8 July 2021
After fine dining in my hotel room with KFC, I needed to get some kinks out of my body so I did some yoga stretches. I find it helps, particularly on long trips (yesterdays turned out to be over 7 hours). I’ve learned over the years to never trust hotel room floors. One hotel several years ago, I walked barefoot a good bit and when I looked at the soles of my feet, they were black.
To do the yoga stretches, I put down a towel on the floor. That’s when I noticed something about the towel. It didn’t seem fresh.
I was curious when I first walked into the room yesterday afternoon why the room temperature was set at 66°F. I normally keep the thermostat at home on 78°F. What I think is this room hasn’t been used in so long they cut off the a/c and only turned it on when I checked in digitally yesterday. There must have been a build up in humidity and that’s why the towels (and sheets) were clammy feeling. The thermostat setting was probably to try to compensate for the humidity in the room and they didn’t want to change out the linen.
Some time during the night I thought I was going to have a repeat meal of the KFC. I got this strange feeling in the upper reaches of my stomach. Of course, my mind goes to worse case scenarios and I think food poisoning. Luckily, it went away. I even got a better than average first-night-on-the-road sleep.
However, when I started to wake, my mind went back to the KFC meal. Now that I think of it, all the local restaurants in Quincy had closed down and the only things open were McDonald’s, KFC, Hardees, and other fast food establishments. I definitely chalk that up to the pandemic and wonder what the long term effects of that will be on (1) the economy of small towns and (2) the obesity rates in small towns. I think the long term consequences of the pandemic will take years to work its way through the country and the world. My news headline on my phone this morning reported 4 million deaths worldwide from the virus.
Ah, Mississippi! I returned to my home state via I-10 at Pascagoula. So much of my life is tied up in this state. A lot of the Mississippi Gulf Coast is tied to my grandmother on my mother’s side – Ruby. She would take me down to the coast almost every summer. Her favorite place to stay was the old Buena Vista Hotel in Biloxi. Sadly, it’s no longer there. It barely survived Hurricane Camille in 1969. I think it’s a parking lot today for one of the casinos.
It was here at the Buena Vista that she trusted me one time to go off on my own and get my own dinner – across US 90 at a restaurant. I remember feeling how important I felt when I walked into a rather dressy restaurant and ordered an open faced roast beef sandwich. I had never heard or seen one before but it fit the $10 she gave me for dinner. I have to admit a fondness for that sandwich to this day.
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I drove by the exit to Van Cleave, Mississippi where as a graduate student Dr. Pullen would take his graduate botany students for plant collection at the University of Mississippi Forestry Research Station. It’s ironic that Ole Miss didn’t have a forestry program (Mississippi State has a forestry school) but Ole Miss has the largest forestry research station in the state. I remember there was a lot of plant collecting and a lot more drinking beer. I’m not sure the plant specimens we pressed looked too good. I remember that after that field trip Dr. P gave us a lecture on how to neatly press plants.
A lot of the names I associate with the state come from high school football. I was an avid follower. I knew of Moss Point, Gautier (pronounced GO ché) Biloxi, Gulfport, Ocean Springs and Bay Saint Louis (all along I-10) from their football teams. Moss Point was a particular powerhouse.
I don’t know what it is about I-10 in Louisiana but it is always under construction. I’ve never, ever traveled this road that there were not detours, road blockages, flooded roadbeds, or some such nonsense. We are talking Louisiana here, original site of the bridge-to-nowhere built under the governorship of Jimmie Davis, the singing governor. His biggest hit was “You Are My Sunshine” so the bridge was named the Sunshine Bridge. It was an embarrassment because there was a bridge across the river but no roads leading up to it on either side of the river. Like a lot of construction, it wasn’t needed at the time but over time, the area has developed and the bridge has become more important. It only took fifty years.
Other than the expected slowdown of traffic in Louisiana, the trip to Baton Rouge went fine. I’m at the Double Tree in Baton Rouge. Nicer hotel. However, the digital key did not work so I had to use the old fashioned key card this time.
Once I got into the room and peed for fifteen minutes, I went on a hunt for diesel fuel. I prefer to fill up in the evening so I don’t have to fight the crowds in the morning. I found a Shell station close by and on my return to the hotel, I found Vegan Friendly Foods! I missed my vegetarianism so much I stopped in Pensacola for some baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, tangerines, and grapes to eat on the way.
Vegan Friendly Foods is one of two Black owned vegan restaurants in Baton Rouge. I had the portobello sandwich with spinach and grilled onions. It was great. I’m sure I can find some vegan place in San Antonio but if not, I still have plenty of veggies left.
This is my second time to spend the night in Baton Rouge. The first happened so many years ago when my cousin Jo was in graduate school at LSU and she took me to a party. It got to be late so she had a male friend who had an apartment downstairs from the party. She made out the couch for me and went back to the party upstairs. Little did she know her friend was big into Playboy magazines and he kept them on the coffee table by the couch. It was an entertaining night.
Tomorrow is a 7 1/2 hour trip to San Antonio.