Goodbye Texas, Hello Louisiana

Day 14, 4/17/22, Easter Sunday, 73 mi. 751 ft elev. AIS 5:36 hrs, 13.1 mph

Silsbee TX to DeRidder, LA Longest mileage and fastest speed yet! We got an early start, 7:30am, hoping to finish before the expected rain today. Btw…no rain. Cycling in the early morning on any Sunday is good, but Easter Sunday was splendid! We were on a divided highway with a s m o o t h shoulder for 30 miles. No traffic, no trucks. We made great time and it was quiet and pleasant.

Stopped in Kirbyville for a snack. Not much open on Easter Sunday but…the donut shop was beckoning us. They had all kinds of delicious breakfast sandwiches and variety of donuts, of course. Happy, happy😊. As we were leaving a nice black man came up to us and handed me $10 bill to get ourselves some donuts. I tried to give it back because we’d already indulged but he insisted we use it to fuel up somewhere. He says “y’all work so hard, you need it”. Such a random act of kindness. He’s a good man. And we did use it at the last stop of the day for Gatorade, ice cream and Coca-Cola. Those last 15 miles were the hard ones of course.

Our last Texas town was called Bon Weir. Sounds French , Louisiana style name. Appropriate since it’s literally at the Louisiana-Texas state line. The border is the Sabine River. The most noticeable difference when we entered Louisiana was we were quickly back into farming country. We haven’t seen much farming on our entire Texas route. Much more cattle ranches. It looked like they were growing wheat outside of DeRidder but we are expecting to see plenty of rice anytime soon. The second difference was the litter on the highway. Texas has some pretty stiff fines for littering. We noticed it ranged from $2000 to $500 fines. I have no idea what the laws in Louisiana are but instantly there was more litter. I’m guessing Texas must pick it up more frequently.

Texas 1086 miles and 21 total days which includes 2 rest days and 51.7 miles per day average. (This stat combines our ride from Part 1 and Part 2). Texas is such a huge part of the Southern Tier route, it deserves a lot of attention. In our adventure of riding starting in 2020 we entered in El Paso (Big Bend country). Because our trip was aborted we drove back to Montana through the Panhandle Plains (Lubbock and Amarillo). Upon our return in 2022 we drove yet again through the Panhandle to begin in Hill Country where we spent our first week of Part 2. From Austin we hit a small part of the Prairies and Lakes and Pineywoods before dropping into Gulf Coast Territory. We saw miles and miles of Texas for sure. We’re from Montana so we know what a big state is like where the geography changes so much from east to west and north to south, but then there’s Texas! You have to see it to believe it! Better yet, see it from a bicycle at 10 mph for 21 days. You don’t miss much. I’m going to finish this section by saying…I Like Texas😊