeling more and more isolated and lost, despite having the GPS, and of course, a road closed sign, miles past the last intersection. We go on, thinking it can't be true but it is. The road is blocked, all torn up, with construction equipment everywhere. A dog runs around between the machines, mockingly.

So we take the Zumo detour, points us to Willie Salts road, which we wouldn't have even seen otherwise. It's all clay and rocks, we're sliding around, insanely hot, but opening the helmet visor lets in a swarm of gnats every time. A bug crawls into my ear but I feel like we'll just tip over if I stop so I try to ignore it. We finally get back out to a main road, back on track, windy roads, crash land in Many, LA at the Toledo Town Inn.

The Toledo Town Inn

The area feels creepy. There's a couple screaming at each other in the grocery store parking lot across the street. It, a gas station, and this motel are all that's here. The manager is very friendly, and tells me how it was run down, used to be rented by the hour, he and his wife are cleaning it up. For $50 we get a huge room. We're both a wreck - jittery and dirty. A shower feels amazing, but all the energy drinks have me much more worried about the motorcycle than I need be, and I'm looking out the window to check on it constantly.

Time to get water and it feels like walking onto a movie set - the gas station and hotel vignetted against nothing but blackness. The glares from the hunters and fishermen at the gas station leave me wishing for the first and hopefully last time for a gun. We get back and eat and it's the best food I've ever had. Spill cereal on the bed, delirious, crying and laughing. After swearing off energy drinks forever, realizing how paranoid and insane they'd made me all day, I try to settle down and get some rest. I'm awakened mysteriously around 3am, think it's nothing, and go back to sleep. We find out the next morning that around 3am there was a huge wreck just outside the inn, a semi hit a car, and killed everyone in it.

If only I'd realized at the time that within a year I'd be actively seeking out roads and towns just like the ones we saw that day.

Cross Country 2007 - Day 4 at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging