When There’s Nowhere to Go
A Destinationless Roadtrip Across Southeast Louisiana
April 17 seemed as good a day as any to get in the car and drive. Anyway, it was the day Fiona Apple’s new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters was to drop, and having been—like most of the world—under house arrest for the past three weeks, waxing and waning between Netflix binges and guilty strains to make something with my time (anything: bread, a poem, a phone call), I hadn’t gotten into my car or listened to any new music in far too long.
It would be a day or so before the reviews raving about Apple’s cataclysmic new work of art started plastering themselves across my timelines, claiming it as a sort of anthem of these strange times, with its gutting emphasis on confinement and the fact that most of the album was largely created in her home, featuring jingles and jangles of household objects as syncopation, and the occasional dog barking.
But on that Friday, upon the clean slate of my empty anticipation, Apple chanted—against a wild and disruptive percussion—again and again through the space of my sedan: “On I go, not toward or away. Up until now it was day, next day. Up until now in a rush to prove. But now, I only move to move.”
Yes, I thought. Now, I only move to move.
In the paralysis of our current state of being, there is, quite simply, nowhere to go. Travel has been restricted on scales large and small. All events that typically define this spring season—our festivals, our weddings, even our funerals—have been restricted. Restaurants are closed. Our gyms have shuttered their doors. Many of us have found our careers halted or reduced. We are no longer able to gather with, or even to quietly visit, the people we love.
As we work to fill the space—the overwhelmingly ample time—perhaps we might take advantage of the chance to remember the joy of going, moving, just for the sake of it.
One place that we are still allowed to be is within the confines of our cars, and—by extension—on the road. And, well, gas is cheap these days. So with a thermos of coffee in my cupholder, my sunroof opened, a banana-bread-and-peanut-butter sandwich sitting snugly on my passenger seat, adorned in my favorite sunglasses and road-trip wear (headscarf and all)—I embarked on an adventure to nowhere.
Using Louisiana Travel’s Highways and Byways map as a rough guide, I carved out a loop that would take me through some of the most iconic landscapes of our state, starting from the Bayou Teche Byway in Breaux Bridge.
Cruising down Bridge Street, under the seventy-year-old bridge with the crawfish mural on top, I passed the historic brick buildings, the antique shops, the old movie theatre that now houses the Teche Center for the Arts, and Café Sydnie Mae. I once bought one of my favorite coats—a vintage felt trench that sweeps the floor when I walk—at a shop here, along with one of those old green suitcases that my dad says aren’t old enough to be “vintage”. The streets were empty, the cars were few. But a quick detour down a sidestreet found the people, sitting out on their porches, sipping their morning coffee.
For the first time in weeks, I wasn’t all-consumed by the inner walls of my own head. I was able to place my attention on something that didn’t demand it, to simply be alongside the landscapes passing by outside my window.
Turning onto Grand Point Highway, it’s all open space and sprawling sugarcane, a big rambling road that almost drives the car for you. Along for the ride, I tuned into the details of this space, reading off the names of the tiny farm roads I passed along the way—family names like Aguillard Road and Bordelon Road, Guidry Road and Martha Hebert Road. There’s even a Jolie Blonde Road. In front of me, a woman rolled down her window to wave at a passing pickup truck.
Eventually, I could see I-10 again, and a glimpse of the funky bric-a-brac that is Louisiana Marketshops at the 115. The shop is of course closed, but is happily selling its wares—from handmade Voodoo dolls to bird feeders to books on Louisiana lore—on its Facebook page.
[Read more about Louisiana Marketshops at the 115 in this article from our December 2019 issue.]
A short wander through the town of Henderson led me to Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf, where I turned onto the Henderson Levee Road, straddled on one side by Bayou LaRose and on the other by Bayou Perry—though it’s impossible to see Perry behind the levee rising gently up on the left. And it was just me. Just me and a blue sky and grass as green as green can be. Wildflowers splattered across the leveeside and in the ditches, clustering around the bottoms of electric poles. On my right, a barrier of forest offered only peeks of the bayou water beyond. For a stretch, the road shifted to accommodate only one lane. The clear, bright manifesto of water, trees, grass, and road ran unbroken for miles except for the occasional sign advertising swamp tours or an accumulation of beehive boxes in the shade.
