Not a great start to the day, it is ******* down. Looking at the weather forecast it is raining all over Texas and Louisiana. Took us about 40 minutes of driving before we actually hit country. There are oil refineries everywhere. New Orleans is about 600k away not sure if we would make it. Traffic quite thick and rain still ******* down. Yanks don't slow down in the wet, I was doing about 75mph (120k) and a heavy tow truck towing a semi went past me doing about 90 mph. I am amazed at the amount of people overtaking us that were glued to their phones and texting while doing 80 mph. That may be why there are huge signs on all of the Texas highways stating "1118 road deaths to date this year in the state of Texas please take care". Seems a lot compared to Australia but Texas has a population of approx 27 million which is more than Australia. Most of the roads are concrete and it seems to hold the water so heaps of water spray. A few sections were tar and nearly no water spray. We got about 20 minutes out of Lake Charles when traffic came to a compete stop. We crawled forward for about 1.5 or 2 hours until directed off the freeway. As we left the freeway we could see a semi trailer that was going the same direction as us had jack knifed and gone partially off the road, was also half off the bank of a bridge and that is why the whole east bound lane was closed. All along the highway was advertisements for Couchatta Indian Resort Casino. There was no hope of making NOLA and I was sick of the rain so decided to check it out. It's about 20 minutes off the highway in what looks like Billy Bobs hunting shack country. The Casino was huge, It has 5 different types of hotels/accommodation on site. The beauty of the Indian Casinos is they are not on US soil but Indian Nation and not subject to state taxes. When you see a price for anything in the US it is generally ex tax, for example accommodation in Texas you have to add %15 hotel tax to the stated price. We got a fantastic room and went and checked out the casino. It was a good relaxing night. For dinner I tried the catfish with crawfish (some French word). It didn't look great but was actually tasty. NOLA tomorrow