Is this HELL??

Don't know what these bushes are, but they're all over the place, in bloom, and they smell delicious!!

We're on the new highway/bridge....they're taking down the one to the right....

Taking it down...

coming in to New Orleans..

KOA

Good evening, Family and Friends wherever you are,

There is a hell on earth, truly, and it's called New Orleans. It is so hot here I can barely stand it. And it's not just me.....really......Mommy is suffering wicked. The heat and humidity really irritate her eye, and the sweat....the stuff that runs down her face into her eye.....is salty!! Think that doesn't burn??? Me?? I just sit in front of the fan and pant.....I hope they decide to put the air conditioner on, but it only blows cold air out of one place in the ceiling, and doesn't do a very good job of cooling the camper off. Soooo, we're just waiting for the cool breezes of evening to do the job. It was 92 degrees when we got here, with high humidity. Looked like fog, almost.

We're in a KOA campground right near the Mississippi River. Tomorrow we're going to go touring, so I'll be able to tell you more about the area then. So far we haven't seen any of the destruction from Katrina......but there are many new buildings and homes around. And, oh my dog, bridges! I've never seen more bridges....going over highways, waterways, lakes, rivers, canals.......unreal.

So....lots to tell you about today. First of all......Daddy decided early on this morning not to use his blinkers. He didn't want to confuse anyone and cause an accident. The other cars seemed to know when someone was going to change lanes.....ESP, perhaps??......and the weaving from lane to lane was interesting to watch. We decided not to go as fast as they were, just in case, and we pretty much just stayed in the right hand lane. Seemed safer there. We pounded paws west as that big storm was traveling east and north, so we didn't run into any bad weather. There were areas of gray, and some smoke, but mostly it was sunny and nice.

Alabama highways are very clean....not much litter at all, and there were crews all over mowing and picking up trash. There were even prisoners picking up trash. I don't know why all the other states don't use their prisoner manpower along the highways. They even pick up the dead tires in Alabama. Not so Mississippi, however. Mississippi is trashy. If they'd pay more attention to trash and less to having a church every half mile, the state might look better. I know, I know, we only saw a small part of this state, but it didn't leave a good impression. Louisiana was better, or at least the part we saw so far was.

We went over the Bay of St. Louis as we came into New Orleans......on a llllooooonnnnnggggg bridge. Daddy said it had been a long time since we'd seen an exit.....but we would have landed in the water!! Silly man.

Anyhow, here we are.....land of heat, fire ants, humidity, bridges, Cajun food, and jazz. I'll tell you what we see tomorrow. Hope you all had a great day.

I love you all,

Juni