>>>I just bought a 2001 V70 Cross-Country AWD and took it to Florida and New Orleans. It rides like a Benz, got 26 mpg going 70-75 on the highway too. Great car.
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>>Want to tell us about the trip to New Orleans?
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>Sure, it wasn't half bad. My wife's dad lives in Mexico Beach, FL and we were down visiting him for the week. Saturday morning we started back home and I had told her how much I hated driving back through all the small towns in Alabama, so she suggested we take the interstate most of the way back.
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>Well, I took her to see some of the new houses being built along the coast in Alabama and we wasted most of the day just knocking around. Once we got back on the road heading west, I suggested we go on over to New Orleans and eat dinner. We drove along the beach around Ocean Springs, Gulfport and Biloxi, MS where I had taken supplies down several times and they still haven't got things straightened out. Many of the houses are gone and the only thing left is the slab. The good thing is that many of the businesses are coming back along the coast.
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>Heading into New Orleans (from the West) things are still unsettled. There were miles of apartments, businesses and homes that are still vacant. I don't know that all the people will ever return. It is truly a strange thing to see. Even so, you can see it coming back and the whole area is undergoing an economic boom. There are construction jobs galore, which will drive so much more of the economy.
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>We noticed the area around Harrah's, the River Front and Canal Street didn't appear to have had much water. I was looking for water-marks on the bridge pilings when I got off I-10 and saw the water may have been 3 or 4 feet deep. As we moved closer to Bourbon street we noticed the water line fell quite a bit. I didn't see any water marks around Bourbon, so I don't think the water even got in there.
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>Bourbon Street was the usual foul smelling, nasty people mixed with a few ordinary people, good music and great food. We walked right by Arnouds (sp) where Chris Jefferies, John Miller, and I ate one year during Devcon and Ann Rice came in. That meal cost me over $100 because Jefferies likes to gang tackle expensive wine! Anyway, we wound up at Cafe Beignet where I had the Red Beans and Rice and she had a Muffeletta. The entertainment was Steamboat Willie and his New Orleans Jazz Band. They were great! The Bass player once played with Al Hirt, so they said numerous times. The Banjo player got sounds I never have heard come from one of those things and the trumpet player/singer was excellent as well. We really enjoyed the music and even the atmosphere of the quaint, little place.
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>We stayed until about 11pm and I drove us back home arriving at La Casa Grande around 4 am.


Thank you for the excellent report. It was the best kind of travel piece -- the kind that makes the reader think they were there themself.

I know the Gulf Coast is still in tatters. The volunteer group that I went to Houston with after Katrina has announced it will coordinate further relief trips for the next several years. They are going to Biloxi for a week in August and another week in November. August doesn't look do-able for me but November may be, depending on work and family schedules. As you say, there is still so much to do. This wasn't just a blip in the news cycle and now it's all over and done with. The first stage is getting rid of all the debris, which is in some cases toxic, and then the long process of rebuilding. I would liken the Gulf Coast now to Dresden in 1945. What will the future bring? I don't think anyone really knows.

A friend sent me Anderson Cooper's book a couple of weeks ago. As you might expect, a good part of it focuses on his time along the Gulf Coast during and after Katrina. You can tell the experience moved and changed him. When CNN told him it was time to return to New York he knew they were right, as a newsman, but he was reluctant to go. Anyway, one part of his account will be of interest to you personally. He met a lot of New Orleans cops during his time there and thinks they got a really raw deal in terms of perception. He says only a small percentage vacated, the rest were working day and night and in many cases doing heroic work -- saving lives, literally. They were tired and they were angry about being sneered at because of the actions of a few. One cop Cooper met had been commuting back and forth between double shifts in New Orleans and somewhere near Baton Rouge where his family was staying with relatives. He always travelled in his NOPD cruiser, as N.O. police officers are entitled to do on off-duty time. He said on every trip to Baton Rouge he was pulled over at least once by a Louisiana state trooper on suspicion of deserting. I can see how that kind of thing would eat at a man.