Scenes from Old Highway 80 ... Where Eagles Dare

When we're traveling, my husband and I love to get off the interstates and drive the back roads. And that's just what we did this weekend when we were returning home from a "getaway weekend" in Shreveport, Louisiana. Our back road adventure began on old U.S. Highway 80 in Shreveport.

On the outskirts of town these pretty "brown-eyed susans" were nodding in the breeze, and seemed to be waving goodbye to us ...

Just east of Shreveport is a little town called Gibsland, whose claim to fame is that the notorious outlaws Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed there on May 23, 1934. There is a even a Bonnie and Clyde "Ambush Museum" ...

And a marker commemorating the spot where they were killed ...

Right around the corner from the museum was this pretty little house all decked out for fall and Halloween ...

{You can click on the pictures to enlarge them, if you'd like}

Our next stop was Arcadia, a quaint little town with several antique shops and also home to the Bonnie and Clyde Trade Days, a monthly flea market covering 130 acres. Unfortunately, the shops weren't open when we passed through, but I did get some pictures ...

All along Highway 80, between Monroe and Vicksburg, lie thousands of acres of the fertile fields of the Mississippi River Delta. There are soybean fields, cornfields, rice fields, and last, but not least, cotton fields ... as far as the eye can see.

I couldn't resist getting out and taking some close up pictures of this beautiful cotton field, which is ready for harvest ...

This probably sounds weird, but I just loved being in that hot and dusty cotton field. I thought it was beautiful and was so tempted to "pick a bouquet" of cotton for a fall arrangement, but I resisted.

After the cotton is harvested, it is pressed and stored in "modules" for protection against the weather.

The modules are stored in the field or on the gin yard until the cotton is ginned. Aren't you impressed with how much I know about cotton? (Wikipedia is a wonderful thing).

After my exciting cotton field adventure, we were cruising on down the highway when all of a sudden my husband said, "Did you see that!?" ... and before I could say, "No, what?" he said, ... "It was an eagle!" Now, among the cotton fields of the Louisiana Delta is the last place I'd be looking for an eagle, but sure enough, there was one in all his glory perched on top of an electrical pole right on the side of the road.

I was so excited and was grabbing for my camera and telephoto lens while my husband turned the truck around and slowly headed back in the direction of the eagle. I was so afraid he would fly away before I could get some pictures, but he was a brave little soul and sat still long enough for me to take a few very excited semi-out-of-focus pictures of him ...

Taking flight ...

I wouldn't take anything for seeing that magnificent creature in his natural habitat. My husband said that he and his duck hunting pals have seen a few near their duck blind which is in the Delta.

Needless to say, after our eagle adventure everything else we saw seemed a little anti-climatic, but I do have a few more pictures to share with you.

During harvest season, this is a pretty common sight on Highway 80, and you get used to sharing the road with John Deere ...

This was obviously an old gas station we passed in Tallulah, Louisiana, with its sign advertising gas for $1.45 a gallon (those were the good old days, huh?) ...

A few miles East of Tallulah, Highway 80 ends on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River. The traffic portion of the bridge across the river at Vicksburg was closed many years ago, but the railroad portion continues to be used today (it's the bridge on the right in the picture below) ...

The bridge on the left is the I-20 bridge and after crossing into Vicksburg, you can pick up Highway 80 again and continue east through Mississippi and into Alabama. After crossing Alabama, it continues on across Georgia, terminating at Tybee Island near Savannah, just a few feet from the Atlantic Ocean.

One of these days, I'd like to follow Highway 80 to its end, but I don't think I'd see or experience anything more exciting or more memorable than ... "the day we saw the eagle."