Today was the most typical day of the trip, so there isn’t much to share. We drove most of the day and were hit by some heavy rain. It quickly passed though and we ended up getting a campsite in Arcadia, just minutes from Punta Gorda. We had two warm pools to ourselves here. We also had some ant spray, as there are many fire ants here in Florida.

Another semi-typical day today. Before heading out this morning we checked out the beach at the campground. The water of the Gulf Coast was crazy warm and the sand is white. We gathered some sea shells and headed out. Before we knew it, we were having lunch beside the main bridge that connects Panama City Beach to Panama City. The water was filled with Hermit Crabs and fish. I put on Kelly’s snorkle to check them out closer and to see if I could find one of the neat spiral shells that they use for homes. Wouldn’t you know it, ever shell I found was occupied. Oh well.

Other than me finding Chris’ lost flashlight in the glove box, we simply drove today, spending the night at Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park Campground. Lots of kids, but we had an entire section of the grounds to ourselves, as the man at the counter said “We don’t get many tenters through here”.

A beautiful morning here in New Orleans. The sun is shining, it’s nice and hot, and our vehicle is infested with hundreds of tiny ants!!!

We awoke this morning to find out that the ants were small enough to get into the Jeep. They were marching by the hundreds along all of the door frames, in and around the cooler, and down and around the floor matts. Great, just great.

As Kelly constantly freaked out making faces at the sight of all the ants, we brushed them away with the snow brush we had inside the Jeep, did a quick check for more (not removing much of our items), then headed off as we had plans to make a swamp tour for noon.

New Orleans East was quite the sight. Most of it was abandoned as Katrina had turned most of the housing and department stores into boarded up buildings with no rooves. Large Toy’s R Us stores were boarded up and all of the trees were snapped like twigs. As we got nearer to the swamp tour location, there were sailbots and small houses along side the road. The nearest water we could see was very far away, so who knows how far these abandoned vessiles were carried. It was like a graveyard.

I almost forgot, while killing some time in the morning before our tour, we decided to check out a cemetary. Seems creepy, I know. But cemetaries here in Louisiana are much different than most other places. Why? Well, New Orleans is over 42 feet (or was it meters) below sea level, so all cemetary graves are above ground in sarcofocises(sp?). It was neat to see. Entire families have been layed to rest together in small marble buildings set in rows. I took a couple of photos, but I felt weird taking photos in a cemetary. Anyway, kinda neat to see.

At 11:30am we arrived at Cajun Pride Swamp Tours. Not to get into too much detail about it, I’ll let you know that we had Captain Ted as our guide and we got to see some wild alligators in the Pearl River. We also saw some hurricane torn cabins while Cpt. Ted tossed out tonnes of information about the area that he had collected over his years. Cpt. Ted even got the gators right over to the boat with marshmallows which was really cool. It was very cool. The whole tour was 2 hours. Another we recommend if you’re in the New Orleans East area.

After the swamp tour, it was back on the highway where we zipped through Mississippi in a couple of hours, then went through Alabama in less time. Funny enough, the song Sweet Home Alabama played just minutes before we went through. Before we knew it, we were in Florida. Nothing like hitting four states in one day.

We couldn’t find a state park that we had planned to stay at for the evening, so we drove on to the next one. Now, remember those ants we had? Well, we kept finding some roaming around every now and then and after Chris opened the cooler to find hundreds inside, we pulled over to examine the situation.

Ants had overcome our cooler. We yanked it out of the Jeep, only to find the most ants I have ever seen in my entire life, making a new home out of ours. To give you an idea of how many ants were under our cooler, I will simply say that it looked like we had a black carpet layed out. There were… THOUSANDS of them. “Holy S***!!!!” we all gasped simultaneously as Chris moved the cooler out. It was insane. I coated them all with Off bug spray and scooped out as many as I could. It was getting late, so we said screw it, put the cooler back, and jetted to the next camp, Naverra Campground. While Chris hung out at the site, Kelly and myself took the Jeep (of which we completely gutted) and vacuumed out the entire thing. Ants and all.

