Day 11, Winnie, TX to Denham Springs, LA

We had our continental breakfast, got some ice, loaded the bikes and we were ready again to hit the road. I was glad I only took out of my bike what I needed, it made getting ready so much faster/easier for me.

We'd turned the mood around from glum, to "Hey we're not done yet, we can still have some fun!"

Winnie, TX

I might a crayon short of a box, but here's my BOX! LOL

We headed out. At our first gas stop, I was so surprised when I went inside and saw a full liquor cabinet. I asked the lady there, "You sell hard liquor here?", she replied (in a southern drawl), "We sure do, this here's Louisiana, and we know how to party and ain't nobody gonna tell us we can't!" Ha ha.

Somewhere, maybe 60 miles west of Baton Rouge, there was an overhead sign saying something about 10 East being closed. We didn't see anything, and I didn't read the whole sign. Fast forward an hour or so later, and we came to a detour. 10 E was completely closed. We had to get off the highway and detour. And now it was bumper to bumper traffic and it was starting to look like rain. As it started to rain, I made the executive decision to turn off at the next exit, time for lunch. Good idea, we got into a Chili's and it started to rain heavy. We were there a long time and it poured, but we were inside dry, so we didn't care.

I tried to find out if 10 E was open yet, but couldn't be sure from the info I got calling the highway patrol info number. Tricia asked a couple of guys going into Chili's, they thought it was still closed. The traffic wasn't bumper to bumper on the detour, so maybe it had started to flow. We figured we'd better go that way so we started out on the detour path, and it wasn't long before we met up with the high volume of traffic from earlier. For the next 3 hours we were in traffic hell. We might get to go along at speed for short bursts, but then as soon as there was a traffic light, miles of traffic were affected. When we were finally able to get back on 10 E, we were exhausted from all the stop and go riding.

We did some more hanging out in gas station walk-in beer coolers.

Tricia enjoying the cool air, and making a call. She is a cooler caller. Ha ha.

We had heard the shutdown was caused by a chemical spill, yikes. We were just east of Baton Rouge, but ready to stop for the night. We had some trouble finding a room, we finally found one at Candlewood Suites in Denham Springs, LA. We'd ridden about 300 miles, but because of the detour, total miles (that counted towards home) for the day were only about 225. Our room was a suite, with a full sized refrigerator, office area, stove, kitchen sink, everything you'd need for an extended stay, even though ours was only overnight. Very nice. I claimed the desk! The girls were tired, so after we all showered, Janet fell asleep, followed quickly by Tricia. I commandeered Janet's laptop and did a blog entry. Here we were 2 days from home and I only had about 3 days of my blog done!

Did some blog work, then finally went to bed around 1 AM or so. We were hoping for a bit earlier start tomorrow since we'd lost so much time today. If only I didn't have to go to work on Tuesday!! But wait, work is how I pay to ride, so better hush complaining about the money maker, LOL.