April 3, 2018
Day 42
Simmsport,LA to St. Francisville, LA
Miles: 57.5 Elevation: 643feet Flats: 0
Today was definitely the River day. We crossed the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, the Morgansa Spillway and the Mississippi River all today. Fortunately it was a sunny day because it was a cool one with a 15mph headwind most of the day.
According to the Architectural Structures Study Guide :
The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge
The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge is a twin bridge that crosses over the basin on I-10, a major highway between Baton Rouge and Lafayette. A twin bridge is one in which two parallel bridges of similar size run side by side. The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge is one of Louisiana's busiest bridges. It's unclear exactly when bridge construction began, but both parts of the structure were built at the same time, and the bridge was open for traffic by 1973. When you drive on it, it seems to go on for a long time. The bridge is elevated in places, and you might notice that you're driving right by treetops. But why, if it's on low ground? Well, several rivers weave under the bridge and in some places it was built high enough to allow barges and tow boats to pass underneath.
The bridge is around eighteen miles long and made of a stringer design, meaning it uses a series of parallel steel beams to support a concrete deck. It's not a particularly attractive bridge, but serves an important purpose for this part of the state. Also known as the 'Swamp Expressway,' it includes two exits off the bridge into sparsely populated, rural bayou areas. The twin bridges merge when crossing Whiskey Bay Pilot Channel, a canal dredged in the 1930s for shipping traffic.
Wikipedia:
The John James Audubon Bridge, completed and opened in 2011, is a Mississippi Rivercrossing between Pointe Coupee and West Feliciana parishes in south central Louisiana. The bridge has the second longest cable-stayed span (distance between towers) in the Western Hemisphere at 1,583 ft (482 m), after Mexico's Baluarte Bridge with a 1,706 ft (520 m) span, and has a total length of 12,883 ft (3,927 m)—nearly three-and-a-half times longer than the Baluarte Bridge's 3,688 ft (1,124 m) total length. The Audubon Bridge replaces the ferry between the communities of New Roads and St. Francisville. The bridge also serves as the only bridge structure on the Mississippi River between Natchez, Mississippi and Baton Rouge, Louisiana(approximately 90 river miles). The bridge conveys Louisiana Highway 10, which is in a concurrence there with the Zachary Taylor Parkway.
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It was a long hot day and after battling the winds and climbing and crossing bridges we were all pretty tired out. Tonight will be our farewell dinner with Derek Sheppard the cyclist from Scotland who is doing an unsupported world tour, this is the last leg of his tour. A nice dinner with a terrific margarita at The Francis Restaurant. At midnight the emergency alerts go off warning us that a tornado might touch down in St. Francesville, I wake Jeff to ask what we should do to prepare, GO Back to Sleep! I tried, it didn't work buy by 12:30 the storm had passed over and no tornados.
Today's ride: 58 miles (93 km)
Total: 1,936 miles (3,116 km)
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