LA18 follows the west bank of the Mississippi River through a dozen small towns, past fields of sugar cane interspersed with above-ground crypt cemeteries in the old wrought iron fashion. It leads to preserved and some still working plantations with white picket fences, great oaks, and Spanish moss draped everywhere. It both evokes and delivers the Old South. Young children play shirtless and shoeless in the dusty side streets. Old men in coveralls sit in the shade of an outbuilding porch and watch whatever passes.
Life is slow.
The humidity literally hangs in the air in the summer. After I rejoined I-10 it passed through the Achafalaya Swamp. The entire road is built on a causeway for miles because there is no solid land below. As the parallel bridges converge in the distance, you can see the steam rising off the swamp in the late afternoon sun, hanging like a mist and drifting like a fog but being not as damp as either. Visible but not present - like an ethereal veil.