5/29 Lake Charles, LA to Pascagoula, MS

Our lodging was at an I-10 interchange, but we found state highway 14 heading south and east through a series of small towns, bypassing the freeway. It was a great road, and had hardly any traffic. We passed through Holmwood, Bell City, Hayes, Lake Arthur, Gueydan, Kaplan, Abbeville, Erath, Delcambre, Garden City, Calumet and Humphreys on our way to Houma, probably the largest settlement on the lower Mississippi River Delta. We stopped briefly at Lake Arthur at a small park along the shore. We parked in the shade of a huge oak tree which was surrounded by a deck and walked along the shore and through the city park. The lake’s shoreline was covered with a film of green growth, and there were a few cypress trees with knuckles rising from the water near shore. Wisps of Spanish moss hanging from the limbs completed the setting.

We drove up and down a few side streets and saw many stately mansions – we also saw some homes that weren’t stately at all. The streets were lined with oak trees, which provided some much needed shade. Nothing seemed to mitigate the humidity, however.

Continuing east along highway 14, we eventually hooked up with US 90, and then onto state highway 182, which led us towards the town of Houma. We stopped along the way at a small graveyard, which we used as a rest stop. Because the water table is so close to the surface in this area, most graves are above ground in concrete vaults, so cemeteries take on a different look. The town of Houma is on the Intracoastal Waterway, and has several other interconnecting canals as well. We eventually found the old section of town, which had one way streets going up or down either side of a canal. We were looking for a place to have some lunch – the catfish restaurant sounded good, but didn’t look so hot, and some others were closed. We eventually settled for a box of fried chicken, which became our evening dinner as well in the form of quesadillas.

From Houma we headed towards New Orleans via US 90. The closer we got to New Orleans, the more residual damage we saw from Hurricane Katrina. Even now, over two years later, many buildings and other structures have not been repaired. We drove down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, and it seemed to be back in business, although the surrounding areas still had many buildings that were either still unoccupied and in disrepair, or simply gone. As we left the French Quarter and headed northeast towards Slidell via surface streets, we saw many residences that still had the red X from the initial post-Katrina searches spray painted on the door, and entire shopping malls and other businesses were abandoned with grass beginning to grow in their parking lots. Many homes along the shore are built on stilts, and those that appeared inhabited were mostly new construction or had had major repairs. We saw just as many pilings with no home at all – they had either been blown away, or the rubble had been cleared. Other homes were obviously in such sad shape as to be uninhabitable. The ‘for sale’ signs far outnumbered the occupied homes.

Staying on US 90, we continued on into Mississippi to see the same sights along the coast. Mississippi has many hotels and casinos in the stretch between Pass Christian and Biloxi, and most of those, if not all, were closed – surrounded by chain link fences with lots of heavy equipment – back hoes and front loaders – standing by for duty. We saw one with a sign that it would open in the summer of 2008, but it appeared that was an optimistic schedule. Others were slated to open in 2010. It appeared business was bad all over. A boardwalk extended along the beach adjacent to the highway for several miles, and at least half the boards were still missing from the storm surge. The same was true of many piers that extended out into the sea – the pilings for the most part were still there, but the boards and timbers were gone or broken and hanging down.

At Bay St. Louis, and again in Biloxi, we passed over bays on brand new bridges, looking down on the ruins of the old bridge. We noted an inset on our Triple A highway map stating that the bridge at Biloxi was out and schedule to open in November of 2007, so we know that particular bridge was only a few months old at most.

We are now in Pascagoula, Mississippi, just short of the Alabama border, so I expect we will be well into the Florida panhandle tomorrow and arrive in the Mims/Titusville area by early Saturday afternoon.