Shreveport, Louisiana

Today I graduated from the Field Artillery BOLC course to officially be branch certified. Whereas it did take a lot of effort, I am not one to congratulate myself — I’ve been to every graduation of mine but I only stay for a few pictures and then leave as quickly as possible. But that’s enough about how hard it is to feel accomplished about anything I do — because the adventure continues today!

I drove from Lawton to Shreveport, Louisiana today, making it into the city only a half hour past sunset. It would be a fair question to ask why I’m staying in Shreveport: the only interesting things you can find online are that it was the state capital for two years (during the civil war when the other capitals were captured), it had a booming oil industry for a while, it is the site of the state fair, and lastly it was used in a World War II war game in which General Patton helped secure the victory. I guess you can also say that it has a strong gaming industry but I hate gambling more than anything — two casinos in Oklahoma is enough for my lifetime.

Well I asked myself the same question and couldn’t think of a good reason other than its crossroad of Interstate-20 and the Red River. So I went walking around at night. Who knew that their most murderous year (to date) was 2021! What I saw were really wide sidewalks, a total of twenty people outside (on a Thursday night in January, I’ll give you that) over the course of two hours, a cute (but sadly underwhelming) park honoring different Asian cultures, and two restaurants that had live music. Obviously I bought the most Louisiana sounding dinner I could have: a cajun hotdog, etouffee fries, and a beignet.

Verdict: If you’re in the north of Louisiana it’s a good place to stop but if you have the chance to go south, I think you’ll find better culture. As always, my visits are limited and I’d love to hear about what I missed in the comments!