The festivities began the night before when Jared arrived at my apartment. Our first order of business was the judging of the margarita contest. With only 4 entries it was fairly easy to keep each recipe straight and choose a winner; all the while maintaining a respectable level of sobriety. Though no margarita truly satisfied our discerning palates, we chose a winner. During the judging Jared somehow managed to break the metal lime juicer:
After squeezing many limes by hand the contest drew to a close. It was time to prepare for the trip in earnest. The mountaintop margarita was premixed so that all we had to do was blend it with ice. I loaded my pack with the battery powered blender and the shooting tequila. Additionally I tried to get as many of the "10 Essentials" as I could find around my place. A 1 AM jaunt to Facebook turned up Christelle's status expressing a desire to go hiking. This is how our party grew from 4 to 5 at the last second.
The morning of the climb dawned and we left for Highland Park to get Christelle at 7 AM. We picked up some food at Mustang Donuts right next to SMU (solid), then were off to meet Nate and Margaret. After a tour of Nate's new place we were off in Nate's new Honda Fit. We were officially underway. It was approximately a 4 hour drive to Arcadia, Louisiana where we would buy a bag of Sonic ice to make the margaritas. As we crossed the state line I was able to snap a picture using some quickdraw camera skills:
The drive was uneventful and we soon reached Arcadia and its all-important Sonic Drive-in:
We headed south from the interstate into Louisiana and between Nate's in-car navigation system, Christelle's iPhone and Jared's phone that can launch satellites into orbit were able to find the Mount Zion Presbyterian Church and more importantly this sign:
It was good that we went to the bathroom in Arcadia as the facilities at the trailhead left a little to be desired:
We set off down the trail which was very wide and clear:
It went like this until we got to a sign:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I--
I took the one less travelled by,
And that made very little difference since they both went the same place.
We were soon atop Louisiana. The highpoint is conveniently marked with a pile of rocks:
We signed the log and credited our margarita contest winner as described in the official rules:
We commenced with shooting the tequila but Nate has those pictures so you'll have to wait for him on those and then we fired up the blender for the margaritas. The first batch didn't get blended very well but the second batch was going much better until the blender failed. We were totally unprepared for such equipment failure, luckily we were pretty much done with the blender. I am not sure what's wrong with it at this point but I am troubleshooting. We were alone on the summit until right as we were leaving when a couple was coming up the trail. They just missed out on margaritas but didn't really deserve one anyway since they climbed up the lame, easy trail. We took that trail back to the car and it was considerably easier than the way we came up. It was then that Jared performed a feat of daring and bravery that would cause lesser men to recoil in fear:
Having accomplished our mission, it was time to eat and we had seen an advertisement on the board at the summit for Mexican food. Some people might be wary of Louisiana Mexican food but do you really think one could get bad Mexican food in a place like this:
Our appetite satiated with excellent food, we were ready to hit the casinos in Shreveport. It turns out there are several and the problem soon became which one to go to. The man on the problem gambling hotline was not at all helpful in solving my personal gambling problem and told me the state police would be notified of my call. We finally decided to try Diamond Jack's. I am not sure how we came to this decision it just sort of happened. The crushing smell of cigarettes instantly assaulted us when we entered. I had practiced up on my blackjack so I started looking for a table. The lowest minimum I could find was $10 so I was thinking my first foray into casino gambling might be extremely short-lived. I managed to sit down and convert my money into little plastic chips, it was exciting. For some reason the pit boss was extremely interested in me and my entourage (nobody else seemed at all keen on wagering their money in games of chance that are rigged in favor of the house, so they just watched me). I played for a little bit, ran out of chips and had to buy more. I was quickly reaching my threshold for losing money. But then I started clawing my way back up. As exciting as this was, it was also really stressful. When I went $30 ahead, I took the chips and ran to the cage to convert it back into real money. I had won money and made it out of the casino, a modest success. I'm pretty sure I played less than an hour but it still feels like I was doing that for about 5 hours.
Anyway, the route to Driskill Mountain gained 150 feet and the hiking distance was 1.8 miles roundtrip. This brings our completion percentage to 3.01%.
No comments:
Post a Comment