278. Coushatta, Red River Parish (LA23)

What a stunningly gorgeous building in such a tiny, dusty town! In fact, that was the weirdest thing about Coushatta… It seemed like a lot of the dusty towns in West Texas, a far cry from the moisture that makes up half of Louisiana. It also had a little more ground than I might have expected, but definitely no monuments. The parish population is tiny, the per capita income also fairly low. I’m guessing they have more important things to do with their tax revenue than to commemorate some of the darker facets of its past. But they do have caches and that’s the important bit.

When the cache was placed, this was an VFW Hall. As you can see, it is that no longer. A bit sad, but economics have been the determiner of many civic groups, especially in smaller, remote locations. That said, it’s not exactly the deepest heart of the Congo or anything. It is only an hour from Shreveport. Also when the cache was placed it was a different form. It was once a green matchstick container hidden somewhere I don’t know exactly but I couldn’t quite intuit where it would have been. But that’s not really important because over the years it changed. It took me a good fifteen or twenty minutes to find even with an extra set of eyes (the other set was napping in the car) but find it I did. I applied tweezers to get the thing done and then replaced it to get rolling back down the road. I had to get these little caching partners back home. Once they were home and goodbyes were said, I was off like a shot. I had the entire next day to get some things done and I wasn’t going to give up this chance. I made my way to I-10, racing the setting sun. I wanted to meet the sunrise in my starting location, but I was just able to beat the sunset to find one more cache in…