The Gary & Connie tour, part 3 -

As some of you know, in Key West the water really is the wonderful fluorescent blues and greens that show up in photographs. The lightest colors are over sand and the darker are deeper waters, with almost brown/blue where plants are growing under water. The mangrove can start growing where some bit of sand or coral is within a few inches of the normal
water surface. Their roots trap flotsam (including seeds of other plants), and soon there is a small island just waiting for a few birds and insects and more plants. The Florida Keys are primarily a coral reef foundation and parts of that reef are still alive and growing.
This day we go north just to the southern edge of Miami and then west to the Gulf Coast. That means a lo-ong stretch of highway through the Florida Everglades. They've made it a pretty straight shot for eighty miles or so as it all looks the same and it's all pretty flat. There are air-boat companies for swamp tours, occasional little Indian villages (they still use thatched
roofs on many of their buildings), and long drifts of Spanish moss on the cypress that grow wherever there is higher ground. We see a lot of bird life (especially hawks and egrets), but it seems to be the wrong time of year for anything to be blooming. There are special crossing signs - Panther Crossing, next three miles (can you see your child hurrying home from the
neighbor's before it gets totally dark?). And the smallest official post office building in the United States (and continuously operated since 1953). The regular one burned to the ground one night and they pressed a storage shed into service (temporarily, they thought). Now it has it's own official roadside sign. We spend the night on the Gulf side of Florida in the town of Naples. So-o lovely! There are lots of big houses and a quite extensive canal system in what would normally be the alleyway, so the home owner can keep his boat handy. We expected to spend some time at a beach this day but that appears to be difficult for a tourist. Visitors can feed the meters while locals have some kind of "Beach Permit" sticker in their windshield. So, we drive north. Fort Myers, Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte really got it from 'Hurricane Charley'. Most of the roofs show some damage. Many businesses appear to be out of business. Large piles of every kind of debris line the streets and highways. This appears to be the blue tarp capitol of the state. Their business, street and highway signs are mostly missing or just a skeleton remains. It is very sad and seems a bit like we are invading their privacy and shouldn't be here unless we are bringing supplies, wielding a broom or hammer or helping someone move.
Things look fairly normal again for several miles up the coast but as we get into the Florida Panhandle we enter 'Hurricane Ivan's' territory. The main Pensacola Bay Bridge on Highway 10 was pretty badly damaged. This is a four lane highway on two, two lane, three mile long bridges side by side. The Gulf side is very tore up with about one third of it in the water (not all
adjacent), as the winds capriciously lifted one, two or three sections totally off their pillars, skipped one or two sections and then took out the next one. Some pillars are twisted like clay toys and some sections teeter precariously on one or two pillars with the other end down in the water. This will be a long, expensive project to fix. Traffic passes in two lanes on what would ordinarily be only West bound. The newly assigned East bound lane appears empty, but mid-span we come to a big truck not running. As we leave the bridge, we pass East bound traffic backed up for several miles (so-o glad we were westbound :-).
The pines took a real beating here. The road signs are down as in other places, but the local road crews have stood them up against whatever is close (even nearby trees or brush), so us poor tourists can at least see who the next exit is for. Neighboring Alabama was also hard hit. The worst was one twisted mobile home clear up on one side against some trees and a business in such a shambles that we could not decide what it had been. And again, the blue tarps are every where. We drive past Pascagoula (where Ray Stevens grandma lived), and arrive in Biloxi, Mississippi in time to tour the old town and see lots of huge, old mansions. We're getting towards the end of the day and we're on a road that is right on the waterfront of the
Gulf of Mexico. So we continue on to Gulfport (Jefferson Davis had an estate here and the mansion is still there and beautifully preserved). Only new building (casinos and hotels), are on the waterside of the road. There is a wonderful long white sand beach in front of most of the older part of town tho' Gulf water is not very appealing here compared to the western side of
Florida (Frank tells us later, that is because the Mississippi brings so much stuff down off the continent). It is a bit grey looking in the sky too, but we take a long walk on that special beach before bedtime.
The next day dawns bright and sunny, perfect for a drive to New Orleans. We stay on the state route so we can see the country side better and it was so worth it. We saw mostly bayou country. ALL the yards are lower than the road and ALL the houses are up on stilts. Boats and cars are usually parked under the houses if anything is there. Many fancier houses try to disguise the fact that they're on stilts but if the garage doors are open you can see that they're empty with brick or pipe piers underneath. There is a lot of debris here too, in neat piles along side the road as if expecting someone to haul it away. Water is very high with many yards still flooded. They say Lake Pontchartrain is over it's banks and many bayous were so full we
couldn't tell where their edges normally are.
Downtown New Orleans traffic is not at all bad. We stayed right on State Route 90 until we got close to the French Quarter and then drove down famous Canal Street. The Quarter itself has VERY narrow streets with parking on only one side and all of them are one way. It seems very old, and historic and surprisingly clean as if the building owners take a lot of pride in
their property. Some streets had trucks making deliveries which added to the congestion. We found an empty spot at Burgundy and Saint Ann. The Louis Armstrong Park was behind us as we walked and gawked toward Jackson Square,
one side of which is the levee to keep out the Mississippi floods and the Quarter side has a white cathedral they built especially for the visit of the Pope (someone said this Pope has been here twice). We stopped at a couple of sidewalk cafes to check the menu and settled on a place offering a one person lunch called the Taste of New Orleans. It started with a bowl of fele' gumbo (shrimp, crawfish and alligator in a veggie soup). Next, a big platter of one third jambalya (a dryer rice and veggie mix with cajun seasoning), one third crawfish pie, and one third their traditional red beans and rice. The waitress told us it was lots of food and kindly brought us two spoons and two forks (she was right, it was more than sufficient for two). After lunch, we went a different way back to the vehicle so we could walk on historic Bourbon Street.
As we leave New Orleans behind on the way to Baton Rouge, we cross lots of water. Many roads are up on stilts and there are no houses in these swamps (but lots of egrets :-). Not very many miles west of Baton Rouge is the Atchafalaya River Basin. Probably due to the huge delta the Mississsippi has laid down over the years, this river really spreads out as it lazily rolls down to the sea. It's about like crossing a huge lake with lots of trees on every slight mound. One bridge was eighteen miles long - two lanes each way but no 'on' or 'off' ramps. The whole basin is over thirty miles across and the space in between the two elevated roads is a canal much of the way. 
Next we drive to Houston and Katy to see the Frank Northup family. Only Frank is home when we arrived in time for a good tour of their home, the neighborhood and MariDawn's store. We went out to a great Mexican meal just down the block in the same shopping center. The boss says 'Frank is a good man', and brought us a complimentary platter of appetizers that were so-o good. We got back to their house, in time for the third Presidential debate and the playoffs before the World Series. Later, Frank plugged in our camera card and sent a few shots to Rick (did they blow up your computer, Rick?). The girls are checking on their clothes and getting ready to go in the morning for a special visit to a scrapbooking product company in Utah which had invited MariDawn and was paying for the trip. Isn't that super? As many of you know, this family are wonderful hosts and we sure enjoyed our time with them even if it was wa-ay too short. 

love Connie
p.s. I'll send pictures in smaller batches again to save your computer memories - these are the tiny post office and it's sign, the post office in the background of a 'Panther Crossing' sign (I have since learned that they are an endangered species and seem to be disappearing from the Everglades from something in the eco system), and Gary at the Gulfport, Mississippi beach