New Orleans
1/6/16 • Written by Nancy
In the French Quarter, New Orleans
We're taking a few months traveling in the South, Southwest, and up the West Coast before at last we get to our home in Seattle. We'll arrive there when good weather does (we hope). This is clearly a trip with a goal, but there's no reason not to have a good time, too. And we'll learn more about the United States itself.
We spent Christmas week in New Orleans. In New Orleans, it was almost summer, in the 70s. We were not complaining.
Julianne's son Tim came for Christmas, and we had a lot of fun. Our place, rented for two, was tiny for three, but never mind. The owners have a fine artistic eye, and they were wonderful for conversation about New Orleans. If there was only one sauce pan and no dinner plates, never mind, we had great visuals and lots of books.
SWAMP TOUR
And then there was the Honey Island Swamp Tour, Creole-run, in a flat-bottomed little barge-type boat that had a roof. Good thing too, as it rained. Tim arranged this wonderful event for us. We saw alligators and turtles, and lots of birds. Also rain.
KATRINA
Both of us had been in New Orleans before Katrina, before we had to learn that elements of our government could be so feckless, so cruel. Hurricane and aftermath, such tragic, infuriating events. Neither of us could bear seeing it, and though we had friends and acquaintances who traveled down to help rebuild, we stayed away. For years.
Well, that was then. Ten years later we're looking for signs of recovery.
Good luck to us.
We drove around the Lower 9th Ward, which was so destroyed by Katrina, and still is. I found myself reluctant to photograph misery after reading a New York Times Magazine piece describing disaster touring in New Orleans (here it is). So a couple empty lots was what I could manage:
And, by chance we drove around the top of Lake Pontchartrain, on little-back-road-type roads, and there we found a jillion dead cars from the hurricane piled up willy-nilly, rotting in place. I think every single car in New Orleans died and ended up in these long rows looking like a new type of levee. Archaeologists of the future will have something to ponder.
There is ever so much to see in New Orleans, grandeur and charm just next to continued devastation. East New Orleans (a separate town) seems to be principally empty foundations and weeds. The French Quarter didn't suffer much, and there are also many lovely neighborhoods and parks. But New Orleans has a way to go.
The population, which dropped two thirds after the hurricane, is still down by a third. There's a lot of emptiness, including just across the street from our rental, where vacant lots used to hold homes, now just concrete slabs among the weeds.
SIDE TRIP TO GRAND ISLE
Our last full day the weather was fine, about 70 and light haze. We drove down to the end of the world, which is called Grand Isle, the very last land the Mississippi River has formed that has a road, the very end.
Gulf of Mexico rolling into Grand Isle
That world is all water and small grassy islands and birds - egrets and rosy spoonbills and the occasional heron and dowitcher. Also, fishermen looking for flounder and catfish, and little fish jumping to get away from the big fish, and wind-surfers, and shut-up summer places, and a cafe or two.
The main economy down there is oil services and refineries for the platforms out in the Gulf. But these are not as far out along the road as Grand Isle. We stopped at Port Fourchon to look at birds, surrounded by these huge installations. Lots of birds, despite industry.
And upwater from there, closer to the mainland, sugar cane, shrimp boats, and rice fields. Funny to see these huge boats nearly at the same level as the roadway - the water table can't be more than a foot under the surface of the ground. Nobody has a basement here.
Out by Port Fourchon
The same is true of New Orleans, no basements, water table amazingly high, and further, most houses are built not more than a few inches above the ground, on slab. There's someone's front door, and then a stretch of yard, and then without transition, a canal or bayou. It would make me nervous. Though also, outside the city, lots of houses are built on stilts, as if they were in Thailand or the Philippines. Those are relatively new.
We liked New Orleans a lot, and will be happy sometime in future to go back. Now, on to Houston and points west.
by Nancy
We're taking a few months traveling in the South, Southwest, and up the West Coast before at last we get to our home in Seattle. We'll arrive there when good weather does (we hope).