Dec 15 - 18 -- Pensacola, Florida, to New Orleans, Louisiana

On Monday, December 15th, we drove 175 miles to Slidell, Louisiana. This made a total of 1193 miles from home. We are sure enjoying these low gas prices of around $1.60 per gallon! The motorhome gets 7 miles per gallon. A fillup is typically 50 gallons, and when we went to Vermont in September a fillup was costing $200! Now it costs about $80. Slidell is 30 miles northeast of New Orleans. We decided to park the RV there since New Orleans is south of our main route, and just drive the Suzuki (at 23 miles per gallon) into the Big Easy.

On Wednesday we drove in and took a Grayline bus tour of the areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. On top of the levees are concrete seawalls about ten feet high, and when these failed, walls of water were sent crashing into residential areas, destroying homes and businesses. Good information is given in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1517817/posts . Here's a photo from the report showing a wall failure. (Click on it to enlarge it and see details better.)

The tour took three hours and we saw many hundreds of yards of walls which had failed and been repaired. The bus driver was a native of New Orleans, about 60, who had great knowledge of and passion for the city. He emphasized the importance of the Port of New Orleans to the country, as its 9th-busiest seaport. He also made comparisons to other big cities which are partly below sea level, such as New York City. There are still a lot of vacant homes and businesses, but much of New Orleans looked to us to be fine. Population in August 2008 was reported as 72 percent of pre-Katrina. Our impression was that the future appears cautiously good for New Orleans.


After the bus tour we went to the World War II Museum in downtown New Orleans. They have a lot of good information on D-Day, the European wars, and the wars in the Pacific. There is a lot of machinery -- tanks, boats, airplanes, and even a motorcycle! There are many narrated exhibits, and a collection of propaganda posters produced by the USA and by Japan. (I asked a volunteer about Katrina, and she said the water never got near the building.)

After our full day in the famous city, we drove 30 miles back to the RV and got ready for the next leg of the trip.