29-Apr-2001 -- Sunday
I was in Lafayette, LA for meetings but had today free. It would
probably be my one and only chance to look for confluences. The geology,
geography and botany are quite different than what I’m used to on the Colorado
Plateau and in the Great Basin in the Western United States. N32 W092 took some
looking. The last town I went through was Holum, then it was out onto the back
roads, of which there are many, many, many. I finally chose to park next to a
small private cemetery.
I had never hiked through thick undergrowth like this! Some of the small
trees had thorns. There were many spider webs. As I was walking it seemed that I
had read someone else’s writing about a similar experience. When I got to the
confluence there was a small orange flag. Apparently I wasn’t the first to
visit.
I had both a compass and my GPS, but I found that I use dead reckoning
more than I had known. The problem is, in dense woods like these, dead reckoning
doesn’t work! I was temporarily disoriented, but when I settled down and used my
equipment, I was fine.
A bad day exploring is still better than any other day!