Well, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles and they ran through the bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go!

Well, here we are again; hurtling southwest on the interstate system. We are taking a short sojourn to New Orleans. We have a timeshare that doesn’t get a lot of attention since we bought the motorhome. We are not willing to give it up as we won’t always have the motorhome.

We were notified by RCI that we were approaching the limit we could bank one of our weeks so we figured that we should take a short trip and use up the delinquent week. After some consideration, we decided to go to New Orleans. We were going there following our visit to Texas but Hurricane Gustav had other ideas and arrived on the day we were scheduled to get there so we missed out.

Cheryl Needs 3 states to complete her sweep of the US. Louisiana is one of those 3 states. In fact it is kind of out there all by itself so this seemed to be a good destination. There were not a lot of available spaces but we found one in the Garden District; a small studio apartment so we grabbed it and started planning.
Since we have plenty of time and wanted to stop in DC to visit Ivy, Andrew and Madeline, it seemed to be a slam-dunk to drive. So now, here we are 600 miles away from home headed down I-81. We are presently in Virginia and plan to stay in Tennessee tonight. That will put us somewhere near ¾ of the way there. We can’t check in until 4 PM so we have plenty of time.

We were up at 3 and out of the driveway at 4. The world is a quiet place that time of the morning. Traffic started to pick up on 495 and really got thick as we approached Hartford. I decided, at that point to take the route through New Haven and over the George Washington Bridge (recommended by the nav system). The traffic was decent until we reached New Haven and started along 95. We encountered a couple of slowdowns and then came upon a northbound accident that closed the entire northbound side of the highway and brought the southbound side to a gawking standstill. We lost at least a half hour there and another half hour in the slowdowns.

With the large amount of truck traffic, we decided to take the lower level of the GW. Again a mistake, the traffic there was pretty insane with cars weaving in and out and a SUV broken down in one of the 3 lanes. The truck traffic on the upper level is much more disciplined and easier to deal with.

After crossing the Hudson we headed towards the Jersey Turnpike. We stopped at the first Plaza for gas and a bite to eat. The Jersey Plazas are among the better turnpike areas to get gas. Connecticut and New York have greatly inflated gas prices while Jersey is much cheaper. I always fill up at home where I better control what I buy and then hold on for Jersey where the prices are reasonable. The breakfast food available is another story but then road food is often a “take what is available” event.

We hit the road again, passed through the EZPASS lane at 50 mph (why do we have to slow down to 10 mph at home?). I hadn’t studied the route very carefully on the computer before we left so I was surprised when the computer told us to exit after just a couple of exits: the adventure was underway!

We followed 78 over to 81 and headed south on 81. I had 2 choices at the start. I could go the way I went or I could have gone across 84 and found 81 near Scranton, PA and headed south. The Nav system chose the GW bridge as the best route and I am sure it was the shortest but definitely not the quickest. Usually, I take the Scranton Route but that is definitely better with the motorhome. With just the car, I thought it would be fun to take the route we did (and the traffic building up to b e heavy going into Hartford helped me make the decision (and it was still wrong)).

Well, eventually we cleared the busy roads and settled in to some serious driving. We watched the price of gas drop as we went further south. Each tank has been cheaper than the tank before it. We just entered Alabama and saw a gas station advertising $2.31.

The distance to New Orleans is just under 1,600 miles. I set a goal of 900 miles in the first day and we stopped at 797. We stopped at a Super 8 around 7 Pm. Decent place considering all we wanted was a place to sleep and take a shower. 2 double beds that weren’t all that comfortable but I never sleep well on the first night anywhere so it was pretty good. One of the Public TV stations ran a nice piece on Peter, Paul and Mary that was entertaining and eventually put me to sleep.
4 AM and back on the road again. We drove through Chattanooga (didn’t see the choo choo) and were soon (nothing on this trip has been soon) crossed into Georgia briefly before entering Alabama. We are presently sitting at 1176 miles down and 415 to go. We stopped at the Alabama Visitor Center and met a gentleman with a very thick accent who took great pleasure in telling us about his visit to Maine.
He worked for a company that used potato products from a company in Presque Isle and went to visit the factory. When he spoke a sentence, you had to hesitate for a bit and let what he said develop in your mind before you understood it. It’s a good thing he talked slowly.

