urban bicycle journeys

I was looking for my next adventure. A peaceful bike ride in south Louisiana can be a secondary road that follows a bayou near to where the pavement ends in the marshes. Pointe aux Chenes, twenty-three miles south of Houma LA and seventy-five miles south of New Orleans looked to be such a place.

Many in Pointe aux Chenes are part of an eight hundred person state recognized once mostly French speaking Native American Tribe. The area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 then Hurricane Ida in 2021. Louisiana does not have many barrier islands and the coastal marshes are exposed to the Gulf of Mexico. Land in these marshes has been disappearing for decades and the future of communities like Pointe au Chenes looks challenging.

I drove down there in our Ford Escape Hybrid with the fat tired Kona bicycle in the back. Alongside Bayou Pointe au Chien I found St. Charles Catholic Church. I parked in their lot, which was pretty full on this Sunday morning.

An elementary school sits across the road. I was to learn that the school has been closed from hurricane damage but looks to be rebuilt.

I started cycling south on a highway that would end in the swamps in ten or twelve miles.

The highest land in this marshy area is along the bayou. There is a mix of newly constructed buildings on stilts, older houses in good repair, and structures seemingly abandoned since the last storm. Even when the building is not maintained, someone is often mowing the grass.

For several miles there were no buildings along the bayou. I occasionally passed a tree killed by salt water intrusion.

The road forks in two directions. For a mile or two towards the end of the road at the Pointe aux Chenes Marina it is heavily populated.

Live Oak Baptist Church

At road’s end I gazed off into the swampland and the trees killed by salt water. It felt like the end of the Earth.

It was not really the end. A mile earlier the road had forked in another direction, a five mile long straight road stretching across the marshes towards Isle de Jean Charles. Below shows these two “end of the roads.”

I spent an hour or two cycling the up and back to the island. That whole time I was only passed by one car. There were indeed parked trucks of those who had launched boats. Most people out here appear to own only pickups.

Isle de Jean Charles had a few well maintained houses. There were also some trailers and many abandoned structures. If having a parked car in front of a building indicates someone is living there, I only saw only two occupied houses.

Pointe aux Chenes means Point of Oaks. Many of these oaks have not survived salt water intrusion as the marsh degrades. I did cycle by some impressive trees on the way back to the Catholic church parking lot.

My car was still there, now by itself.

Driving home, I swung by a coffee house half an hour away in central Houma called Downtown Jeaux. I ordered an oat milk latte, one pack sugar, for the drive home.