About : RAAM

Holly Beach, LA 127***

Youre not going to get this until tomorrow. Im in Roys Cabins in Holly Beach LA – staying courtesy of a special pre-season opening by David (manager) at the behest of the lady at the local convenience store gas station.

They say they have 6 cabins, but I count only 5. Im in the 4th door (room 8 – go figure). Its only 3 blocks from the beach, across the street from Joes cabins and next door to Toms cabins.

They generally expect you to bring your own towels and toilet paper, but were gracious enough to supply me on request. They have lots of mosquitoes and rules here.

There are no restaurants around, but the lady at the convenience store supplied me with bread, boudin (rice and pork, spicy) sausages, milk, orange juice, v8, 320z Gatorade, 32 oz water and an apple. Dinner and breakfast.

I followed the route today, but when I got to Port Arthur it was only 4:30P and I had gone only 87 miles. (There were terrible headwinds all day.) Then there was the fact that I wanted to get out of Texas (7 or 8 days is enough – its a big state), and there was this impressive bridge.

Note also the impressive road block keeping people from the bridge. A pick up had head-oned some truck that looked like a mini refinery, and I suppose they were afraid of fire. They directed me around some side streets (walk down the embankment, ride a few blocks, walk up another embankment) and let me cross.

The river didnt go down, so they made the bridge go up. No shoulders but some great views.

In that second picture you can see a road at the bottom hading south into the woods. Louisiana was only 12 miles away, but Roys, the next place to stay was 37.

Heres a looking back shot of the bridge, and the welcome to Louisiana.

Prior to the bridge, there wasnt much. I noticed what looked like min- runways every 10 miles or so, saw an ag plane, then low and behold

They had a crane truck and a flatbed truck with sacks of fertilizer on it. The plane landed, loaded up, and was off in literally less than 3 minutes. I ran over, as it was taxing up, but by the time I got close enough to take this picture (the propeller is spinning), he was just ready to leave.

The first 70 miles were almost straight east on 1960, which joined US90. It was flat and straight, with headwinds. The only other things I took pictures of (besides a couple of uninteresting road, farm and field shots) were the bridge at Anacocita (to show high waters and the morning sun coming through the clouds), the sign to China, TX (for Tom), and a refinery (to show the wind and a representative sample of the 15 miles of refineries and tank farms between Beaumont and Port Arthur).

Thats about it for day 15. I would have made a lot more miles (30?) if it wasnt for the stupid wind. Started early, and ended late. Even the gulf here is flat and non-descript. But heres a closing picture of it anyway. Tomorrow I hear theres a ferry 12 miles down the road at Cameron LA. Sounds like fun to me! Bye!

(Its twilight -the sun has already set here, so its a little duller than it probably is during the day.)

PS. I did see (only) 3 historical markers, and took a picture of only one (Sam Houston saves the ragged refugees) but Im not including it.

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