Trip to New Orleans

Last month I had to go to New Orleans for a conference. So, I dragged Mike with me since we've never been there. We had a blast!
We saw the French Quarter, this is us at Jackson Square.
Bourbon Streets an interesting experience, we probably will never go back.

While in New Orleans we did as the New Orleaneans do and ate and ate (don't go to New Orleans if you are dieting, not a good idea). We had po' boys, jambalaya, dirty rice, gumbo, and beignets (like square doughnuts covered in powdered sugar, yummy!). It's hard to eat in New Orleans being pregnant, everything has shellfish in it!

We went to a party on the floor of the SuperDome, and heard the Neville Brothers, and other psuedo-famous people (can't remember who they were now). And for my family, I took a picture of the field which still read "Utah" from the Sugar Bowl. My dad would have been thrilled.









On our last day there, we wanted to take a tour and the only one we could fit in was the "Hurricane Katerina tour". We loaded on a bus for 3 hours and drove around looking at sites leftover from the hurricane. It was shocking. We took pictures to share.



A lot of what we saw was houses where people were trapped. They were trapped because the walls of the canals broke (not the levees) flooding communities within 10 minutes. It's hard to see here, but after the National Guard came through they would mark a house with a gigantic "X" with the date, the number found in the house alive, and the number found dead. This house is a duplex. On the left the X says that 0 people found alive or dead. The X on the right reads that 0 found alive, 2 found dead. We didn't get a picture of it, but the right side of the house still has the hole where people were in the attic and broke through to get air. The worst we saw was one house shows that 0 found alive, 6 found dead. The really scary thing is that the date that the National Guard passed through some of these neighborhoods was a month after the hurricane went through.


These are the canals that run through neighborhoods that lead out to the lake which lead out to the Gulf. You can imagine if this floods it has a few options of where to go. The wall on the right are what broke. These pumps are recent additions. But, it makes me wonder if you are pumping the water backwards, where does it go? There are still miles of houses to the right of those pumps.

Before Katrina there were no vacant lots in New Orleans. I took a picture of what most neighborhoods we went through look like now. Lots of open spaces where houses once stood.
I took a picture of this church because it shows you how high the water line got. Look at the structure in front of the church.

But, on the light side, we stopped to get ice cream at the most darling of parks. We took a picture on a bandstand where John Phillip Sousa played. Yes, that would be my Mike making that face...