Southern Hospitality vs Nasty-ality

April 16, Thursday Baton Rouge to Marganza 40 miles

Dave brought our bikes to the hotel about 7:30A and drove us out of town a ways to start out ride our of the traffic. He helped us load up our bikes and gave us hearty sendoff and wishes for a safe ride. He really did a great job with our bikes and was very helpful. We recommend him and his bike service to anyone heading his way.
We rode through St. Francisville where we had our R&R at the end of the ride last year. We wanted to visited with the sisters at the Eight Sisters resturant. Rode by and the place was empty. They had been counseled by some of the local business people to pace themselves and not get burned out. We of course were not able to find out what happened except that St. Francisville is a charming but sleepig little southern town and perhaps the eight sisters couldn't afford to stay in business. I was really disappointed. I felt like I had lost a good friend.
We took pictures of houses that had been nearly under water during our ride last ride when the Mississippi River was flooded and the ferry was out. We were able to take that ferry this time and then we rode along the levee on some very flat roads. Wow! What a contrast to last year's ride which was full of hills, hills, and more hills causing us to use words not common in our vocabulary like "dork" and "stupid" and lots of "glass half empty" type of comments. Even though we are fully loaded each carrying about fifty pounds the ride just flows along....so far.
We rode into Marganza, a small southern town consisting of an RV park, a country store and very friendly people.
The RV owner told us to set up our tent in a flield on the other side of a short hedge so we did. About a half hour later a man and woman in a pickup truck drove across the field and pulled up along side our tent. "Is this your tent?" they asked. "Did that blond woman tell you you could camp here?" "Well, it's our property and we've told her before so you'll have to move your tent!" Yikes! That's like the last thing we wanted to do after our first day of riding, being hot and sweating and pretty much done for the day. But with smiles we readily complied. The owner of the RV park, the blond woman, said very sweetly with her southern accent, "I maintain that field, mow it and pay taxes on it and we had an agreement. I'm very sorry." Interesting the difference in the hospitalitiy welcoming us to Marganza.
Not being able to find fuel for our MSR stove yet we ate a delicious dinner we had bought from the little story of cottage cheese, peaches, tuna fish and soda crackers. Breakfast would be breakfast cereal bars and bananas to hold us until we could find something long the way.

One thing that I am really enjoying is the birds that sing all day long and the smell of honey suckle. AHHHHHHHHHHHH Louisiana!

(We stayed at Maxey-Care RV Park. Nice shower and laundry facilities. My time is out at the libray computer....will be back as soon as I can).