The next stop after the bayous was New Orleans. Where, once again, and for no apparent reason, someone tried to break into our car. I thought I was playing my cards right. Park on a higher level of the parking garage, park near the elevator where there is a lot of traffic, park under a light, park with back against the wall so no one can see the out-of-state tag. But apparently the Haun Lumina is the Holy Grail for car thieves, and this time they decided to take a crowbar to the driver side doors. And again, they failed but left us with the hassle of jumping out of the car to slap duct tape over the gaps in our door whenever we saw raindrops for the rest of the trip (and we saw a lot).
The insanity of Bourbon Street didn’t appeal to us too much and the oysters on the half-shell that I had for dinner didn’t appeal to Heidi too much. We walked along the Mississippi some and then retired, exhausted, to our hotel room. The next morning we visited one of the spectacularly odd New Orleans cemeteries.
Our drive to Florida was rather eventless except for the sporadic rain showers we kept getting. We had to constantly scramble to re-apply duct tape to prevent the driver side doors from filling with water. Why didn’t we just put the duct tape on and leave it? Remember that we still don’t have A/C, so as soon as the rain went away we had to roll the windows down or suffocate in the hot, humid Florida air.
Covered in sweat, a swim in the Gulf on the beautiful beaches of Port St. Joe was quite welcome. We swam for a while past sunset and then went back to our camp. Shortly after eating our dinner, a huge storm rolled it. (cue Elton John’s “The Circle of Life”) The first camping night of our trip was a turbulent one, so I guess having the last one be stormy was only fitting. We have literally come full circle in more ways than one.
But don’t let this email let you think we are down. Getting home was great – Buster was there anxiously awaiting us and the house was in one piece. Heidi’s jury duty she was assigned today only lasted about 3 hours – we were dreading that she would spend the rest of her precious vacation time in a boring courtroom prosecuting car burglars (…rrrrr….). I was glad to get back to work and share my unreal stories with my friends.
We’ve developed 24 of our 37 rolls of film and they have turned out beautifully. We will be posting them online in a couple weeks and notify you when you can see them. The other 13 rolls got wet and are at a specialty camera shop where we hope some of them can be salvaged (say a prayer for us). But even if we do lose them, we have so many other good photos, they won’t be missed.
We hope you all enjoyed the website and we thank you for putting up with our rants and sometimes long-windedness in emails. We recommend you all plan on a 25-day vacation next year and head west. Just remember the Lessons Learned from our trip and you should be OK. And of those, most importantly, don’t drive a green Lumina and always hike with a flashlight.
Now blessed with a greater world view,
William and Heidi
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