New Orleans 2010

On February 8 and 9, I (Dave) met a couple friends in New Orleans for a very quick trip. We scheduled the trip before the Saints were in the Superbowl and ended up being in New Orleans for the Superbowl parade on the only night we were there. The trip was less than 48 hours, but we had a good time none the less. The pictures are out of order, but you should get the gist.

This is a swamp we found as we were driving around. I nearly swamped myself trying to get on and off of this derelict boat.

We stopped by a plantation house that was built in the late 1700's. The tour was very interesting, and we learned quite a bit about the slavery system in N.O. during that time period.

Here is one of the "new and improved" homes that was built post Hurricane Katrina. In fact, this is one of the many crazy styles that Brad Pitt decided to build to help the people out. This house can actually float 12' before causing damage.

Here is the Six Flags park that is out of business. All the rides are still intact, just vacant. This area got up to 21' of flood water.

This is what many of the houses looked like. The foundations are completely undermined. Many of the houses had signs indicating when they would be demolished.

This and the next picture go together. The picture below is the location of one of the levee breaks. There are many foundation slabs in this area without houses on them. The rest of the houses are new. Of the 1.6 million people the lived in N.O. before the floods, 600,000 never returned.

This is a typical house that has not yet been demolished (5 years after the floods). The signage spray painted on the side indicates the date and the agency that checked the house for survivors. The zero on the bottom line indicates that no one was found dead here. You can see from the line where the water stayed for about 6 weeks.

These two pictures are near the Mississippi river around the French Quarter. There was very little damage in this area. The picture above is one of the levee gates.

The parade took over 2 hours to reach our location, but there were thousands of people crowding the streets to see.

Kade would enjoy these pictures. We had shrimp gumbo, fried gator, and po boy sandwiches for lunch. We also had some great Jambalaya for dinner.

The video below is a short glimpse into the riot of the parade. When it was over, the streets were absolutely covered in garbage. However, by early the next morning, it was all spick and span again.