We should hit Birmingham in an hour and a half then another hour and a half to the Mississippi border. More later. Hey, it’s later! As things go, we did 900 miles yesterday so we could have an easier day today and get here before it was too late. As hard as the 900 miles were yesterday, the 680 miles today went off like a charm. Like yesterday, we left at 4 am. The difference was that we had to kill time as we were too much ahead of schedule.

As near as I can figure, the miles in the Northeast with all the traffic and the lower speed limits made the driving difficult. Today, we had almost no traffic and the speed limits were 70. It was a little more difficult as it started raining in the late morning and poured most of the time. The entry into New Orleans was so rainy that you could hardly see the road ahead. We took I 10 across Lake Ponchatrain. The high point of the bridge was in the clouds and you couldn’t see more than 300 yards into the lake.

We did get into the city with little trouble even though the computer seemed to be sending us on a wild goose chase in a circle over the roads we needed. In retrospect, it was just dealing with the plethora of one way streets and we did end up at the right place (even though the name on the building was different than the name on all our paperwork?) They explained that the resort was the right name but it is owned by Wyndham hotels who wanted their name on the marquis. It worked out although we had to unload the car in a downpour. We didn’t take long but we were soaked by the time we finished. We were better off than the people who came later. They couldn’t park close and there were more of them so they ended up getting really wet.

We got everything up to the room and got somewhat settled. The room is nice. It is called a studio which means a one room apartment. The literature said that we would have a queen sized bed with a mini kitchen with a toaster oven, a microwave and a mini fridge. As it turned out, we got a king sized bed, a 2 burner stove, a small apartment sized fridge and a microwave looking oven which has way too many buttons and a metal shelf. I will figure that out later.

We headed out to find something to eat. We were directed to a place called Igor’s. It is billed as a bar, grill, pool room and Laundromat. We sat in the bar; we could see the pool tables and didn’t go looking for the Laundromat. We had our first Hurricane, one of the signature drinks of New Orleans (a fruity concoction). It was pretty good but I am glad that is out of the way and I can get on with trying other things out. We met a bunch of people in the bar. They were all curious where we came from and we had fun eating the chicken nuggets (not traditional NO food) and drinking our hurricanes.

Afterwards, we decided to take a walk down the street. We got as far as the corner of our building and stopped watching the people trying to get across the street. It seems that the street beside our hotel had 6 inches of water in it. We decided that tomorrow would be early enough to explore. We did find a store that had food and alcohol but the prices were outrageous so we returned in vain. Time to just relax and get over our 1600 mile drive. I think the Celtics are playing on TBS tonight but after an extensive effort, it seems that we don’t have TBS on our TV. There wasn’t much on and we were really tired so we went to bed at 8:30 hoping for a better day in the morning.

Well, it’s morning. It isn’t raining but the news is full of the aftermath of yesterday’s storm. There were areas of the city that got more than 5 inches of rain yesterday. New Orleans is largely below sea level. The levees that failed during Katrina have been rebuilt and are much stronger. The city is kept dry by a lot of pumps that pump the water out of the city. One pump failed and a gate was opened to relieve the pressure (I am not sure how that all works). The gate eventually failed and they could not close it when the rain let up. They ended up closing up the space with large metal plates. It sounds pretty bad but they seem to take it in stride down here.

The weather is cloudy and foggy. They keep telling us it is warm and humid. The temp is in the 60s but it is really humid making it a little uncomfortable. I’ll take it; it’s better than 30 deg and windy any day. We had a quick breakfast here (toast and egg salad) and coffee. We bought a pound of coffee and had it ground specifically for this trip. We left it in a bag of Christmas presents.

Fortunately, there was enough coffee here in the room for a couple of mornings.
We decided to do the walking tour of the Garden District that was in our tour book. We headed out and walked a block in the wrong direction before we realized it. We turned around and headed for our first stop. This is the area where Ann Rice lived and made famous with her books. I have read all of Ann’s books and look forward to spending some time in the same places that she has made famous in her books.

