March 15, 2010: Opelousas to St Francisville, Louisiana

Today was one of those days when you spontaneously start singing Led Zepplin’s “When the Levee Breaks” as you ride alongside 30 foot high, gradually sloping levees that parallel most of the roads. We’re riding across the upper Mississippi Delta, which is one of the largest deltas in the world. Most of it has long been drained and dammed and modified by the Corps of Engineers to make land available for timber and rice and cotton and sorghum. It’s these giant levees that try to keep the water where the corps wants it to flow (similar but far upstream from New Orleans). It’s these giant levees that periodically break in 100-year floods and make a mess when they do.

In the meantime, though, the levees we rode along today are planted with deep green pasture grasses and covered with cattle, donkeys, horses, and cattle egrets that hang out eating grasshoppers and flies off the cattle’s backs. The levees are quite beautiful, low sloping green pastures, and the roads along side are quiet with barely a car in sight.

Alan and Claire ride along a low sloping levee.

Cattle and a cattle egret (the little white dot between the two) graze along a levee.

But the delta is more than just the levees. It’s also some giant rivers that used to be part of the braided river channels of the Mississippi as it changed course during floods as a part of the natural cycle of flat-flowing rivers. The Atchafalaya River is a great example. It used to be one of the main braided channels of the Mississippi before the Corps built the levees and tried to keep each of these braids separated into more manageable channels.

We rode over the Atchafalaya today. Riding up and over the bridge was the biggest climb of the day.

Matt follows Jane and Stu over the Atchafalaya River.

The Atchafalaya River, an old river channel of the Mississippi.

Finally, at the end of our 106-mile day, we arrived at a ferry landing of the Mississippi River. The ferry was bigger than Huck Finn’s log raft, but it was pretty neat to cross the river by boat -- especially for the life-long westerners who rarely see this size of river.

Stu, Rob, Gary, Bob, Bill, Alan, and Rich wait for the ferry at the Mississippi River.

The ferry docked and waiting on the western bank of the Mississippi.

Charlotte, Ruth, David, and Mark ferry over to the eastern bank.

Ron, Nate, Polly, Julia, Jerry, Patty, and Carol on their way across.

Once across the Mississippi, we arrived in St Francisville, which is still in Louisiana, about halfway across, roughly near the arch in the boot of the state.
Here we’ll spend our first rest day tomorrow.

Arriving on the east bank of the Mississippi River in St Francisville, Louisiana