566. New Roads, Pointe Coupee Parish (LA45)

I spent the night in nearby Lafayette so I could begin the day with chicken cracklins (which as far as I’m concerned are the greatest food in the entire state of Louisiana [yeah, I said it]), and then made my way here. The courthouse did not disappoint. Strikingly handsome in brick, no? I also like a nice clock tower. Of course, I was surprised to learn that the parish was also the birthplace of this badly photographed leatherneck…

…John Archer Lejeune. Luckily…

…I have a better photo of him in statue form (and by “better” I mean “has a head”) from back in Baton Rouge. Being former Army, I mock the Marine Corps (and, frankly, all the other forces) a little bit, but anyone who can earn an Army Distinguished Service Medal is alright in my book. Add into that the entire Commandant of the Marine Corps thing and innovating combined arms in WW1, he is one of the few marines I recognize the name of. So there’s that.

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The cache was gathered on the way into town at the Pointe Coupee Museum. It’s a little run down, but I would have gone inside for a few minutes had it been open. The “river” it’s on the bank of is actually a false river, a former channel of the Mississippi that got blocked up by sediment. I was a little amazed that there wasn’t an earth cache there because that seems pretty interesting from a geological perspective. Perhaps it’s because it involves a river and I don’t think hydrology is an acceptable subject. Either way, I’ve never made an earth cache before so it’s in the back of my head. But that was idle thinking at the moment. Once the cache and the courthouse were both visited, my work here was done. I was happy to be back out on the road in a general sense, but even happier to be back in Louisiana specifically. I had started and completed two other states since the time since I started, and it was long past time to finish here. I never really did as much at a time as I would have liked here so I feel it took a lot more trips than it should have, but that was alright. What mattered was that I was here and doing what needed to be done. I continued on up the road and stopped in my next destination…