I had reviewed the route to Vidalia, LA last night and planned to get on the road about 9am which would put me there around 4pm. Went to have some breakfast around 8, back to the room about 8:30, pack up some stuff, showered, got dressed, finished packing, ready to go! Opened the door to pouring rain… Huh? Had not expected that! Looked at the phone, yup – big thunderstorm, flash flood warnings, rain for next 45 minutes. OK, guess I’ll do a little work stuff.

Two hours later, still raining. Time for checkout anyway, so packed up and loaded things into the car. Drove down to McDonalds and sat in the parking lot for about 45 minutes working on the past days blog entries. Finally stopped raining about noon. Ran inside for some lunch and then was finally on the road about 12:30.

The route from West Helene goes south into a big bend in the river and within this bend are a couple of bayous that run in parallel from north to south. It had rained a lot and there were flash flood warnings until 1:30pm so I was actually a bit nervous heading in this direction. But, the route is the route, so – onwards!

As mentioned, I had reviewed the routes so I knew which highways I was looking for and more or less the order. So as I headed south out of West Helene I was looking for state highway 418 which came up earlier than I expected so I actually missed the turn. Not a big deal, not much traffic, so it’s easy enough to pull a u-turn. Turned onto the road, and oh my, it’s narrow, and no shoulder. Hey, at least it’s paved and I mean it is a state highway. Oh look, there’s some standing water on the edges. OK, no big deal it’s not much. Always onward. Well, now it’s a bit on both sides, I’ll just scooch on down the middle, no problem. Onward…? Just take it slow. OK, what’s this? Well now, that seems kinda deep and all the way across and a bit long. Oh hell no! Reverse, 3-point turn, photo, and it’s back the way I came. Routes are only suggestions!

Now, I probably could have made it through that stretch of water, but I just didn’t think it worth the risk and I had no idea if there would be even worse sections. As mentioned this was a bayou area so its inherently wet, low-lying land and it had rained a lot! After backtracking and checking the map it turns out that this highway 418 does a loop and I was actually supposed to pick it up further south, deeper into the bend of the river and I assume even lower-lying. So I’m pretty sure I made the right call. I back tracked and picked up the route on the other side of the bend in the river and stayed high and dry the entire way!

Ok, by dry, I only mean that I wasn’t dodging standing water on the roads. It did continue to rain off and on throughout most of the drive. But all in all it wasn’t too bad. Other than being kind of a boring drive with nothing much to see but cotton fields. I’ve now arrived in Louisiana for the first time ever!

I arrived in Vidalia about 6:30 and had been considering camping here for the night as I had found a campground that was right on the river that looked pretty decent and while still hot, the nights had been cooling off decently so thought it would be a good option. Unfortunately when I pulled into the campground, I found that the office closed at 5pm and there weren’t any clear instructions on being able to self register. Oh well, I wasn’t that set on camping and there were a few hotels just up the road as well. So I checked into one and got a nice riverside view.

Reviews of the few local restaurants were less than stellar so I opted to just have dinner in the hotel restaurant. Pretty quiet there, one couple just finishing dinner and a couple people at the bar. Bartender and cook the only ones there. So I pulled up a chair at the bar as well. Bob, the bartender, handed me the menu and led with “there are no steaks, even if it’s on the menu”. Well, OK, good thing I wasn’t planning on a steak. I was looking at the catfish\shrimp combo platter. When I told Bob that’s what I wanted he winced and said, “ooh, sorry no shrimp tonight either”. You’re killing me Bob! OK, just the catfish then. Fortunately it was good – I had it blackened. Then it was back to the room and crashing for the night.

Tomorrow is the last leg, all the way down to the end of the river and road!