Jan 23-25 New Orleans

Swung down to Hwy 90 along the coastline which took us through Ocean Springs, Biloxi and Gulfport.Incredible amounts of total devistation from Hurricane Katrina, still untouched since 2005. Biloxi is a hustling city full of Casinos and tourist attractions. Several waterfront hotels and casinos were totally destroyed in the storm. There are areas several blocks deep that were totally stripped of buildings, with only the footprint, driveways, chimneys, etc left. The trees that were destroyed along the waterfront roadway have now been chainsaw carved into very attractive pieces of art. From here we carried on to New Orleans where we checked into the Mardi Gras RV Park, an area that was under 3' of water during the storm.

We took a city bus tour 0f New Orleans-picked up at the park at 9:20 AM. We toured through Ward 9, the hardest hit part of the city; went through an above ground cemetery (because of being below sea level and a really high water table); the French Quarter; the Red Light district (home to 200 red lights and shut down by the Navy as it was too much of a distraction); the new city (Brad Pitt project- 40 new "green" efficency houses already with 60 more to come); and Basin Street Station. John, our driver, kindly drove us to the Mardi Gras Museum where we took another tour. This is where all the big floats are made and stored. We got to see the actual process using styrofoam,and paper mache. The characters can be altered over and over to fit the theme of the parades from year to year. An average float will cost $50,000 and on up to $800,000 and there is no corporate funding so teams have to do lots of fund raisers.There will be several parades going at one time but you must have a minimum of 14 floats to make a parade.
From here we shuttled to the foot of Canal Street and walked up to Bourbon Street for a bowl of gumbo at a street side cafe. There were throngs of people everywhere waiting for the final football game for the Superbowl to begin between their team, the Saints and the Minnisota Vikings. Fortunately, the Saints won it in overtime. We walked down to the French market but caught it at closing time -lots of masks, beads, T-shirts, etc. so stopped at the Rivers Edge Restaurant on Decatur for a Southern sampler dinner (gumbo, shrimp creole, red beans, jambalaya, bread pudding with rum sauce). We caught a taxi and headed home after a long and very informative day.