[ride reports] [photo album this trip] [PDF text only] [maps & routes this trip]

Louisiana Tour

Bienvenue à Bayou
November 25 - 30, 2004

Trip Highlights

The plan

This was the fourth time I had planned to tour Arkansas and the fourth time I cancelled the trip due to inclement weather. The cold temperatures and snow in the north were going to keep Missouri and Arkansas cold for the next week. As I stared at the computer monitor and the state of Arkansas in the MS Streets & Trips application, I started scrolling below the state Arkansas, wondering what kind of roads did Louisiana have? They weren’t as twisty as Arkansas roads, but all the little lines that designated roads in my mapping software were winding ever so slightly back and forth suggesting possible curves. The roads in Illinois defiantly didn’t do that, in the mapping software or in real life.

After a few hours of searching for twisty and scenic road information and finding some good motorcycle roads I was intrigued and decided to plan a four-day tour of Louisiana. I have been to New Orleans many times in the past. The words New Orleans in my head equaled great Cajun and Creole food and warmer weather in the winter months. But how was the rest of Louisiana?

Wednesday, November 24
Packing mode

As I headed home from work, the rain that had been falling all day now started turning to snow. How wonderful, we were apparently in the middle of a blizzard and the first major snow fall of the year. Once I got home I clicked on the TV and left it on the weather channel as I started packing. I was listening to the TV, trying to figure out how bad it was it going to be getting out of Chicagoland tomorrow morning. Mainly focusing on the weather forecast in the Midwest, I was tuning out the forecast for the rest of the country until I head the announcer say “Twisters Tear Through Louisiana, Killing One”. That got my attention, I ran over to the TV to see what’s up down south.

Apparently, the tornado struck 165 miles west of Jackson, Mississippi the night before. Four state highways were blocked by fallen trees. This morning another tornado ended up killing one person in Olla and destroying dozens of homes and businesses as far south as the New Orleans suburbs. About 2,500 homes lost power. Geez! That didn’t sound very inviting. Should we be towing our bikes in blizzard conditions just to arrive in a place where so much destruction just took place? This year has been very unlucky for us in the weather department, but it was too late now to change plans again. Louisiana, here we come!

Thursday, November 25 - Thanksgiving Day
Heading South

We were supposed to load up the bikes the night before, but it was snowing so hard we decided to wait until the morning. It wasn’t snowing this morning, but it was very cold. The weather channel said that parts of the Midwest received up to 7” of snow last night, the worst area effected was central Illinois. Finally by 9:45AM we were leaving this winter wonderland. The roads were not cleared and were slippery. It took forever just to get to the highway. All along I-55 there were abandoned cars form last night’s storm laying in the ditches and there were many cars that apparently slid in to the ditch today. Some parts of the road were very slippery with snow packed in the lanes making lane changes difficult.

There were power outages in central Illinois and a few gas stations were out of gas probably due to the tanker truck not being able to deliver gas, delayed by the blizzard. A lot of traffic on the interstate, Thanksgiving being the most traveled day of the year. Finally somewhere in the middle of Missouri, the snow disappeared completely. We brought food with us so we didn’t need to stop for lunch. At around 6PM we stopped for dinner at an Arby’s. We were not getting there as fast as we hoped. After 14 hours of driving, we called it a night around midnight in Canton, MS. and checked in to a Holiday Inn Express. We were going to leave the truck and trailer here and leave on the bikes tomorrow morning.

NEXT