One thing I forgot to mention as well. The iPod had shuffled more than 900 songs before Chris went and messed it up again.

Today we’re off to New Orleans. At 9:15am we entered into Baton Rouge. We only passed through, however, as we weren’t really sure what to see here. We had plans for a swamp tour anyway, so we continued on the highway until we got to our exit. The highway, you should know, is all over water. After Lafayette and Baton Rouge, it’s all swamp and bayous, so for miles and miles at a time the highway would travel over water on a bridge that sometimes appeared to never end.

As we pulled into where the swamp tour location was, we noticed many large objects scattered on the road. We quickly realized what they were. The giant grasshoppers, only this time, there were lots of them all over the road.

It was impossible not to run some over, so Kelly cringed as we pulled into the parking lot. A big sign stared us in the face. “CLOSED”, it read. We were confused as we knew they had a tour depart at an earlier time than we had arrived. Chris went in and sure enough, they were open. However, the next tour wasn’t until noon and it was currently 10am. Waiting around for 2 hours was a complete waste of time, so we changed our plans and decided to do the tour tomorrow and use today to browse New Orleans.

10:30am, we arrived at the only KOA in New Orleans. Located in New Orleans West, the campground was packed, occupied mostly by locals who had lost their homes to the hurricane less than one year ago. They ended up letting us set up camp in a location that wasn’t originally a campsite, but was turned into one temporarily after the hurricane. Apparently the campground was used to accomodate volunteers and firefighters after the storm.

Traces of Katrina were scattered around the city as we drove into downtown New Orleans after setting up camp. Piles of sandbags lay unwanted and the rubble of buildings could be seen on every other block. Locals told us that only 70% of the city had been restored to this point.

We parked and wondered the French Quarter for a few hours, stopping in for some drinks at one of the many bars. Drinking in the streets is legel here, so there were a few staggering abound who had had their afternoon fill by 2pm. Oh and, we decided that since we only had ham sandwiches for lunch, that we would find a place to grab a small bite. A recommendation for you… a great little spot to grab a bite is Napoleans House. Here we got to sample some true authentic Louisiana Seafood Gumbo. Mmm, tasty.

After we toured “the quarter”, we headed back to camp for the ever popular afternoon swim. We were all particularly dehydrated after the day at the waterpark, so we made sure to drink lots of cold fluids today. After grabbing dinner at a restaurant that was recommended by some locals we met in the pool (who had just returned to New Orleans after taking a trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario) we spent some time doing laundry, then headed to the tent for the evening. Before we got in, Chris and Kelly mentioned that some ants were making there way along the door frames of the Jeep. We thought nothing of it and went to bed.

Max temp today hovered somewhere around 31 degrees.

Slept in today. The Schlitterbahn (or as we called it, “Schlitterback”, “Schitzenbootle”, “Schlackdaddy”, and any other random word we could think of) wore us right out.

Anyway, off to Louisiana today. I started the drive, and two hours later, we hit Houston. Now, we were informed to avoid Houston at all costs due to it’s insane amounts of traffic, but we figured what the hell, and ventured through. All was fine too, until they decided to close the main highway. All traffic was diverted off. So after some minor detours, we finally made it through.

We had lunch at Subway today. Not Subway itself though. No, no. We ate our own lunch right in the Subway parking lot. Meh. After lunch and after Kelly attempted to drive away with Ian only half in the door, we entered Louisiana at 3:00pm.

Tonight we got a campsite at Fishermans Wilderness Campground, not too far into Louisiana from the west side. What a change from the desert though. In a couple of days we went from burning hot and dead, to lush and green with swamps and bayous. It was slightly raining this evening, but we managed to get a fire going and cooked up some chicken and potatoes. Mmm, mmm, good!

Plenty of mosquitoes here, so we were into the tent once the darkness hit.