LOUISIANA’S RURAL HIGHWAYS THE PATH TO THE REAL ADVENTURE
I visited Louisiana with my family three times in 2015 and 2018, visiting a friend from our home state of California, and we spent roughly 15 days there in total. We spent all three trips exploring Southern Louisiana by car, usually with our friend as a guide, but occasionally by ourselves.
During each visit, I spent less than one day in New Orleans; it was just a stopover. The real destination lay across Lake Pontchartrain and the Atchafalaya Basin, on the rural highways of the state.
It was through these motor trips that I fell in love with Louisiana.
The open road
Some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen through a car window was on the I-10 freeway in Louisiana. The drive from Lafayette to Baton Rouge is 18 miles across the Atchafalaya Basin, a marshland created by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. To traverse the swampy terrain, you take the Atchafalaya Swamp Freeway—an elevated bridge suspended high above the swamp on giant concrete pillars. This floating road provides magnificent views of America’s largest wetlands. Then, after crossing the Mississippi River on a two-lane bridge
