Stop Time: 1930 CDT
Start Location: Tallahassee, FL
Stop Location: Vidor, TX
Lodging: Best Western
Dinner: Bar-B-Que Depot
Miles Traveled Today: 668
Weather: 65-95, mostly sunny
What a relief when we woke up to 65 degrees and SUNNY skies with no more rain. Tropical Storm Andrea had headed on up the coast and away from our path of travel. That was a relief!!
A lot of miles on I-10, although we did take the "short cut" around New Orleans via I-12. The ride went well until we got to Baton Rouge. There was a three vehicle accident in the center lane of the Mississippi River bridge!! It was very slow stop and go traffic in 95 degree temperature and what felt like 95% humidity!!! Took us 45 minutes to make it to the bridge and across the Mississippi. That took a lot out of us, especially with the slow/no speed and heat of the engine. I even turned my engine off for about 30 seconds a couple of time to cool the engine and ME!!
The swamp bridges west of Baton Rouge are pretty amazing pieces of highway engineering. Goes for miles and miles. I can't imagine the monotony of the workers that were pouring concrete along this highway when it was built. We were lucky that we didn't encounter a wreck on these bridges as I am sure traffic is blocked for hours when an accident happens. We did see one more wreck on I-10 in western Louisiana. It had just happened and many cars/trucks had stopped and drivers were running to the scene. It looked pretty gruesome as the car had apparently flipped several times and was tore up pretty bad. We slowed up but didn't stop. I am sure all the traffic was stopped in that area after we passed through with the needed clean up! In just two days we had seen more car accidents than I think I had on all my combined trips before!! (edit - thankfully, we didn't see another accident for the entire rest of the trip, except for a cougar that had been killed during the night on a Los Angeles, CA freeway!!)
Riding through Louisiana was a first for me. I only had another two states to ride in to complete the 49 states and I would ride in those (Wisconsin and Michigan) on my way back to Richmond later in the trip.
We finally made it to Texas:
We decided to stop in Beaumont for the night and thought would be no problem getting a room since it was a Friday night, but we were wrong. Little did we know that Beaumont was hosting the Junior league baseball tournament this weekend for the entire state of Texas. Since Texas is so big, that is a big deal. We stopped at a Hampton Inn and the desk clerk just laughed at us when we asked for a room!! There were kids running all over the inside and outside of the hotel so I guess we were lucky as I don't think we would have got any sleep. She did tell us that all the hotels in the town were booked for the tournament. I got on the phone with Best Western and finally found an available room in Vidor, Texas and grabbed it quickly. This required us to backtrack on I-10 a few miles and we had seen a back up going back east as we were coming west. We looked at the traffic maps on our iphone and it looked like if we went back through town we could bypass the traffic heading back east. Wow, did we ever see the old section of Beaumont, Texas. Just glad we did not have any breakdowns or run out of gas as the areas we traveled through did not look very hospitable!!!! In any case, we made it by the traffic and on to the Vidor hotel.
Two things I wanted to eat in Texas was some good Texas BBQ and a Texas steak. Checking with the hotel desk clerk, she recommended a place just a few blocks down the street called the Bar-B-Que Depot. They had been there cooking Texas BBQ for 17 years. Meet the owner/cook and his wife. Nice folks and some really good Texas BBQ!!
Here is Bill placing his order:
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