Day 46 – We have time to kill this morning because we can’t check in to our next campground until 2 p.m., and our drive should take between 2 and 3 hours. No need to rush out this time. 7 a.m., 56 degrees, sunny & no longer humid, gorgeous out. We added Mississippi to our State sticker map and sat around reading until time to depart. As we were getting ready to go, two Mississippi Sandhill Cranes flew NOISILY over the campground; they make funny noises as they fly.
We left at 11:40 a.m., sunny & pleasant, 79 degrees. The girls were pretty good about going into their travel space; I don’t think they liked this campground any more than we did. We travelled thru the rest of lower Mississippi and entered Louisiana through many bayou & swamp lands, and large lakes & rivers, on long bridges which were built to allow Interstate 10 to cross them. What’s the difference between a bayou and a swamp? From the DeLorme Louisiana Atlas & Gazetteer: “Swamps are similar to lakes but are dominated by water-resistant vegetation. Bayous are sluggish streams influenced by tidal pull.” We learn something new every day.
We had to drive through New Orleans via the 10/90 to get to our campground, drove right by the Superdome and visualized the pictures of all those people that were evacuated because of Hurricane Katrina. We were on the Interstate, caught in a traffic jam on roads raised above the regular City traffic, so we were able to get a good look at areas of the City from the road and looked down at the Mississippi River as we crossed it several times as it wound back and forth. There’s much poverty here and so much history, a very interesting area built right at sea level. Lake Pontchartrain is huge and looks like an ocean.
Literature says it’s not advisable to drive and park in New Orleans, and it’s suggested that people take a bus or ferry, rather than trying to find parking places. We are staying below and slightly beyond New Orleans in a city called Westwego, a stopover on the way to a small strip of land on the Gulf coast. We won’t be going into NOLA at this time, but later in the trip we’ll be staying at a campground right on Lake Pontchartrain; they have shuttle buses which run from there to the French Quarter several times daily. Everywhere we go, we see these huge pipes, 3 to 4 feet across and larger, that are used to pump water out of New Orleans into the drainage canals to prevent the City from flooding. Large pumping stations pump water through those pipes into the drainage canals. Everywhere we go, we see water (canals, bogs, swamps, lakes) and they’re always right at the level of the road – sea level. It would take very little rise to cause significant flooding. There are 15 to 20 foot levees separating the canals from the bordering areas. There are gates (which are just sections of the levee) that can be open and shut to prevent flooding, walling off flood-prone areas in the event of a storm. Obviously, something went majorly wrong when Hurricane Katrina arrived. And we can’t help but wonder what will happen when the next huge storm arrives.
We got to our campground, Bayou Segnette State Park, at 1:45 p.m. Check-in time is 2 p.m., and the RV’s are lined up at the office. It’s going to be crowded – oh yeah, it’s Friday & another weekend crowd is upon us – we tend to lose track of what day it is. We check in and go to our site, #C1007. Lots of big rigs, we are dwarfed in comparison. The campsites are nicely spaced from each other in most instances and the campground is nearly full. As the day went on, more vehicles arrived. We have a nice site, but we’re located directly across from the shower facility & restrooms AND a playground. The noise level is quite loud, kids screaming & dogs barking, and this goes on until 10 p.m. Note to self: make sure we don’t get a campsite in the vicinity of the restroom/playground grouping.
After setting up and having lunch we attempted to sit outside and read, but it was too busy and noisy. We decided to check out the rest of the campground. It’s very large and has a wonderful day use area which will be perfect for a bike ride tomorrow. Hardly anyone there, they are all collected near our campsite. LOL. We go to check out the canal and the cabin area: WOW. These “cabins” as they call them, I’d call them almost houseboats, are floating on pontoons in a lovely canal, very private and secluded away from the campground. Screened porches, wrap-around decks which one man was fishing from, really nice. If we didn’t have an RV, that would definitely be a great way to go! $120 per night; we paid $24 per night, but still……..
The high today was 81 degrees, sunny & breezy. We don’t have shading at our site and are in full sun. We’d had the air conditioning on in the RV because it was almost 90 in there. It was nice when the sun went down and we could open windows as evening set in. There’s lots of areas we can drive to for sight-seeing tomorrow if it gets too loud and busy at the campground; bayous & swamps of course, and we found a drive in the mapbook which would take us thru “cajun country”. This is such an interesting area!
Notice how they don’t remind in French to keep Louisiana beautiful??? (hint hint :-))))… so green still… Maybe some day it’ll be our turn!!!! Almost catching up finally with you guys… Dumb question: any code for the color of the states on your sticker map :-)?
The map stickers are colored using a standard mapping algorithm I assume. No touching states can have the same color. We just use the stickers that came with the map!
and on the map below, could you make the “point” change to where you are??? (I guess not but blue could be where you planned, green where you are and black where you had been :-))) so picky as always!!!)
Yeah, I’d like to do that. I also wanted to include the actual route we followed as a line, but haven’t had a chance to figure out how to do that without having problems.