If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

We seriously considered changing our itinerary to have a second day in New Orleans, Louisiana but with 600 miles to travel in the next three days, that wasn't going to happen.

Our itinerary had us travelling to Lake Arthur, Texas (sic) today, a trip of 188 miles. The itinerary was set a loooooong time ago, and Chris couldn't remember all the detailed thinking behind it. We couldn't find a Lake Arthur in Texas, but Port Arthur, Texas was just across the border from Louisiana, so thinking Chris had made a typing error we set our course in that direction. The GPS told us it was 270 miles, which didn't add up...

We set off from New Orleans as soon as we had the bike packed and farewelled the lovely Place d'Armes hotel.

Our journey was delayed 15 minutes while the Police supervised the road so a huge trailer with an oversize load could negotiate a corner.

A few minutes later we made a stop to fill up with petrol that delayed us more. The police and trailer now passed us.
A masterpiece of Art Deco in the middle of ordinary city buildings.

About 40 miles down the road we stopped for drinks in Houma and discovered we still had the hotel keys in our pockets (doh!). We phoned the Place d'Armes to confess, and check if it would be OK just to mail the keys back. That meant finding the post office, buying a suitable envelope and posting the keys - adding further delays to our progress.
We asked locals for directions.

The Houma post office had an interesting sculpture that floated in the breeze.

Some of the fly overs made you feel as if you had wings.

Riding on for what seemed like ages in the heat, we stopped for drinks in a nowhere little town and for ice creams in Layfayette at Bordens Ice Cream parlour. The place was continually very busy which speeks for the quality of the ice-cream. There were also small table settings for children with paper and crayons.

It was already 3:30 pm when we left there  and we still had 135 miles to ride. Chris was still troubled by the distance discrepancy but determined to get to Texas.

We took to the Interstate I 10 to maximize speed and rode off into the setting sun  Port Arthur was miles off the Interstate, so we changed our destination to Beaumont.  DO NOT PUSH???

Miles of freeway over swamps or wetlands.

We had another stop for drinks 40 miles out  It was hot and our butts were really feeling the miles.

Franklin.

 About 30 miles from Beaumont the reserve fuel warning came on. Normally we would have enough fuel for 50 miles, but travelling at 70 mph Chris knew the fuel wan't going to last that long. He couldn't read the LCD display in the bright light (one of the least likeable design features of the bike), so it was fingers crossed.

When we reached Beaumont and found a petrol station the computer estimate was that we had 8 miles to empty. This dog lover has three pets in his truck.

The first motel we stopped at didn't have the Internet, so we rode on to a second motel, the Rodeway Inn, where we got lucky.

By that stage we had ridden 272 miles and were exhausted. It was 7:15 pm by the time we unpacked, so rather than find a supermarket and make our own dinner, we ate at a cafeteria across the road from the motel.and settled down to blog our day in New Orleans.