Sententia

We made it! Those words are surprisingly significant. We set out at about 1 PM yesterday and didn't arrive to New Orleans until this evening at about 5PM. 28 hours. The shocker, we never made it to our sleeping point in Memphis (Trinity Lutheran Church). There was a snowstorm in Arkansas that slowed us down to about 25 MPH for 3 hours, had we continued, we would not have gotten to the the church before 3 or even 4 AM. At that point we decided to get to a hotel. A decision we had made to late, we found when we called over 10 hotels that had no vacancies. We trekked on until the two lane highway that had become a one laner came to a full stop. We sat for over 45 minutes, and had finally come up with a plan to take shifts sleeping and turning the car on and off for heat, when things picked up again and we stopped at a gas station. After much difficulty getting the gas pumps to work and thorough contemplation of our plan we decided to sleep in our vans in the gas station lest we end up doing the same on a highway.

Sleeping conditions in the back of the van

My technique for blocking out the bright lights under the Shell station.

Breakfast of (Shell)Champions

Morning eyes at breakfast after about 2 hours sleep plus anything gained while driving

Finally, after settling in and having a sort orientation at the LDR site, we went to the French Quarter to have dinner at Cafe Masnero on Decatur and Toulouse. Here's the trademark New Orleans Muffaletta Sandwich (this one has meat, I got the one with olive salad):


and then we went off to check out the better/healthier (haha) parts of Burboun St.