Capturing these tiny roadway gifts, I mulled on the mindset of moving to move, going to go, and the way it offers a perspective often lost in my regular day-to-day processes. By focusing on the journey rather than the destination, I was seeing—really seeing—the moment, distilled, in all its illustrious detail. For the first time in weeks, I wasn’t all-consumed by the inner walls of my own head. I was able to place my attention on something that didn’t demand it, to simply be alongside the landscapes passing by outside my window.
So, later, when I was driving straight through the center of miles and miles of farmland spilling from the Catahoula Highway, I allowed myself to slow down, to look closer. It’s not a rare thing to see a line of trees marking a barrier to a field, but in this one, they seemed to dance. Really—the way these oaks bent and reached around the adjacent pines was so intricate it felt intentional. I pulled over to discover a road passing under them, and a sign offering their story.
Oak and Pine Alley, as it is called, was planted by the sugar planter Charles Durand before the Civil War. Legend has it, a family wedding party once paraded beneath, totally canopied in spider webs and dusted in gold. I got back in my car and drove, slowly, down to the end, taking in the eerily gorgeous knots and whorls of dozens and dozens of century-old trees. At the very end, a sign proclaimed “Private Property”—an accumulation of modest abodes with a driveway fit for royalty. In one yard, I spotted a tent, through which the tops of two little heads were just barely discernible. It looked almost like one was wearing a tiara.
Finally, I landed in St. Martinville, which marked the beginning of my next leg down to Morgan City. I followed the Teche down the tree lined roads to New Iberia, where I recalled the Dave Robichaux-themed tour I took last year for the Books Along the Teche Festival, passing the historic 1891 First United Methodist Church, which I remember featured some of the most fascinating stained glass I’d ever seen; Victor’s Café, right beside the Books Along the Teche bookstore; the Teche Motel, and—of course, The Shadows.
Onwards to Jeanerette, then through Baldwin, then to Franklin. Taking my time down Highway 182, a blue Chevy truck older than me passed me by with the windows down, and I noted the impressive collection of Mardi Gras beads hanging from his rearview. In Centerville, a sign advertising the annual Cast Iron Cookoff bore an orange banner strapped across it, shouting: New Date–October 31, 2020. In between the long driveways marked by wagon wheels at the road, the forgotten-looking shacks, and the newly-built houses along the way, there sat the overseers—the historic icons from which many of these places center their identities: whitewashed, steepled Acadian-style churches and moss-laden antebellum homes—inviting me to visit again and hear their stories, some other time.
The end of the Bayou Teche Byway settles in Morgan City, right atop the Atchafalaya River, and—turns out—you can stand on it. Right in the center of downtown, you can actually climb onto a twenty-two-foot flood barrier known by locals as “The Great Wall.” Emblazoned with the city’s name, the structure offers a bird’s-eye view of the river and all its traffic. Though a little less than cozy, the spot—devoid of civilians (I wasn’t totally confident I was actually allowed up there, honestly)—offered an ideal leg-stretching, sandwich-eating view. Boats still float in a pandemic, it seems.
Out of Morgan City, I hopped onto Highway 70, another levee road. This part of Louisiana, settled in between the Basin and the Gulf, is seeped in water. Relics of the amphibious lifestyles lived here are everywhere. I passed a tiny, broken-down shack dwarfed by the shrimp boat living in the bayou right behind it. A mailbox on the side of the road proclaimed “Captain” in bright red. At certain points, water flowed on both sides of the road—the Little Tensas Bayou and Avoca Island Cutoff. In Belle River, I had to stop for fifteen minutes while a pontoon bridge was raised, then lowered. While I waited, I observed three old men, each with his own boat, chatting in the parking lot of The Spunky Monkey Daiquiris, which also happens to be a boat launch. In the background, seagulls squawked absently.
The outer villages of the Capital City—White Castle, Allemania, Plaquemine, Morrisonville, Addis, Brusly—they all offered a short repose before thrusting me onto the Horace Wilkinson Bridge, which even in its familiarity struck me—that day—as sublime, scented by the coffee beans roasting down the road and undertrod by barges passing on Ol’ Man River.
