Leaving Texas and My Trip to Bourbon Street in New Orleans

The next morning I headed out toward Louisiana and it wasn’t very long before I crossed a bridge that took me into that state. I like to see how many states I can get my truck into and I like to take a photo of the truck in front of the state signs. I pulled alongside the Louisiana sign and took a photograph even though it was a very overcast day and rather dark. Driving through the southern, Cajun, deep south Louisiana was not at all what I had always imagined. It was not much different than the Gulf Coast of Texas except for the abundance of small Catholic churches that I spotted just off the highways every five or ten miles. The people were very friendly when I stopped to gas up and eat lunch but I didn’t hear anyone with the thick Cajun accent that I have heard before in the south.

As I headed for New Orleans, I crossed several bridges that took me across the ocean. I enjoyed it but never cared too much for the heat and humidity that the summers have to offer in the southern U.S..

Going to Mardi Gras has never been a desire of mine. I am not one to enjoy large crowds, especially when they are full of liquor! I did want to see Bourbon Street though and I thought it would be fun to go into a couple of the bars and shops to see what it was like. As I entered New Orleans, I went over one of the oddest bridges I have ever seen. It was very tall and on the very top were railroad tracks. The lane I was in sat a hundred feet or so below the top of the bridge almost as if the engineers who designed it, had just decided to hang a highway off the side. The oncoming traffic was the same way on the other side of the bridge. With the aid of the GPS and the maps on the laptop computer, I drove right to Bourbon Street. Without the modern technology we have through computers and satellites, it would have taken me quite some time to find my destination. I drove on a feeder road below one of the freeways in New Orleans and I could see that traffic was at a standstill. Luckily, I stayed off the freeway and drove right into Bourbon Street. The Antebellum period homes that I saw in New Orleans were breathtaking. It is my opinion that they are the most beautiful style of home ever built. When I got to Bourbon Street, I was amazed at how narrow the street was but the architecture there was beautiful and I realized even more how I would not enjoy the crowded streets at Mardi Gras. I looked for a place to park my truck so I could explore some of the businesses along the street but when I finally found a place to park, it did not look like the better part of town. I did not want to take the chance of someone deciding that they needed the things in my pickup truck more than I did, so after driving down Bourbon Street, I decided that I would drive on toward my next stop, Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Before I left on my trip, my truck developed an intermittent miss. It didn’t seem like anything serious but it was annoying. I had planned on getting it into the shop before we left but it quit missing and I knew that if the problem wasn’t showing up, the mechanics wouldn’t be able to find it. In my research on the Internet I ran across a web site for McMullan Motors in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. My trip would take me right through Hattiesburg and it just so happened that I would be there in time to spend the night. My truck is a highly customized four wheel drive Dodge Dakota and McMullan Motors is a Dodge dealership. I called and asked them if they could get me in the next morning to try and diagnose what was wrong with the truck. I had originally scheduled the appointment for 11am but we stopped in about 9am after some breakfast and they were kind enough to get me right in and they put a mechanic to work right away since they knew I was traveling. The mechanic traced the problem down to the computer but they did not have one to put on the truck and it would take another day to get one in. I just couldn’t wait and since the miss was more of an irritation than anything else, I continued on my trip. The rest of the way, I would call ahead to each major city that I would be driving through and it would always be that they could have the computer the day after I was going to be there. With that, I finally called a Dodge dealership in Salt Lake City and ordered one there so I could put it on when I got home. The employees at McMullan Motors had the neatest looking denim shirts with McMullan Motors embroidered on them. I asked if there was some way that I could purchase a couple of the shirts but they didn’t have any for sale. I would love to have one.