Saturday, December 20, 2008 - Eunice LA
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Breakfast Camp on the Levee, Black Hawk LA, December 20, 2008
I've been debating what route to take across Texas to reach southern New Mexico. I could take the pretty boring route I took last year or I could try something different. Different won so after crossing the river on US84 I turned left at Ferriday LA and took LA15 south along the river and then LA105 south to catch US190 west at Krotz. I wanted to see what the country is like along the river.
Riding the levee
Life along the river is dominated by the levee and living here must have been very different before it was built. There's a band of farmed bottom land outside the levee, the levee itself which looks like a long, mowed grass, park, and then inside the levee is the looping, meandering river bordered by low, wet woodlands. The levee is the highest point for miles and dominates the viewshed.
Breakfast Camp on the levee
Louisiana Route 15 is built atop or just outside the Mississippi River levee for miles and miles. Just south of Black Hawk I found a nice spot to pull off atop the levee to make a breakfast camp and have a look around right... about... {here} with {here} being at that dirt pullout you see on the outside of the curve on LA Route 15 - try zooming out to put {here} in a bigger context.
Lunch Camp at Wal-Mart, Eunice LA
Later I stopped for lunch at the Wal-Mart in Eunice LA and that's as far as I got. While lunching I searched for potential night camps along my westward trajectory. Hmmm...... there are no Corp of Engineers or State Park campgrounds this far south in Louisiana and the next Wal-Mart ahead of my westward bound trajectory is in Woodville Texas and that's 170 miles from here - farther than I'm willing to drive this afternoon.
I'm in no hurry, I'll make camp here at Wal-Mart until tomorrow morning. That's fine, I'll use the afternoon to catch up on stuff here at the site and to tidy up around the rig a bit.
Travel route for the day
From Natchez MS
- West on US84 across the Mississippi River about 10 miles to Ferriday then
- South on LA15 about 40 miles to Lettsworth then
- West on LA1 about 5 miles to Simmesport then
- South on LA105 about 25 miles to Krotz then
- West on US190 about 35 miles
To Eunice LA
Night camp
Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Eunice LA
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Eunice LA
Wal-Mart Supercenter, 1538 Us Highway 190, Eunice, LA 70535 - (337) 457-7392
- Good level parking lot
- Verizon cell phone service is ok
- Verizon EVDO Broadband not available - reasonable service is provided over their Extended Network
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Five Trillion Spiders
Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.
From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69