R-V There Yet?

After being shocked and saddened driving through the Gulfport-Biloxi area we headed to New Orleans.  How very sad that town looks. It is very hard to capture it on camera.  Large nice apartment complexes or large buildings were empty and fenced off since the storm.  We first came across middle income neighborhoods and looking down the street there was some kind of trailer in everyone’s yard.  Some 5^th wheels were parked in the driveway, some were parked along the street and some were parked across the front yard.  Just like in MS, the people are living in their trailers working on their houses.

 

 

As we drove farther into town it wasn’t just middle income neighborhoods but all neighborhoods that had lots of trailers. Older strip malls and buildings will never be rebuilt.  It would probably be best to just bulldoze those buildings but that cost money also.  As long as these buildings are allowed to stand it will always be a constant reminder of Katrina to the people of New Orleans. 

We stayed in a new RV park near a ship canal.  Across the road was one of the levees.  It looks more like a fence to me.

 

 

 

The roofs you see are the roofs of 2 story houses. This levee held but water flowed around it at the end and the water was up to the fence inside which meant the water came up to their roofs.

 

 

We were fairly close to the ninth ward so we took a drive through it.  One of the things that we didn’t notice on TV was how close all the houses are to each other.  Instead of all the front doors facing the street, some of the front doors are on the side yard and the house is lengthwise..  After seeing how close the houses were to each other, we noticed the same thing in other areas but not as crowded.  We figured the reason was that land is scarce as New Orleans is surrounded by water.  We had heard no one was moving back to the Ninth Ward but we saw a lot of cleaning up and rebuilding or remodeling.  When we say remodeling we noticed some people had replaced the windows and doors with new ones but using the old wood to remodel the rest of the house.  As close as all the houses are let’s hope a fire never breaks out in that area.

 

For fun we drove across Lake Pontchartrain. That is a huge lake that is to the north of New Orleans.

 

 

 

When we got on the bridge the lake looked like an ocean as you could hardly see the other side.  No wonder.  The bridge is 23 miles long!!!!!!  There were actually 2 bridges.  2 lanes going in one direction and another bridge returning.  Every 2 or 3 miles they had a crossover so you could get on the other bridge.  This must have been in case there was an accident on one bridge then they can move the traffic to the other bridge and avoid traffic congestions.  There were also wreckers sitting in 2 different crossovers waiting for an accident to happen.

 

 

On our return trip we passed a car that was going very slow.  It was a nice new car with a flat tire.  Someone will probably by very quickly to help them change the tire and get them on their way to avoid a traffic backup on the bridge.  The bridge is a toll bridge.  After being in Delaware and New Jersey and paying such high tolls we could not imagine how much this would cost.  So Tinka gets a $20 bill out hoping that would be enough.  She had it sitting in her lap.  As we entered the toll bridge we noticed there weren’t any toll booths.  Had they turned it into a free bridge?  Pretty unlikely!!!!!  As we came to the end of the first trip across Lake Pontchartrain we spotted the toll booths.  They only charged GOING into New Orleans.  We drove around the town on the other side a few minutes and started heading back across the bridge.  We still did not see a sign saying what the toll would be to cross.  Well, 23 miles of bridge and driving around town takes up at least 45 minutes.  That meant 45 minutes the $20 bill sat on Tinka’s lap.  As we got close to the toll booth—no $20 bill.  It was lost.  Tinka could not find it anywhere.  So we get another one out of our wallet.  The toll amount was $3.00.  Unbelievably cheap for a 52 mile trip.  In Delaware or New Jersey that toll would have cost as much as a house!!!!!!!!!  When we returned to the RV park we found the $20 bill.  It had slipped between the seat and the console.

 The next post will be about the French Quarter. 

Life’s a journey and we are on one!!!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 10:11 am and is filed under Louisiana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.