7-14-09 Tuesday (A Vacation)

Jim and I woke up early today.  7:30am.  That’s early for us.  7:30 is to us, like 5:00am is to you.  Got it?  See what I mean… early.  It was an 8 hour drive day which we really hate doing.  We did it because we didn’t want to waste a day stopping somewhere we didn’t want to be.

I’m happy to announce we’re now in the Eastern Time Zone here in Georgia.  We have a 10am appointment at Camping World tomorrow.  We’ve been on the road almost a year and this is the first time we’ll be dry-camping/boondocking.  Basically we’re running the generator all night and not hooked up to anything.  We filled our fresh water tank before departing New Orleans.  We’re in self-contained mode.  Thrilling. 

We put out the leveling jacks but haven’t bothered with the slide.  The idea is to get up early, you know, like 7:30, and get this fridge problem handled.  After it is diagnosed or repaired, then it’s only a 1/2 hour drive to Unadilla.  We’ll be there for like 10 days.  Finally a rest, a vacation, a oh, I see your point.  Well, it will be a vacation from sightseeing.  Yeah, nothing seems right about this paragraph.

After we disconnected the Jeep from the RV, we went to Olive Garden for dinner.  Shockingly, we over-ate, came home and went to sleep.  It was a long day.

7-13-09 Monday (Expensive Laundromat)

The other day our fridge stopped working in electric mode.  It automatically switches to gas when electric isn’t present.  We’ve been told by a few sources that it’s probably the circuit board.  We have a $500 deductible on our almost-out-of-warranty warranty.  Tomorrow, we leave New Orleans, but will go to Macon instead of Unadilla.  Macon is 30 minutes North of Unadilla so it’s not much out of the way.  We’ll have the fridge repaired or if need be, the parts ordered and replaced after Unadilla.  It’s keeping food cold and/or frozen so for right now, we’re OK.

Most of the day we lounged around in the coach or drove around various neighborhoods.  We had lunch at McGuire’s on Magazine Street in the Warehouse District.  We had a 2 for 1 coupon and the deep fried, stuffed burger sounded good… and it was. 

We did shop along Magazine Street.  There were some antique stores, clothing stores and a Spencers-type store.  We bought nothing.

With our typical stuffed bellies, we wandered the Garden District.  That sounded like walking.  Wandered as in drove.

Campground bitching: For as expensive as this place is, the hot tub is still broken.  The bathrooms aren’t air conditioned.  Ugh.  The extra we paid to have a gazebo wasn’t worth it for us.  I vacuumed the chairs and wiped the table down but the only use this thing got was us hanging towels and swimsuits to dry.  So for $17.00 a day more, it made for an expensive clothes dryer.  Despite my opinions of short comings, I’d still recommend French Quarter RV Resort.  It’s very nice and so close to it all.

By the way, here’s what the Beignet from Cafe du Monde would have looked like since I showed you the after photo only.

We were going to see a plantation today but it was further than I’d care to go.  So pretty much, we spent the day in and out of the pool, and surfing the net. 

Tomorrow we leave New Orleans and go to Macon, Georgia.

7-12-09 Sunday (Missing House Poster)

For those that haven’t been to New Orleans, should definitely consider it.  I’m thinking that it’s definitely not a good place for people avoiding alcohol.  Well, probably not a good place for a prude either!

Open alcohol is permitted in the streets.  The only rule is no glass!  If you bought a bottle of beer in one bar, they usually have plastic cups near the door for you to transfer the booze.  Many places will allow drinks from somewhere else in.  Some do not.  The frozen drink places are awesome.  They usually have 12 or so machines with alcohol-frozen drinks.  I’ve tried many flavors and all have been great so far.  I still have more to go.

We’ve also discovered Bourbon Street is alive every night of the week.  It’s pretty busy during the day but in the evenings, a lot of the street are closed off to vehicle traffic.  Many of the sex shops and bars have people standing outside them asking/screaming/begging/whatever for your business.

Now that you’ve become a party specialist, we’ll move on to today’s adventures.  Jim and I took another tour.  This was the Hurricane Katrina Tour which met at the same spot as the paddle boat and city tour.  Yep, another 2 for 1 coupon too!  We’ve saved so much money!  Anyway, the website description:

An eyewitness account of the events surrounding the most devastating natural - and man-made - disaster on American soil!

Learn the history of the original city, the French Quarter, and why it was built at this particular location along the Mississippi River.

We'll drive past an actual levee that "breached" and see the resulting devastation that displaced hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents.

The direct connection between America 's disappearing coastal wetlands, oil & gas pipelines, levee protection and hurricane destruction will be explained.

Your tour guide will give a "local's" chronology of events leading up to Hurricane Katrina and the days immediately following the disaster.

This tour will travel through neighborhoods such as Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East, St. Bernard, and the Ninth Ward.

You'll be amazed at the volume and variety of products "offloaded" in the multimodal port of New Orleans , the second largest port in the country, and then distributed to your hometown.

Did you know that 30% of the seafood (fish, crabs, shrimp, oysters, and crawfish) harvested in the lower 48 states comes from the coastal wetlands in South Louisiana?

After this tour, you'll have a better understanding of events pre and post Katrina and the "Rebirth of New Orleans"!

