A trip to "The French Quarter" and "A New Feature!"

We got an early start this morning, and had everything packed up and we were on the road to "New Orleans" by 9:30 a.m. (that is early for us these days...). We pulled into our campsite around 1:00 p.m. and got set up and had some lunch. We decided we would off load the bikes, and take a trip down to the French Quarter.

One thing for sure, there is still a lot of destruction and ruined buildings left over from Katrina which happened in 2005. House after house destroyed and simply left. Whole neighborhoods were destroyed. Unbelievable! some homes have been repaired, and you get a mixed bag of some nice homes, and then some destroyed on the same street. I could not believe all the business that were destroyed and simply did not open again. Wallmart simply destroyed their building and did not rebuild. We are staying at an RV park and the owner this afternoon told us he had 3 1/2 feet of water on the RV park. Enough on this, as everyones remembers the sights of New Orleans on the TV not that long ago. It is painfull to see.

We got on the bikes and drove right to the French Quarter. We stopped for some tourist info and away we went. The French Quarter was not hurt badly by the Hurricane, or they have made repairs. It is in good shape and very active. We spent the afternoon walking around. We parked the bikes on a side street, and hoped they would be there when we got back...(they were).

We took quite a few pictures of the streets and buildings, they are very neat. Here are a few...

They had some streets closed off, and street busters were all set up and doing their thing...

The guy in the white suit set people up for some fancy poses and pictures for a fee... (everything was for a fee...)

This guy glued a set of horns to the front of his motorcycle, put his guitar out, and and bucket to collect money from people who take a picture of it....crazy....

There were some singers and performers...

And this guy would wright a new poem for you and read it to you.....??????......

There were lots of vendors selling art work.....

We walked down to the waterfront area on the river, and they had it all fixed up and a nice board walk to follow. They had a nice IMAX theatre and aquarium for the tourist. Lots of Palm Trees!

And last, but not least, we stopped at a little outdoor theatre right on one street, and these four Performers put on a street show. About 200 people gathered around to watch. It was very good, and funny, we could hardly contain ourselves as these guys disrupted every ones lives walking by... you had to be there...

The act even made it out into the street and stopped the traffic.....they were nuts....

All in all, a terrific day that we enjoyed. It was nice to see New Orleans, we always wanted to go there, so scratch that one off our list...

I mentioned a new feature today on the blog. If you scroll down to the bottom after reading this blog you will see a map I have put on which shows where we have been and where we have stayed. I am just starting to play with this and it may evolve over time.

Tomorrow we will head out again and continue on towards Arizona. Will probably make it into Texas tomorrow.