Whoo-boy, it was a loooong travel day for us today. We traveled just under 500 miles today. We got up early and were on the road by 7:30am. We drove from the Texas/Louisana line to Florida. We are staying 2 nights here in Navrarre Beach on the beautiful white sandy Gulf Coast. What a day it has been. I must start off by saying both Millenni and Oreo have traveled like champions today. I think they are used to this lifestyle by now and even enjoy it. I-10 proved to be a horribly bumpy ride. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita certainly took a toll on the road and there were times I couldn’t believe the RV was still attached to the truck it was so bumpy. As we drove further into Louisana the wildflowers became more sparse and the trees grew taller. We passed over the Henderson Swamp once again and pee-eweeeee….. was it ever stinky! Talk about a dank, musty odor…Yuck! We really wanted to drive into New Orleans and see if there were still signs of the damage caused by Katrina. As we got into the city we saw a Goodyear Blimp flying overhead. We passed an awesome looking cemetery. It was on both sides of I-10 and it appeared that all were buried above ground with large monuments on the tops. I know that entire area is below sea level so guess they have to bury the dead above ground. I wondered how many graves were displaced when they built the interstate since it runs right thru it. The Superdome appeared to be in good shape, repairs have been made on the outside anyway. The city itself looked fantastic and I was very pleased to see no real signs of devastation remaining. I was concerned because last June, when Jamie drove thru she saw a lot of devastation. I would never have known anything so tragic had happened had I not known. Now once we got on the east side of New Orleans it was a different story. Numerous roofs still have not been repaired and remain covered with blue plastic. We saw a lot of new shingles on roofs too. We also saw a lot of FEMA trailers parked in the yards of homes. I imagine the houses are not safe enough to live in yet so they just parked the FEMA units right in the yard to live in. At times we would see a FEMA park with the plain white trailers all lined up. Over all I was encouraged that the city appears, from the interstate anyway, to be healing nicely. When we crossed over into Mississippi we stopped at the welcome center and took a respite for about half an hour. We ate our lunch, walked around to get some exercise then rested for a little while in the RV. Millenni and Oreo were happy to get out of the truck for a while too. I somehow missed the rest of Mississippi and all of Alabama as I was busy looking in our RV books and online using my laptop for a campground for the next 2 nights. We had hoped to find a state park but with it being a Friday night there were no spots available. We made several phone calls just to verify but no luck there. We ended up finding a nice commercial campground in Navarre Beach and will hang out here until Sunday then will be off to the next campground in Georgia where we’ll be staying for a week. This campground is very pretty and I will post some pictures tomorrow and write more about it then. Tonight after dinner we soaked in the hot tub and it felt heavenly!
Oreo and Millenni were such fantastic little travelers
This is the ever-so-stinky Henderson Swamp in Louisana
Welcome to NOLA
the city of New Orleans with the Superdome to the right
a FEMA village right along I-10, just one of many we saw
a New Orleans neighborhood with FEMA trailers parked in the yards