The most interesting to me was about Six Flags in New Orleans.  Their pumps failed, submerging the park in up to 7 feet of water of brackish water for a month.  The salt destroyed everything except one high ground ride.  They don’t own the land.  The park was a loss, they offer the Mayor money to get out of the lease, he declined, and now Six Flags is bankrupt, and New Orleans probably won’t get a dime as a result.  The link above has all the Katrina – Six Flags stuff.

Here’s photos:

Above: A sculpture dedicated to Hurricane Katrina.

 

Above: FEMA trailer.

 

Above: Another FEMA trailer.

 

Above: 33 levees breached.  Earthen levees (like hills) were intact but the ones which were walls failed.  You can see the color difference in the wall which shows old and new.

 

Above: Look for the water line.

 

Above: The X shows the date, people rescued, alive, dead, who the rescue team was, etc.

 

Above: Can you see the levee is higher than the homes?  Can you see many empty lots where homes once stood?

 

Above: I was surprised there was still a foundation.  Many lots are grassy now.

 

Above: The Superdome is remodeled.

We’re back from the tour.  It was very informative.  We learned a great deal about what happened, and what they’ve done to fix the deficiency's to protect themselves from future problems.  Did you know the pump stations had no generators at the time (they do now) so they couldn’t work.  Did you know that even if they did work, the pump station staff was sent home for their safety?  Now the pump stations have protective housing like the Coast Guard uses.

 

Above: Is that Garret guy fascinated by restrooms or something?  I heard that!  Well, I was with this one.  It’s a men and child family room.  The toilet on the left is child sized.  I’ve never seen that before.  This was in the Jackson Brewery mall.

 

Above: This just tickled me.  I’m sure there’s a great caption for this.  Suggestions?

 

Above: Mississippi River.

 

Above: Riverside walkway, Jackson Brewery mall in the background.

 

Above: Aside from Swingers and Leathermen, perhaps a Medieval convention?

 

Above/Below: A fleamarket with many trinkets.  I’m sure this is the best place to buy your made-in-China New Orleans souvenir.

 

Above: One of the hundreds of cool buildings.  All buildings are Spanish architecture except for a handful of French buildings that survived the fires.  New Orleans was settled by French, at some point was under Spanish control, back to French control and eventually sold to the US by Napoleon. 

 

 

Later in the evening, we went on a Vampire walking tour.  I didn’t get many photos because it was dark.

 

Cool stuff!  Lots of walking, but we need the exercise and walking around this awesome city is … well, awesome.

Good night!

7-11-09 Saturday (Drinkin’, Gamblin’, Boobies)

Welcome back! Today’s adventure starts with a bus tour, the Super City Bus Tour to be more specific. By the way, all the boat rides, bus tours and walking tours have been 2 for 1 with our Entertainment.com coupons. Here’s what the tour website says:

Travel Through Three Centuries of history, legends and romance as you encounter "The City That Care Forgot!"

Absorb the sights & sounds of the world famous French Quarter and historic Jackson Square, home of the Cabildo and Presbytere Museums.

Visit one of our historic cemeteries, referred to as "Cities of the Dead," and learn about this unique above ground burial system.

Marvel at stories of voodoo and piracy on Bayou St. John, the waterway used by Jean Lafitte and his band of pirates, as we make our way to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. View the longest bridge over water in the world, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.

Follow the path of the St. Charles Avenue streetcar, the oldest continuously operating passenger railway system in the world (until service was disrupted by Hurricane Katrina).

See the homes of former Kings & Queens of Mardi Gras, stately mansions and the world-famous, exclusive Garden District.

View Tulane and Loyola Universities across from Audubon Park, home to one of the top five zoos in the nation, The Audubon Zoo.

Includes cemetery stop and narrated motorcoach tour.

Above: We boarded the bus at the same place where we departed for the river cruise.

Above: Terry works on going to hell.

Above: Now we work on going to hell. This Faget provides a bench to sit in front of his crypt.

Above: Katrina damaged home. I have more from the next day’s Katrina tour. Look below the address numbers and follow the horizontal orange line. That’s the water line! I have tons of photos but I’ll spare you.

Above: Mardi Gras beads in every tree on this parade route street!

Above: After the city tour, we elected the Harrah’s drop off point. We waited outside the door since we were all over 21. Finally, we asked an employee if there was a separate entrance for men of our age. They permitted us to use this entrance! How nice!

Above: We showed Terry how to operate the new fangled slot machines. I played a few rounds of Roulette and lost. Other than that we watched Terry have fun with the slots.

Above: I had Mardi Gras Fettuccine which had shrimp and crawfish. The food in this town rocks! Jim had stuffed tuna.

Above: Bourbon Street. Terry tells us to wait for him.

Above: Terry, trying to pose?

Above: People, leave the kids at home! Bourbon Street and Vegas are 2 places that should be adults only.

Above: With a little alcohol in my system, I tried hitting on the machine. I got no response.

Above: This lady was spotted all around. She looked and walked like a zombie. She sold roses.

Above: You know… chicken and New Orleans. They go together, right?

Above: Of course we ate them. They were similar to Elephant Ears.

Above: I forgot to take a before photo. The pile of powered sugar is ridiculous.

Above/Below: Painted boobies.

Above: The funny thing is there was a Swinger’s convention in town. Also a Leather convention, amongst other groups.

Above: “Hey, I need to run an extension cord out the window.” “Oh, just break the glass and pull it through".”

We said goodbye to Terry tonight. We had an awesome time! Terry, we’ll see you in Florida! Yee-Haw!