She has since moved to Southern California following the death of her Husband Stan. The walking tour that we have is heavy on references to places she lived, owned and hung out so it will be fun to check them out. Our first stop is the Garden District Book Shop and the adjacent Coffee Shop. It was a nice walk and we settled into the coffee shop like we owned it. We felt immediately at home. The proprietor was really friendly and we talked for some time before we got our coffee and scones and settled in with the other customers. The place fit like a kid glove.

Afterwards, we moved up into the main part of the building where there were several shops including the book store which was the only place open. This was the book shop where Ann Rice held her first signings for each of her published books (actually it was just around the corner from her house). They had all of her books in stock including signed copies. Her latest book was there as well a book of her memoirs that I did not even know existed.

Freshened by coffee, food, a book store and a couple of Ann Rice locations, we headed down the street. The houses here are magnificent. There are many large houses in the style that we northerners identify as plantation style homes. We found one house that looked like a house but was listed as a church (former). It started out as a Catholic church and then became another denomination. It figured into one of Ann’s books and is now owned by Nicholas Cage. There was also a huge mansion that had a “corn” fence around it. It was wrought iron and shaped like stalks of corn.

As we were walking down the street, we came across a herd of “Red Hats”. We talked to them a bit and one of them asked if we were interested in the PRCA Christmas House Tour. They had 2 tickets that they had bought early for 2 people who ultimately could not attend. It was a good opportunity and the tickets were deeply discounted so we bought them and headed off to the closest house. These are houses that people live in. They are decorated for Christmas and open their doors for tours to make money for charity.

The first house we came to was not on the tour but is owned by the Ladies Opera Guild who maintain it as a tourist attraction. It is a beautiful house and is rarely open to the public. It was open free today so we started there. These buildings were exceptionally beautiful while obviously lived in. Some had visible children’s play rooms and kitchens with “stuff” visible in the glass doored cabinets and desk areas. One house owned by the Sinclair’s was certainly the equal of some of the Newport Mansions. It had recently been “down to the studs” renovated. It is incomprehensable how much money must have been spent on this house. It was the star of the show and had the biggest line.

Since we had started late and began in the middle, we decided to skip house # 6. This house was quite a ways out of the way and in the opposite direction so we skipped one. There were 8 total with the addition of the opera ladies house, we visited 8 houses….OK, 2 of the houses were one house (?). They were originally 2 neighboring houses that were bought by a single person who built a beautiful huge kitchen between the buildings joining the houses and making a single dwelling. It was a unique building but did reduce the advertised number of houses to 7 actual (no complaints, just interesting).

We then crawled over to Buster’s Soul Food Restaurant and split a Hot Shrimp Salad and an Oyster Po Boy. The salad was good but the Po Boy was delicious. The oysters were well fried and nice and crispy. I threw a little hot sauce over the oysters before adding the pickle, tomato and lettuce. MMMMMMM

It was a busy morning (and early afternoon) so we decided to leave the very loud Saint’s fans to their game (and drinks) and return to the condo for a nap. Cheryl worked on some things and I took a rather long nap. I am still suffering from the drive. Tonight, we took a nice walk along St. Charles Avenue in the other direction. We checked out the restaurants, clubs and bars. We stopped at Lucky’s for a drink and discovered that it was owned by the person that owns Igor’s where we ate and drank last night.

This time, we had the Bloody Marys. They were tasty and moderately hot. The garnish was pickled green beans. The drinks were really good but the menu was the same (exactly) as last night so we finished our drinks and continued our journey. We passed some really nice places which we weren’t in the mood for and some lesser places that just didn’t float our boat. We did see a Burger King (I did not drive 1600 miles to eat in the same places we have at home) and eventually a KFC (same note). Then we found Voodoo BBQ (voted best BBQ in NO). While it was good, I would not consider it the best of anything. It was pretty good but the meat was a little skimpy and the roll was not as fresh as it could have been. Such is the curse of the cook. It is hard to buy things that I make myself without critizing them (mine is better).

Now we are back in the condo and thinking that it may be getting close to bedtime. The weather for tomorrow is not good. They are talking about rain tomorrow and another siege of flooding rains through Tuesday. I guess we will just have to wait until tomorrow to figure out what we are going to do. I think I will upload this. Hope you are all doing well.

Merry Christmas.