2009 Roadtrip: Update #4.5

Lunchtime! Being always prepared, Jen had pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids with bags of chips and the choice of either an apple or an orange. Jen and I are talking about how we need to write a book on how to travel with kids. We do it all the time and it's normally a very pain-free event-- all due, of course, to her brilliant planning and foresight. In any event, Jack chose the orange:



I need to say that this is our first extended roadtrip in the 15 passenger van. We took the back four seats out (which gave us enough seats for everyone plus an empty) and used that space to pack all our stuff. There's so much room that we didn't even have to stack our stuff- and you can still see unobstructed out the rear window. There's tons of room for the kids to sit and not feel crowded by the ones next to them. All the kids had plenty of room in the new van to eat comfortably:



Here's a shot of Jen talking to her mom on the phone. Her mom didn't believe that we were actually taking pictures and blogging about the trip while we were still on it.



After going through Lafayette, we finally made it to the weirdest thing we'll encounter in Louisiana-- the huge bridge that goes on forever! Apparently this is around Atchafalaya. You have to love the Louisiana names. This bridge is something ridiculous, like 20 miles along, and travels straight through the middle of the swamps. Here's a shot of the bridge from the car POV:



Traffic was surprisingly heavy. If you look off the bridge, all you see is swamp on either side for as far as the eye can see.



They even have a welcome center in the middle of the swamp! I can't for the life of me figure out why they need to welcome you to the swamp.



You know what's absolutely beautiful about Louisiana? Nothing. Here's a shot of what looks like a barge on fire. It wasn't, there's some kind of smoke-producing machine in there somewhere which I think serves the purpose of producing poisonous nerve toxins, but I can't swear by that:



Finally, right outside of Baton Rouge, we stopped for gas and a bathroom break. We stopped at Love's truck stop, which was huge, had approximately 20+ gas pumps and it was very busy:



The one thing that's the most uncomfortable about long road trips is the diaper changes. There is no modesty when you have to get your diaper changed on the seat of a van:



Here I am cleaning the windshield while we were stopped. I did an especially poor job. I'm blaming the hernia, but I don't think Jen is buying it.



We all used the bathrooms and they were very big- 4 stalls and 4 urinals in the mens, and 6 stalls in the womens. But it was busy and there was a line in both. The bathrooms were nice, but not very clean. They weren't "Eeeew. I'm touching nothing"-dirty, but they weren't clean either. The verdict? Jen gives them a "so-so":



Finally we got back on the road. Just before we got to Baton Rouge, we saw the big bridge which crosses... THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER!



Here's another shot of the river. It's pretty big and impressive to see at this end of it:



More updates will be provided as they become necessary!