Indoor Culture, Outdoor Adventure

We said goodbye to Texas and returned to Louisiana to see some of the places we had missed. In Shreveport we visited the Louisiana State Exhibit museum, which has a huge fresco at the entrance,
a big relief floormap of the entire state, 22 meticulously-crafted dioramas depicting various aspects of LA culture, such as agriculture, mining and oil drilling,

and paintings of local scenes.
Well worth a visit.
The R.W. Norton Art Gallery is located in a beautiful neighborhood and surrounded by gardens blooming with azaleas. The museum itself is fabulous and included some of my favorites--Remington, Russell and Hudson River artists--as well as an eclectic sample from a variety of artists.

Downtown, along the muddy Red River, is a row of huge steel roses and tulips and a park with mosaic picnic tables, a fountain and a small garden.
After partaking of the culture in town, we headed to the woods. We missed the final turn into the Kisatchie National Forest and turned around in a dirt road. This entailed backing the trailer into a side dirt road with a big dip. The casters did their job but sank in a little. The campground in the forest was nice enough, but our campsite was beside a rowdy group that stayed up until 3 a.m. playing country music and yelling obscenities.
We were only here a day, otherwise we would have moved to another campsite the next day. It was a beautiful day--warm, sunny, low humidity, little wind.

Our plan was to bike the Sugar Cane National Recreation Trail. The trail map we got from the camp hosts was hard to decipher and had no information about length or difficulty. The camp host said we could pick up the bike trail at the boat ramp. So we biked to the boat ramp, saw some trails and picked one. We knew we needed to cross the lake and eventually found a trail across the dam. The trail was supposed to split immediately into two, one for biking, one for hiking.
We didn’t see the split and didn’t see a sign, so just kept biking. David went on ahead. We encountered several unidentified forks in the trail and no other people. He ended up on the bike trail. I ended up staying closer to the lake, which was flatter. The entire time we never saw a sign or map, but there were red and white triangle marks on trees. The hiking trail I was on was rough with roots and rocks. I had to go slow and get off several times to navigate obstacles. The trail David was on was narrow, unmaintained, steep and difficult. It was impossible to tell what lay ahead of us, but according to the “map”, we should eventually come to a road.

After what I thought might be half-way, I called David on the walkie-talkie and told him I was going to continue all the way and not turn around. “But you don’t know what’s in front of you,” he said. “Yes, but I know what’s behind me, and I’d rather go ahead. I’ll take my chances.” Since my section of the trail was shorter, I ended up ahead of him. He caught up when the two trails merged. The final stretch of the trail was relatively easy.

Better yet, after an hour and a half (about six miles for me), we found ourselves back at the campsite. Although parts of the trail were rough, it was fun. “I’m going to go around again," said David, “but I’m going to stay on the hiking trail this time.” It took him less than an hour the second time since he knew the way and didn’t have to stop. When he got back, he was hot and very tired.

He said he had had a headache for several days and now had a stomachache. Neptune had a pretty bad asthma attack this night.