Texas Cont'd
Bright and early at 6am, we made our way just southeast of Houston to the Johnson Space Center. Nothing was open yet, but we just wanted to take a look. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can see from the front of the building.

We returned back up north into downtown Houston just to take a quick look around before continuing our eastward trek.

The Gulf Coast
We stopped at a Waffle House in Port Arthur, TX for breakfast before crossing over the state line into Louisiana around 11am at mile 2138. When we got to the capital city of Baton Rouge, it was Yvette's first trip east of the Mississippi. The capitol building itself is said to be the tallest one in the nation.

We got to New Orleans just before 4pm Saturday afternoon and drove by the Superdome, home of the Saints. It still has the "We're Back!" banner on it from the city's celebration of the team's return to post-Katrina New Orleans. On our approach to the city, things seemed to be either pretty well fixed or hidden to the casual visitor. If you didn't already know what had happened to the city, you might not even realize what they had been through. The French Quarter seems to be back in full swing with all the activity on Bourbon Street as well as everywhere else. We managed to chow down on some real "N'Awlins" dinners of red beans and rice with sausage and chicken jambalaya before taking off.

Leaving New Orleans to the east was quite a different story. Their seemed to be miles of abandoned neighborhoods. Not just buildings, but whole neighborhoods. Of course we didn't have time to visit any of the badly hurricane damaged areas (not that we wanted to) but I'm sure there had to be much worse than what we could see from the Interstate. Very sad.

Crossing the border into Mississippi at mile 2424 was even worse. We made a detour off of I-10 to the Gulfport and Biloxi region on the Gulf Coast. Almost every building across the street from the beach seemed to have been wiped away. Empty foundations, shells of buildings and even a few piles a rubble where still there to be found almost two years post-Katrina. The buildings that are now standing on the beach are obviously brand new, condos and hotels mostly. Even though we were there to see it, it was very hard to wrap your mind around the level of the devastation that had occurred there.

We crossed into the state of Alabama at mile 2511 at 8pm and checked into a Motel 6 in Mobile, Alabama. Looking forward to a hot shower and a comfortable night's sleep! Our first night of the trip in a real bed!