Monday Decision time!

Having reached Louisiana, we now realize that there is a lot more to see here than we have time for. So we have decided that we will skip the Arcadian, Bayou, Cajun and wetland areas and head straight for New Orleans. This area will then form the basis for the start of our next trip. So rather than crossing the Mississipi, we travelled back to the East until we hit I55 at McComb, where we called in at the local Walmart for supplies and a Subway lunch. We then went south to New Orleans, trying not to be seasick on the way. The road surface of I55 is made up of short concrete sections, which make a merry kdoink, kdoink, kdoink as you drive over the joints. However, when you do it with an 8000lb trailer, it comes out like kerbang! Kerbang! Kerbang!, as the trailer bounces across each joint. Now lets see! 93 miles, each concrete pad is about 20 feet, that’s 250 to the mile, that about 25000 Kerbang’s we had to endure (oh alright there were one or two tarmac sections). Then we thought it would be great to arrive in New Orleans in style, by crossing the Pontchartrain Lake, as there is a toll bridge across it. The bridge is 27 miles long! When you start on the bridge, you cannot see the other side. It is wider than our English channel! Although its only about 15 feet deep. Guess what, it’s a bridge made of concrete sections, so 27 more miles of Kerbang! Kerbang! Kerbang!
We survived the concrete roads and found a nice State Park in a place called Westwega, about 3 miles from the centre of New Orleans. Only problem is it is on the wrong side of the river. Now there are two river crossings at New Orleans. The western bridge, called the Huey Long Bridge is high and narrow and Long (Sally’s fear of heights nearly made it a Huey as well). We brought the trailer across that during rush hour, one side of the trailer inches from a steel kerb, the other side across the white line of the two lanes, and cars still passed us. The Eastern bridge, lovingly called the ‘Miss Bridge’, is a long viaduct that sweeps round to a toll bridge and is the one that the news programmes showed buses and the army moving along during Katrina. You get a great view of central New Orleans as you can see the Superbowl and the skyline. You immediately drop down into the French Quarter of New Orleans, beside the huge Convention Center. This is the way that we would go into New Orleans on our first adventure there.