The Largest Mural in the US

Well fed, but exhausted and hot, we piled back into the GeezerMobile after enjoying the French Quarter.  Even though we heard no complaints of flooding, Lake Ponchartrain was pretty high.

We made it to Alexandria, Louisiana, before we had to stop for the night.

The next day, we got up, ready to make our way toward Dodge City, Kansas.  Of course, there were a few things to see on the way.

Shreveport, Louisiana, has a few quirky things we decided to pull off and see.  In a vacant, there's a great big rooster.  I couldn't find any reference to an old chicken restaurant having been in that lot, but somebody obviously cares for the rooster that remains.

Driving by the Shreveport Regional Arts Council, you can meet "Art".  Art is probably better visited after dark, but we weren't hanging around that long.  It was about mid-morning when we hit Shreveport.  He doesn't really look like much during the day, just a white on white dalmation.  You have to look closely to see the white spots.  However, they are said to soak up the sun and project different colored light, glowing in the dark, when the sun goes down.

Shreveport has a lot of murals on their buildings.  Many of them are highly whimsical.

While these are nice to see, there is one that is pretty awe-inspiring.  We came across one that covered the entire side of a 14-story building.

I was really impressed with it at that point.  However, I have since learned a little more about it.  It apparently extends around the building and is just as big around the corner.  The other side is a collage of multiple scenes.  The entire mural is 30,000 square feet and represents something significant to at least one person or family in the parish area.  Also, every person depicted (including this girl) is an actual person who lived in the area at the time.  It was also designed as a "paint by numbers" project.  The muralist, Meg Saligman, drew the panels and held "painting parties" for thousands of people to do the actual painting of different pieces.  After completion, the pieces were "floated in acrylic" and hung like wallpaper on the building.  We may have to go back to Shreveport to see the other side of this building and check out Art after dark.

There aren't any pictures of Texas because Dallas has a lot of traffic.  That's code for "my turn to drive".  There aren't a whole lot of places Bruce just refuses to drive if he can help it.  Dallas is one of them, though.  He would rather go 200 miles out of the way than drive through Dallas, Atlanta, or Los Angeles.  And when I'm driving, I just want him to lay back and go to sleep.

Into Oklahoma, though, we were back on tooling down little back roads to see little known art installations, like the Spider Bug outside of Lexington, Oklahoma.  Notice that it only has 6 legs, so it's not truly an arachnid.

We don't push ourselves too hard when we're going long distances, and this has definitely been a long distance with longer to go.  So, we stopped for the night in Oklahoma City.