The Scenic River Road


Monday, June 3, 2019

Our goal today was to take the Scenic River Road from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

 Sue managed to get us through/around Baton Rouge and to the banks of the Mississippi River without a whole lot of difficulty.  The ‘Scenic River Road’ was not what we were expecting.  From Baton Rouge to New Orleans the river is contained within a 100-foot levy.  So yes, we were traveling alongside the river, but not once did we even catch a glimpse of it.  What we did see caught us totally by surprise.  We expected to see fertile agricultural land as we knew that this area had once been sugar cane plantations.  Instead what dominated the landscape for at least 120 kilometres was oil refinery after oil refinery, the petrol chemical industry at its finest.  Shell, Marathon, Dupont, BASF to name a few.  These plants stretched away from the river as far as we could see.  Thousands and thousands of acres covered in these massive processing plants with their elevator/piping systems spanning up and over the levy to the river.  Throw in some coal yards, potash processing facilities and some grain terminals and it is industry gone wild.  We were aware that this area had oil processing plants but had no idea of the scale of it.  The products come and go by way of the river as well as rail.  The scary part is that all these plants are at a lower elevation than the Mississippi River

The sugar plantations of yesteryear are of course gone.  Some of the old plantation mansions still exist but are surrounded by the petrol chemical plants.  Sugar cane is still grown here in amongst the industrial complex.

We are in another KOA Kampground just in the edge of New Orleans.  We have just found that our computer will not allow us to hook up to their Wi-Fi as Norton senses a danger with it. The posting of the blog will have to wait until tomorrow sometime.  Tomorrow we visit the ‘Big Easy’.

Distance Traveled = 184 km.  Wildlife Sightings = Mississippi Kite, Red Headed Woodpecker, Great Egret, Cattle Egret, Black Vulture, Oyster Catcher, Anhinga.


Constant view from the 'Scenic' River Road

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