Sometimes we wake up to find our lives are lost in the most desolate, grace-proof places, and we have no idea how we got there.

It just so happens that the perfect image of this experience is a theme from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Bugs was fond of traveling by tunneling through the ground as rabbits do. Thinking he had reached his destination, he would pop his head out of the ground and find himself in Middle Eastern caves, Spanish bull rings, or even in Antarctica.

From my young years I had always been told that South Louisiana was the true Louisiana. When I went off to Louisiana College in Pineville, this mystical land lay before me in the distance, calling out to me like Louis Armstrong's trumpet. I had been to New Orleans, so I already had an idea of the true Louisiana, but this was not enough for me. Incidentally, I had already developed an affinity for road trips by that time, one that intrigued and amused even my closest friends. These two conditions together would give me a day-trip fever of a lifetime that spanned my entire college career.