On recommendation, I turned off of the highway onto Shell Beach Road, a tight windy path through the underwater forests, the bayous sometimes getting shockingly close to my tires, all dripping with moss and that dark, lush greenery of Louisiana backwaters. Turning onto Lakeview Street, I found myself practically in Lake Verret. The people who live there—in their stilted and over-the-water houses —were out and about, working in their yards, sitting on the back porch, fishing, all with the lake so high and so close you almost can’t help but to touch it. It’s a neighborhood so precarious and exclusive and private, I felt almost as though I was trespassing—gawking at the old cypress trees that anchored it all.
Back on Highway 70, and moving onto River Road, the landscape shifted into that ironic southern duality of farms and industry: calves chewing fresh grass against a backdrop of a chemical plant. The outer villages of the Capital City—White Castle, Allemania, Plaquemine, Morrisonville, Addis, Brusly—they all offered a short repose before thrusting me onto the Horace Wilkinson Bridge, which even in its familiarity struck me—that day—as sublime, scented by the coffee beans roasting down the road and undertrod by barges passing on Ol’ Man River.
From here, I pointed myself to the Felicianas. When you look at a topographical map of Louisiana, this is one of the only terrains with a hill, maybe even two. After a day of flatland jaunting, the rolls and roils of the road to St. Francisville offered a much needed dose of adrenaline and dreaminess. A few miles past the center of town, I turned left onto the Tunica Trace and rolled down the windows. The sun had started its descent by now, though hidden behind a skim of white clouds, giving the towering forests and bundles of flora a dark, European fairytale-esque sheen.
Miles in, I found the entrance to the Old Tunica Road. Not a one-lane road, even though it almost should be—it’s all gravel. The bridge over the Tunica Bayou was basically floating, and I held my breath as I crossed over. Around the bend, a basketball goal stood in grass waist-high beside a pile that looked something like a squashed barn. Continuing on, the borders of the road started to rise until I was flanked by two rising walls of sod and trees and vines and all the creatures that live between. The trees above reached toward each other in odd, wavering embraces that regardless formed an emerald canopy. As the elevation increased, though, so did the volume of my kinda-sketchy-lately car. After climbing a particularly rumbly hill, I called it and turned back.
At this point, I was tired. But I was at the final stretch. Motivated by the promise of a pepperjack boudin ball in Krotz Springs, I make my way back through St. Francisville, then crossed over into New Roads, then to Melville, landing on homeground—the Zydeco Cajun Prairie Byway. On Louisiana Travel’s map, this route meanders, loops, and trails off in various routes across Central Louisiana (it would take another whole day to do the entire thing). It passes through many of the more remote Cajun and Creole settlements in the state—Port Barre, Chataignier, Eunice, Mamou, Ville Platte—then moves up into the piney woods regions of Bayou Chicot, Pine Prairie, and Turkey Creek, an area I would pass through the very next day to go fishing with my brother and my fiancé. From here, though, I could take 190 down through Leonville and Arnaudville and land back where I started in Breaux Bridge. But instead, I kept going west on 190.
[Read this story from our June 2013 issue: Krotz Springs is the missing link on the boudin trail.]
From this point, I could make it to my parents’ house in Vidrine, Louisiana with my eyes closed. And even though I told myself—considering all my new philosophical musings—that I should actually watch it with new eyes … truth be told it had been a long day. Instead, I indulged in the greasy glory of fried Cajun meats and I let the road take me home, pulsing along with Fiona’s rolling, angsty melodies. “Fetch the bolt cutters, I’ve been in here too long.”
Louisiana Travel’s Byways Map offers nineteen byway routes from all corners of the state. During non-quarantine times, staycationers can use the resource as a guide to attractions and restaurant recommendations. For now, though, it stands as a great starting point for anyone wanting a day exploring our remarkably diverse and beautiful state. If you’ve got a favorite highway, backroad, or secret site, we’d love to hear about it! Shoot us an email at jordan@countryroadsmag.com.