The Great American Road Trip: Day 118

To Auburn at EveryTrail
EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking near New Orleans, Louisiana
Distance - 387 miles
Time -6 hours

Back on the road! Daisy and I got ourselves put together and packed into the car (with some Cafe Du Monde cafe au lait and beignets for breakfast, of course) by 10am. We went a little bit out of our way to take the causeway across Lake Pontchartrain - it's the longest straight road bridge in the world, and formerly held that title without a qualification until a road bridge built in Thailand in 2000, which is mostly over land instead of over water. It's pretty impressive, there's a good stretch of it where you can't see any land at all, just driving and wondering how in the world they managed to sink that many support structures into the lake bed (with a lot of patience, I expect!). The drive was pretty quick and uneventful, lots to chatting and podcats and pretty wooded roads.

Then we arrived to stay with Caitlin Parsley! I haven't seeing this amazing woman in almost two years and I'm so sad that our lives are so busy! We met at college through crew our freshman year and were co-captains our senior year. We were often to be found in the science buildings, and worked together our senior year in the same lab (meaning that combined with crew we saw each other every day for several hours at least - it's a good thing we got along!). She's been at vet school for the past three years, and just took her board exams. She's doing clinical rotations and is applying to internships for after her final semester, which means that she's been very busy rushing around the country visiting schools in between shifts at the school clinics!

Caitlin introduced us to her mom and her two adorable cats Kagen and Milo, then the four of of us went out to dinner at Tacorita, known for their fruit-based margaritas (the grapefruit was very tasty) and creative tacos (try the seared tuna steak with tempura battered avocado slices). Caitlin had to study, so the rest of us started watching House of Cards. I wasn't paying much attention because I was working on blog pre-writes, but soon I got sucked in - it's very addictive!

Plane trails

Driving across the causeway (photo by Daisy)

Going over one of the two rises in an otherwise flat bridge (photo of Daisy)

It was very different from driving across the bridges from Key to Key in Florida - we were much farther from land, but somehow felt less remote being in the middle of a lake than being on the only entrance and egress from an island (photo by Daisy)