Starting Simply: Pictures from Louisiana Roads

On our first day driving from western Louisiana to New Orleans, we passed through the capital city, Baton Rouge. In contrast to Texas, which has tiny towns all along minor highways, Louisiana has Shreveport in the northwest section of the state, the cities along I-10, and that's pretty much it. From Texas to Mississippi along the interstate you get Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, then New Orleans. There are some towns off the highway, but...

Baton Rouge has the major university, Louisiana State University (LSU), which has recently won national championships in college football and boasts having schooled Shaquille O'Neal as a student athlete. In this picture, Corrie caught Tiger Stadium from an elevated section of the highway that comes off the bridge over the Mighty Mississippi. A football game that ended with a touchdown in the last six seconds in a victory for the Tigers elicited a celebration that registered as an earthquake in LSU's geology department.



On the second day of driving west I got a picture of something that native Cajuns and other Louisianans might take for granted, the bridge that signals Lake Charles. As a driver heads west along I-10, this sight appears after a slight bend in the road, a few short miles from Tony's current city of Sulphur.



I guess sex sells, right? I was pretty surprised by this billboard the first time I saw it, so I took this picture the second time around. Used computer parts and crucified-looking bikini-clad blonds? Still not quite sure what to think...



As we were getting close to Sulphur after the day out at Avery Island fighting off gators and 'skeeters, industrial parks like the one I hiked by in Austin are all over, and I took this silhouette shot. There is something rather modern in the industrial aesthetic...a lesson I remembered from the art class Tony and I took together eight years ago at Cuesta.