Arriving in New Orleans and back to Crawford Landing Camp

Sunday afternoon we left for New Orleans to drop Mark at the NOLA airport for his flight home.  We had a little time to kill, so Mark wanted to pick up an additional King Cake to take home.  He even bought us one for dropping him at the airport...completely unnecessary gesture but it tasted great!

On I-10 coming into New Orleans, we spent several miles driving on elevated bridges above the swamps and bayous.

We could see the flood walls as we entered the perimeter of the city, designed to keep floodwaters out of the metro area; they circle the city like a giant fortress or like the Berlin Wall. ("File Photo")

We also drove along the southwestern shore of Lake Ponchartrain, which being brackish is almost more like a large inland sea than a lake.  It was primarily the storm surge waters of Lake Ponchartrain (not the Mississippi and not the Gulf) that damaged the levees during Hurricane Katrina, spilling into downtown area flooding upwards of 80% of New Orleans. In the photo below, Lake Ponchartrain is on the left.

Here you will find a very interesting interactive graphic explaining the flooding of New Orleans during Katrina.

Also, we drove past the Bonnet Carre Spillway, a flood control device taming floodwaters of the Mississippi River.  The Bonnet Carre allows water from a flooding Mississippi River to flow into Lake Ponchartrain, which acts as somewhat of a catch basin.  It's difficult to capture a pic from the interstate, so we provide another file photo.

After dropping Mark off at the airport, we decided to scope out some RV parks within city limits that we had considered staying at.  The nice ones where up to a whopping $99 per night (that's to park a motorhome, and not "peak" pricing which climbs to over $300 per night during Mardi Gras); needless to say that wasn't an option for us.  We saw a few that were $20-$30 per night, but in a "ghetto" industrial section of town that Katrina would have done nothing but help.  We decided to forego all RV parks in New Orleans proper, and head back to Crawford Landing camp in Slidell, which was quiet, free, well-kept, and with which we were already familiar.