March 27,2007
We are now on the road again heading toward Louisiana. We spent the night at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Beaumont TX. This is the first time we have stayed at a Cracker Barrel. The manager welcomed us to stay and seemed quite pleased. Of course we did eat there. As it turned out there was another rv there and at least one big truck.
As we leave in the morning it is our plan to make it to Mandeville which is across the lake north of New Orleans. We hope to stay at the Fontaine Blue State Park there and have stayed there several before. It is a very nice campground right on the lake. However it did sustain a great deal of damage from the hurricane. At that time their web sight said it would be closed for 18 months. We checked recently and now it says they are open and does not mention the hurricane. When we arrived there we were told they would have a spot for 2 nights but otherwise they were booked up. We took the 2 nights, drove in and found most of the campground is still closed due to the damage. There are many huge hundreds of years old, Live Oak trees on these grounds. They did survive but have been stripped of most all foliage and lots of branches. They are working to get the campground completely open but still have lots of work to do. We could not find any campgrounds around here that had open spots. So we will head on east into Mississippi. Gene called and found an RV park in Waveland. This is one of the hardest hit towns in Mississippi. We are amazed that there is an RV park open there. I-10 in Mississippi is about 5 miles from the gulf shore. As we turn off and head south towards the shore we immediately see effects of the hurricane. In the towns of Waveland and Bay Saint Louis which is just adjacent to it, many businesses have never recovered. Complete strip malls sit completely vacant with no signs of recovery. Some houses have been rebuilt but definitely not a majority. There is storm damage clean up everywhere. There are many areas with FEMA trailers, some with just a few and others with many. The small campground we are staying at, only 14 spaces, has a few long term local people and a few who seem to be here doing rebuilding. Along the coast there are 11 cities, from Waveland on the west to Pascagoula on the east. They are all connected together and all were heavily damaged by the hurricane. One day we took a drive along the coast to Gulf Port. It is amazing to us how little rebuilding has been done. Much of the litter from the hurricane has been removed but most of the lots along the coast are vacant with little sign of rebuilding. As we get to Gulf Port the businesses there seem to have recovered better than anywhere else. Of course the casinos are open and that could have something to do with the rest of the business community. Another day we drove into New Orleans from Slidell. Even the bridges across Lake Ponchatrain are damaged from the storm however they have made temporary repairs to it. We begin immediately seeing the devastating damage for Katrina. The majority of the damaged houses are still sitting just as they were after the storms. Many businesses are still closed. It appears that mostly national chain businesses have repaired and are open for business. We have seen many, many large apartment complexes unoccupied. We had a nice dinner with our niece and family who live in New Orleans and had a chance to visit with them about the recovery of New Orleans and the gulf area. Jenny’s husband John explained to us the reason the apartment complexes and commercial businesses have not rebuilt and probably won’t. The required flood insurance is now so high it is not feasible to rebuild due to very high monthly premiums and even higher deductibles. Seems no wonder that people are not coming back as so few apartments are available. The French Quarter and River Walk are pretty much as we saw them last. There are not near as many tourists as there were before Katrina but the traffic on the street seems to be quite heavy. On our way out of town we drove along Lake Shore Drive which is on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The houses along here are more expensive homes. They all had many feet of flood waters in them however many of these homes have been rebuilt and look very nice. We took Highway 90 on the way back and on our way out of New Orleans we saw several boats along side of the road where they landed when the waters receded. It seems to us that only around ¼ of the damaged homes have been rebuilt. That was kind of depressing to us. We decided to not take any more pictures as we would like to remember how it was before the hurricane and not dwell on the present condition