Scenic Route US 90

02/04/08 20:31
Knight's Inn 001
We have arrived in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, on our way to New Orleans. The motel is pretty cheap-ass, and we are still waiting for the manager to come fix the doorknob to our bathroom (our bladders are about to burst as we type this entry). The Vietnamese woman behind the counter at the gas station across the highway is nice, but she seems pretty obsessed about getting ID whenever you try to buy something more incriminating than a bottle of water. And her English is pretty lacking as well. What the hell, we are only here for the night.

We came by what the signs described as the "scenic route" heading west from Pensacola. However, Hurricane Katrina that nearly washed New Orleans into the sea a few years back seems to have put quite a different spin on the word "scenic". The beach is a mess, the palm trees are mostly gone, and the old colonial villas that used to dot the Mississippi coastline have been replaced by new and less decorative structures. It is pretty much non-stop road work all the way, and if you did not know any better you would probably think that somebody just reenacted D-Day down there.

Tomorrow we are off to New Orleans to try our hands at something new. We are planning to do a portrait of the city based on the people we meet and the places we see. We have already set up a couple of interviews with a journalist who have traveled all over the US and a volunteer who moved there to help rebuild the city. We are pretty excited about the whole thing, and hope to write you some interesting stuff while there.

For now, all we got on offer is a little slideshow of our impressions along Scenic Route US 90. Be sure to check it out in the Roadside Reels section.

See you in NOLA!

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