Random Thoughts

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Geo: 29.9098, -90.2075

Up early this morning (5 AM) and out of the hotel by 6. Car returned without any mishaps. Travelled a total of 1455 miles. The car was a pleasure to drive. It was fully equipped with all options including a full length sunroof.

We had a tight connection at Dallas-Fort Worth. We had tried the day before to get a seat assignment without any luck. To our pleasant surprise we were able both get aisle and exit seats which will be nice because it is a 3.5 hour flight. Our connection in Seattle was also tight but went smoothly and the parking service arrived at the Bellingham airport to pick us up and get us to my car.

The first portion of our trip was great being back in Louisiana and seeing the historical sites and eating creole and Cajun cooking - always a favorite for us. We took advantage of the trip to enjoy the fish (Zelma) as well as oysters, shrimp, jambalaya, crawfish, gumbo and hush puppies.

This area has so much history. Many of the settlers in this area came from eastern Canada. The mix of the French, Spanish and native American makes for lots of interest.

Our visit with Bill & Debbie was great. They are terrific hosts and we felt very at home in the relaxed environment. The antics of the two cats was also fun to watch. Pensacola is a very interesting city. It is situated on the Gulf and fortunately is in an area which is seldom hit by hurricanes so far. It is the oldest settlement in the US but not continuously. First settlers were the Spanish and many of the street names reflect that. We had another chance to visit the Naval Air Museum which is continuously changing. Fortunately Bill had a couple of days off so we did some travelling in the area. This part of the Gulf has less tourism than other areas. In many ways it is a hidden gem and we look forward to returning.

After our stay there we headed East towards New Orleans. The weather further north in Alabama had turned cold so we decided to stay close to the coast. The last couple of days were definitely cooler but we had lots of layers of clothing.

Our base was Ocean Springs which again is a very pleasant smaller community just outside of Biloxi which is a major tourist location. It seems the economy is driven by tourism, snowbirds and casinos.

We visited Beauvoir and toured the Jefferson-Davis house. There were some civil war demonstrations on the grounds. The commentary by one of the people there made one think that the animosity between the North and the South still exists. His opinion was that the South would prefer what he called a Constitutional Republic rather than a democracy. I looked it up and I am not sure what exactly he was referring to since a government of that type by definition can allow for some citizens not having the right to vote. Nevertheless, the feeling was that the taxes from the South go North and don't come back. In some ways the animosity may be similar to the Quebec - Canada situation.

Our trip headed East and took us through some areas of very nice homes. However, there were also many open lots where houses had stood before Katrina. Basically, in many places the first two blocks from the water had been devastated. Rebuilt homes tended to be built on stilts with parking for vehicles under the house. Also, it seems houses with hip roofs seemed to survive better. As we got closer to New Orleans we entered Bayou country. Here one could see even more devastation with boats sitting in trees and destroyed homes which had not yet been rebuilt. At one point we passed through the levee gates. These can be closed to protect New Orleans.

We came into New Orleans on highway 90. This is a fairly poor area and again lots of buildings which showed the devastation of Katrina. We eventually got back onto a major highway and found our way to the hotel.

We have been very lucky with the weather. We had a day of light rain showers when we were driving North in Louisiana and one night of heavy torrential rain, lightning and thunder in Pensacola. Generally it has been short sleeve weather but not beach weather.

Some technical notes. This trip I did not bring a laptop or a netbook. The pictures were all shot on my iPhone and transferred to my iPad Mini. TravelPod has an iPad app so everything was then done on the iPad Mini. In addition, I have DropBox on my phone and was able to use WiFi to save all my pictures in the cloud. 500 pictures took about 20%25 of my storage and when I get home I can transfer to my laptop. My phone calls were all made using Skype and everywhere we stayed had free WiFi. In addition the iPad Mini was used to make all hotel bookings, etc. I have Kobo as well so there was no need to carry any print books. This trip was a bit of an experiment to see how well all of this would work. My conclusion is that I will not be travelling with a laptop or netbook again. This combination is lightweight, compact and does all that I want it to do.

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