The Mississippi River Trail extends the length of the mighty river. We of course biked only a small part of it atop the levee along Hwy 18, the River Road. We hoped to see a bit more of the river than yesterday, and we did, although a good bit of the shoreline is lined with trees that effectively block the view.
Our first challenge was finding a place to park near the beginning of the trail. There are evidently no official parking areas. We decided to park in the parking lot of a small cemetery and bike back to the trail. For the first part of the ride, we had rail lines inland and shipyards on the river. We saw lots of barges, many being pushed along by tugboats.
We bounced a bit over grains of dried corn that had fallen from the loader as we passed under this ADM loading facility.
We saw lots of rail lines and shipping facilities.
We saw several huge ships waiting to load or unload cargo. One of them was signed Singapore.
We saw egrets unconcernedly hunting for breakfast in the long grass at the foot of the levee. Our round trip of 18 miles was limited by the amount of water we brought along, since there was no place to get water. We did find a small park built by ADM for St. Charles Parish, where we climbed down the grassy face of the levee to use the port-a-potties.
We saw some armadillos in the park today and did our laundry (free machines!).
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