There would be no roads in southern Louisiana without bridges. We left New Orleans, crossing Lake Pontchartrain. It is still raining as we drive the 24-mile-long bridge across this lake that is so big we can’t see the shore when we’re in the middle. We stop and eat Italian on the other side as the rain pours.
“I saw some ducks in the median back there under a tree,” Ben says. “It’s bad out when it’s too wet for ducks.”
Freshly loaded with garlic breath, we head into Covington, do our focus group and spend the night at another Holiday Inn. In the morning, we head out toward Baton Rouge and take the back roads because that’s the right thing to do – you can see the country up close and not from the faceless interstate. We’d had our share of the interstate yesterday in the rain with the flat.
We take Highway 190 west and the daiquiri signs increase in frequency beside the ever flat sugar cane fields. The sky is hot and scorched almost white in the building heat. We pass Joe’s Dreyfuss Store restaurant, which Robin says is a good place to eat. We laugh because every place down here is a good place to eat. Even places where they don’t sell food are good places to eat.
