July 14 – Fontainebleau State Park, Mandeville, LA

People around the campsite here in Louisiana are very friendly. No matter how many times we might pass by someone, they always lift their hand to give a quick wave – a simple, friendly gesture, which echoes the hospitality we have been shown throughout the south. We jumped into our tent at about 10:30 last night. It was still 80 degrees outside. As we laid in there on our little mats, listening to the whir of the air conditioning units working furiously around us (we seem to be surrounded mostly by RVs and the few tents that are here have AC units sticking out the sides!) I turned to look over at James. Never a fan of the heat, it was difficult for me to tell if they were tears or beads of sweat rolling off his face – probably a mixture of the two. We had a leisurely morning around the campsite before heading off towards New Orleans. We arrived at about 11:30 after journeying over the longest bridge any of us have ever been on, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway that carried us 24 miles across Lake Pontchartrain to the city of New Orleans. The city was as we expected it to be – beautiful balconies enclosed with lacework iron surrounding buildings of gently weathered wood and worn brick. There were neatly dressed business men and women sharing the sidewalk with tourists who lingered on the streets and sidewalks, with large plastic drinking glasses in hand, relics perhaps, from the last Mardi Gras celebration. After a quick walking tour, we stopped at Café du Monde for some iced coffee and beignets (square French doughnuts which came heavily dusted in icing sugar and reminded me a bit of fried dough, only these were much tastier). We walked over to the Mississippi for a quick look at the goings-on there (and interestingly, we saw almost 200 years of sea-vessel engineering floating right past our eyes – the Creole Queen paddleboat, a small tugboat, a cargo ship and the Carnival Triumph which had just pulled out of the dock and was turning to head out to Sea). The kids were excited to watch all that was going on and wanted to climb down the wooden stairs that lead in to the river but there was a man at the bottom doing, well I’m really not sure what he was doing. He had an empty water bottle which he filled with the Mississippi River water. To this he added heaps of Morton sea salt and then proceeded to put his mouth over the bottle. Ben insisted he was probably doing something ‘medicinal’ in nature but James and I had other ideas so the kids were forced to stay with us on the boardwalk above. As we were leaving the city, we drove through the 9th Ward where Fats Domino once lived. There was evidence of rebuilding but many of the houses showed the destruction suffered by Hurricane Katrina. Tomorrow, it’s back to New Orleans for a trolley tour around the city and then a swamp tour in the afternoon (which I’m kind of freaking out about because I have this real irrational fear of alligators). We’re going to grab a po’ boy for lunch in between all the sight seeing (today when we were discussing it, my mother in law thought we said ‘toy boy’ – oh how she squealed with delight! She was slightly disappointed when she learned we were talking about a sandwich….