to Houston and back, 2010: day 2

This morning, as we were leaving our hotel in Hattiesburg, we noticed the palm trees in the parking lot, so I decided to take a picture. Have you seen palm trees in Hattiesburg before?! I don't recall them being a Mississippi plant. We were staying at the Candlewood Suites and left around 8:00 am.


From Hattiesburg, we drove to Slidell, Louisiana, about one and a half hours. One end of the Tamany Trace is in Slidell. It runs about 27 miles across the top of Lake Ponchartrain to Mandeville, then turns north to Abita Springs and Covington.

We found the trailhead in Slidell, puttered around a bit, and were ready to start walking about 10:00 am.


There was a nice, small garden in the trailhead parking lot.


We saw some pretty flowers beside a boardwalk...


There were signs along the trail showing all the towns it goes through, the mileages between them, and other information.


This next picture is of a rather strange thistle plant we saw -- it's clearly a thistle, but not like the purple thistles we see on the side of Tennessee roads.


The path was long, straight, flat, wide, and paved. After we had walked a while, it stretched out of sight in either direction.



After a pleasant walk (about 3 to 3.5 miles or so, probably about an hour), we drove on to Baton Rouge, arriving a little after 12:00 noon. We often don't sleep well in unfamiliar places, so we're both tired already and it was nice to have a short day.


In Baton Rouge, we're staying at the Hampton Inn. It's run by very nice folks who let us into our room early (usually, check-in time is 3:00 pm), so we have a comfortable place to while away the rest of the afternoon.

Tomorrow we'll drive the rest of the way to Houston, about 4.5 hours.