Day Three of Our Trip

It was my thought that I would do a blog on our trip every two or three days and be done before school starts, but reality set in.  Hopefully at this rate I'll be done before Halloween. 

Day three started out in Slidell looking for John's old apartments and church.  We did finally find one of them and found out that there was a new church.  The old church is now another denomination's church.

We left Slidell and headed up into Mississippi to Laurel where John served. 

I was the driver for the day and for some reason I did not get any pictures of his apartment there.  Lets just say it looked alot better back in John's time there than it does today.  We got to see the church which had been added onto.  We then headed back south to Hattisburg where he had to stay with the zone leaders for a few days because they had a down pour while they were in zone conference and all of the road out were flooded.  We got to see where Southern Miss Golden Eagles play while in Hattisburg.

  Mississippi was very green and pretty with many trees, swamps, and marshes. 

We headed south to Biloxi where John served.  We got to see the Gulf of Mexico and also damage from Hurricane Katrina.

From Biloxi we headed to Mobile, Alabama where he was trained. 

We got to see some of the beautiful streets with the trees that had branches that went clear out into the road.

We went under part of the bay to get to the USS Alabama Memorial Park to see the USS Alabama Battleship and submarine.

It was neat to get to see the submarine and battleship.  It is amazing how much of a small city the battleship was.  We went inside the submarine first. 



Before going on the ship we saw a sign warning us about alligators and snakes. 

The battleship was really neat with many levels which we did not have time to go completely through.  Here are some of the pictures. 

We also got to see planes and tanks from WWII.  

We also got to see an SR-71 spy plane, one of the fastest planes ever built.

We left Alabama for Florida.  I did not get a picture of the Florida sign, but I am sure that John did.  We stayed overnight in Pensacola.

Day Two of Our Trip

Day Two started off driving to Louisianna.  We were able to see swamps for the first time and many miles of bridges. We also got to see sugar cane for the first time.

John said that alligators could be hiding in as little as six inches of water, not that we were ever that close to any water, especially as we were driving most of the time.  We arrived in Baton Rouge and went to the state capital.  The state capital is not one you would think is a state capital, it more of a skyscraper and office building combined.

We also learned that the only battle of the Revolutionary War fought outside of the original 13 colonies was fought at Baton Rouge.  There is a very old arsenal building that was near the same site.



We left the state capital grounds and headed to the temple just to the south of Baton Rouge.  It is one of the original small temples announced by President Hinckley and is next to a meeting house.  We also went to the mission home and mission offices, but these were not the same places as when John was on his mission.

From Baton Rouge we headed to New Orleans.  We were able to see the Superdome where the Saints play, the arena where the NBA Hornets play, and alot of the French Quarter including Bourbon street, which we would never go down again.  

We were able to view the Mississippi River to the south of New Orleans and see the flood walls that are put up to protect the city and French Quarter from a storm surge.  The French were smarter than later people, because the French Quarter and downtown New Orleans are above sea level.  Too the north and south of the city is were most places are below sea level and have to be constantly pumped to keep from being flooded.

 

From New Orleans, we headed south into the Mississippi Delta region were John served for a month of his mission in a little place called Buras.  This area is a narrow strip of land no more than a mile wide with the Mississippi River on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west with dikes built up on both sides.  This area had a direct hit from hurricane Katrina.  We could never find John's area that he lived in probably because they were destroyed by the hurricane.  Many homes were abandoned and there was alot of evidence still, six years later of the damage caused by Katrina.   The only evidence of many homes was only the foundation.

Because this area is below sea level, the cemeteries are all above ground.

We drove down as far as we could south into the Mississippi River Delta.

We headed back to the north and stopped to see a ship coming up the river and a beautiful sunset along the river.

With the destruction of the hurricane and possiblity of future flooding, many homes and businesses are built up, not to withstand the winds of a hurricane, but the water from flooding.  Many places have garages and storage under their homes.  We saw a new high school begin built as well as a living quarters for teachers to come into this depressed area to teach.

We commented that we had not seen many bugs during the time, and here they came.  They are smart enough to avoid the heat of the day.  This was about twenty miles worth of bugs before we filled up with gas and washed it.

We came back through New Orleans at night, and then headed across Lake Pontchartrain to the north of New Orleans. 

We traveled across the longest bridge over water in the world for over 26 miles.  It was dark so we did not get any pictures.  We stayed overnight in Slidell Louisianna for the night.  It was a long day, similar to the others we would have.