Louisiana

Louisiana Trail

We drove from Houston to Baton Rouge on the 15th August, having swapped the old Caddy for an identical new Caddy (except with ninja black leather interior) in Houston that morning. The old Caddy, having some sort of a Spectrum inside it, was claiming that the oil was worn out. It suited us to swap it anyway as the other one was filthy and the exhaust had been grounded on more than one occasion…

As soon as we got towards Louisiana the ground frequently gave way to swamps and bayous, and the I10 is raised for miles in places on concrete stilts. I regret not detouring off the I10 a little more though as it’s very hard to see anything from the road, it’s basically tree-lined on both sides for a thousand miles into Florida.

The following day we completed the short distance into New Orleans, spending the afternoon and evening there without getting robbed or shot, which was nice. The oppressive humidity made walking around uncomfortable, and I was unable to see the grave of ‘Voodoo Queen’ Marie Laveau as the cemetery was shut! Steve and I also failed to locate the authentic Voodoo Temple even though I was clutching a carefully made biro map, so all in all our Voodoo exposure was rather disappointingly limited to seeing some glazed alligator heads in one of the gift shops.

I didn’t find New Orleans to be all that photogenic, so once again my experience of the place is summed up in a single frame, showing the typical ironwork in the French Quarter. This image was taken on 16th August, less than two weeks before Hurricane Katrina made landfall and devastated the whole area.

New Orleans