A levee bike ride...

Yesterday, I zig zagged 5 miles through the Garden District on my bike to Audubon Park. From here, I hopped onto the well-maintained, paved Mississippi River levee bike trail and rode 10 miles west (and back)

My 30 mile round trip route, below, took me through the Garden District, uptown and Audubon Park, and through Jefferson Parish.

A shiny red train sat on the tracks below the levee just after I started my ride...

A row of rustic fisherman's shanties lined the riverbank at the base of the levee. They looked like they'd been there forever.

A little further up the trail, I saw the old Teoulet's which served as a grocery store, tavern and liquor store during the past 100 years. A renovation to remove asbestos shingles revealed some brightly colored, well-preserved 1940's ads on the building. Now called the Rivershack Tavern, the building is a highly-rated, albeit casual restaurant and a bar.

The Huey P. Long bridge stretches over the levee trail in Jefferson Parish.  It is a cantilevered steel truss bridge that carries a two-track railroad line over the Mississippi River with two lanes of US 90 on each side of the central tracks. Opened in December 1935 to replace the Walnut Street Ferry, the bridge was named for the extremely popular and notorious governor, Huey P. Long, who had just been assassinated on September 8 of that year. The bridge was the first Mississippi River span built in Louisiana and the 29th along the length of the river. It was designed by Polish-American engineer Ralph Modjeski.

I was curious about the horse references on trail signage until I noticed a couple of stables on the non-river side of the levee...

The bustling Mississippi River hosts a lot of industry, barges, electrical towers, tugboats and activity.

About 5 miles into my ride, the scenery became woods and wetlands on the river side and residential on the north side of the levee.

After 10 miles, I decided to turn around. The last landmark of note was a vacuum pump, attached to a pumping station by huge dual pipes that regulate the flow of water between the river and the low-lying land to the north of it. The levees were breached during Katrina in 2005, rendering the pumps useless as the water poured over and through the levees.

This is a huge electrical tower on the riverbank. Note the "small" man under it and the huge bird's built into the steel frame ;-) All in all, an interesting 30 mile round trip ride, even in 92 degree heat! I actually had a bit of  heat exhaustion about a 1/2 mile from home and had to sit on the sidewalk and rest, then walk my bike home. A little scary... gotta get used to the humidity here!