Thursday, August 30, 2007
New Orleans
Well, I have a lot of things that I have been planning to blog about, and even some photos to share. But I'll save all of that until later. I'd really like to blog about what's on my mind right now.
I decided a little while ago to change my plans for my driving route. Since I have planned to drive from DC to Colorado via Buffalo, NY and Houston, TX, I realized that this is going to be the perfect opportunity to drive the Natchez Trace (a National Park that links Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS). I'll talk about that in a later post. As you can tell by the title of this post, I am currently typing this to you from New Orleans.
Due to a lot (a LOT) of rain for a day and a half in Mississippi, I arrived in New Orleans a day earlier than I intended, so instead of driving straight to see my friend in Ponchatoula I would take a hotel right in New Orleans tonight and meet up with her tomorrow. So I drove a different route to get into the city than planned.
On one hand, I'm glad that I drove the route that I did. But I have to tell you that it was absolutely and completely depressing. In most of the places I drove past it looks like the storm happened just yesterday. There are fences hanging on their frames, there are broken windows, collapsed walls of homes, and so on. I drove past one neighborhood that I saw from the interstate that had trailers (the infamous FEMA trailers) in every front lawn. The rest of the neighborhoods I drove past were just a mess without any trailers in sight. There were whole shopping plazas vacant with broken signs and damaged buildings. I drove past this type of thing for about 10-15 miles. There was even a hotel that had about 15 floors with all broken windows and damaged walls. And I only drove past one side of the city. Totally depressing ... it made me cry ... even the hotel where I'm staying tonight is next to a shopping mall that is only half used ... the other half looks like it's being cleaned out, but is in bad shape.
Truly, if Katrina had happened yesterday, I can't imagine it looking much worse than what I saw. (Although I know that it must have looked much worse ... at least the interstates were up and running ... and there was a huge traffic jam to the SuperDome to see the Saints game (By the way, thank you to the Saints for beating the Dolphins!! Meanwhile, the Bills beat Detroit IN Detroit! Yay!!) so some things must be working.)
There were some interesting bill boards, too. One advertised a Katrina victims' lawsuit. Another advertised Lowe's "Katrina Cottages". Hmmm....
I don't know what I'm trying to say. I just know that it has been so sad. I hope to have some time to explore tomorrow.
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