The onshore wind collapsed my tent with me inside and I had
to laugh aloud as I struggled to dress and assemble my gear while I was in it.
I had no hope of lighting my propane burner, so had coffee at the bar and grill
with the old gal that ran it. Nobody else was there, but being Friday, she was
hopeful things would liven up a bit in the sleepy hollow of Matagorda by the time
evening falls.
Hwy 521 to Freeport
for groceries and a weather update from one of the customers who warned me of a
big storm that was blowing through this evening with lots of rain. It should
pass quickly, they say, but it is not the kind of stuff for tent campers such
as I.
Still going east. Freeport
had a Dow Chemical plant that was big and smelled funny. I held my breath as
long as I could while passing through it, and thought of the people who lived
and worked there but did not have the option.
And then there are the refineries. Port Arthur notable among them. What an
enormous facility! The inland channels were chock a block with oil tankers
waiting to unload their crude, and of course the entire continent waits at the
fuel pumps to load the refined product. Gas here is less than $1 per litre.
 |
| Traffic on the Intracoastal waterways |
But I am ahead of myself. I followed the coast along the
sandbar islands including Galveston
Island. It is attached by
a bridge to Houston
but I reached it from a bridge attached to another sandbar island to the west.
 |
| Endless beaches at Galveston |
Galveston.
Go ahead—don’t sing that song to
yourself. I dare you!
Glen Campbell’s dulcet refrains of that famous song rolled
around in my mind until I wished I could floss my brain. Indeed there were sea waves crashing, sea winds
blowin’, sea birds flyin’ and all the rest of it, but if he was talking about
‘hills where we used to run’, well I’ll tell you what (say the good ol’ boys) —the
elevation is about two feet above sea level. Get real, Glen.
 |
| Sandbar islands that define the shoreline |
For that reason, and in consideration of the big storms that
punish these shores at regular intervals, all of the houses along this coast
are built on stilts. At Galveston
the houses are perched especially high off the ground. In 1900 “The Big Storm”
as it is affectionately known here, devastated the place forcing a complete rebuild
in the aftermath. All along the coast there is evidence of past storms that
have ripped off roofs, siding, toppled structures, thrown cars in marshes, etc.
and they have been abandoned rather than restored. Hurricane Ike of 2008 the
most recent and second only to Katrina in damage caused, was a category 2 when
it reached Galveston.
 |
And then The Bruiser carried us over the border to Louisiana!
Not a Stetson
or a set of horns on the grill of a pickup anywhere in sight. Where the ground in Texas
is dry and dusty, in Louisiana
it is all swampland. It’s The Bayou, dontcha know.
 |
| The bayou! Looks a lot like a swamp. |
 |
| If you were born on the bayou, you might have been spawned here. |
The first two meals of the day somehow got missed and I was
started to fade late in the afternoon, so I stopped at a little food joint at
the roadside at Creole and ordered me up an oyster burger, even although fresh
crawdads were available, this being Friday and all.
I caught a ferry from Galveston
to Bolivar Peninsula,
and then another short one across the river to Cameron, LA.
Lots of camping opportunities on the long expanse of beach, but that
threatening storm that I keep seeing over my left shoulder kept me moving. When
I reached Lake Charles
I started investigating motel rooms. Parked outside the Comfort Inn where the
heartless management demanded an outrageous sum from a poor retired teacher on
fixed income—the sky suddenly split open. Curtains of rain fell with
sensational forked lightning for added drama. It didn’t actually pass, but when
it finally let up a bit I fished out my raingear and headed off down the
freeway (in the wrong direction) in search of a more reasonable hotel I had
located on my ipod. When I finally sorted it out and made a few of my vintage
U-turns (my family will understand) I arrived at a great little motel where I
was invited to park The Bruiser under the awning outside my door. Civilized
people, these.
After almost 5500 miles I reckoned it was time to do some
laundry. I washed my favourite brown shirt in the sink only to find that I
don’t actually own a brown shirt.
Wifi and lots of time to surf afforded me the chance to book
ahead for New Orleans
for Sunday night. I’ll have to find something to do tomorrow (Saturday) since
the city is fully booked on the prime days of the weekend.
2012 is election year in the U.S. and every office is up for
grabs, from senator seats to sheriff, from school superintendents to judges,
and there are campaign signs everywhere. Without knowing anything about
anybody, I do have a hunch that some names will suffer a paucity of X’s owing
to their unfortunate names. Schlitzlinger, Gay, “Skippy” Jones, Cheatem, and
Dullard are finished before they start. Don Cherry will probably do OK, but
Steve Harper… I don’t know.
