PJ's 2006 RAMBLE

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December 01, 2006

Gulf Coast, Post-Katrina

My apologies for the dearth of updates lately, I have finally uploaded all but a dozen or so of the photos and I promise that I will see the writing aspect through to the end, hopefully sooner rather than later.

As with Florida, my preliminary route map above is not an accurate reflction of the path I took from Mobile to New Orleans, I didn't go up into the "meat" of Mississippi. Instead I left Mobile and headed southwest along the Gulf Coast, though I didn't see any signs of the ocean for the first hour, until about 10 miles into Mississippi. Not much to report about that little chunk of southwest Alabama, as Henry predicted I found aging motels interspersed with nature in a fairly conventional way. As was to be the case on both ends of Mississippi, I saw no sign letting me know that I was entering or leaving a state. Judging by what I saw, I chalk this up to hurricane damage, not malevolence.

Once I got close to the water, near Gautier, the landscape changed radically. The further west I got, the more the scenes of destruction unfolded; first I saw battered buildings and then I saw basically no buildings. The landscape near the water, moving from south to north, basically consisted of ocean, beach (deserted), the occasional boat marooned on the land like a whale, Hwy 90, slabs of cement and piles of rubble where businesses and houses once stood, scrubby little trees, and then as you got 1/4 mile or so inland a scattering of houses still standing in various states of abandonment or renovation, many had sprouted FEMA trailers or other campers alongside for people to live in while they picked up the pieces.

The Hwy 90 bridge was out at Biloxi (mind you, this is 13 months after Hurricane Katrina), so I had to take a detour onto Interstate 10. Once I got past Biloxi (pronounced "Biluhxi" by many people locally) and back to 90 I saw more of the same. I had to detour again 30 miles or so west at Pass Christian/Bay St. Louis, and in that case there was absolutely no "detour route" posted, just ominous signs a few miles before you got to the bridge saying that it was out.

Since the landscape is so unique and swampy in these parts, you don't find the usual grid of roads every mile or so like we have in the midwest, it's much more haphazard and defined by the local terrain (and not only did I have a maddeningly inadequate map, but there were no gas stations around, or even businesses open or signs of life). I took 90 as far as it would go, trusting that I would see a posted detour route eventually, but I followed it all the way to the "bridge out" end of the road and saw no detour signs. Fearing that my overloaded scooter's roughly 9 Horsepower would not be enough to jump the unseen bridge "Dukes of Hazzard Style," I turned down the first road I saw to the north, hoping to run into the Interstate at some point. This wasn't to be, this road was more of an overgrown two-track and near the end of it I came across a smashed VW Beetle. I have no idea what this road was before, if there were houses there or if it was fairly rural, but at this point I couldn't tell, just lots of weeds with some rubble and garbage and no people. Sketchy.

So I started back east on 90, dreading the thought of backtracking (for some reason it makes me crazy to backtrack at all, even a few miles). Since I'd never been in a landscape like the one I was in, and since there obviously used to be houses and businesses along the entire seacoast, I had a really hard time determining where a town began or ended. I was hunting for the first town on my map, Pass Christian, which I had seen no signs for when passing through before, but I eventually found it (I think), after a lot of hopeful driving in what I guessed to be the right direction. At this point night dusk was upon me, I wasn't prepared for the kind of desolate wasteland I encountered and I was very worried about running out of gas. My tank was nearly empty and the only gas station I'd seen in hours was this one.

Fortunately I found a gas station (which had quite a flurry of activity, being the only thing of its kind open for god-knows-how-many miles) and filled up. I also saw a bar open next door named "Hurricane Katrina's" or something similarly bitter/saucy, as well as a snow-cone stand (closed that evening). If time permitted I would've loved to have gone into the bar to get the scoop from the locals, but as I mentioned, night was falling and I was determined to make it to New Orleans. Of course there were no marked main roads in Pass Christian (if that is the town I was in, who knows!?), and no signs pointing me toward the Interstate, so I turned left onto what appeared to be a fairly well-trafficked road and hoped to run into the highway. After several miles of curves, no signs and no luck, I started to get nervous and consulted my compass. I found a little convenience store and asked an oldtimer if the road I was on would get me to the highway, he assured me that it would and I took it. Somewhere between there and the highway I crossed this bridge, which was awfully pretty.

I got on I-10 and followed it west until exit 13, where I took 43 southeast back to pick up 90 in Bay St. Louis. Now I was a few miles inland and things didn't look quite so bad, though it was still rough and uncertain, wholly abandoned strip malls and lots of places like this where I couldn't really tell if they were dead or alive.

It was basically dark, with just a trace of light still in the sky, a little more light than a full moon...and I lost my way. I suspect that what happened was that I missed a turn where 90 splits south from a 4-lane highway called 607...whatever the case was, it wasn't marked well, or at all, and all day long there were precious few roadsigns of any kind telling me where I was, what direction I was headed, or how far I was from New Orleans.

It was on this deserted 4-lane divided highway that two sketchy-looking men walking down the middle of the road tried to intercept me, I believe they wanted to rob me and thought they could overtake me on the scooter if I tried to pass. It was almost surreal, there was no traffic and just these two guys, almost like a dream, or a video game where you have to get past them to continue on. I stopped about 100 feet shy of them and they kept coming toward me, not yelling, injured or in distress, just leering and advancing. I turned around before they could get close, crossed the median and drove against traffic (there wasn't any) to get away from them, as they couldn't run across the median in time to stop me. Lots of things I saw on the Gulf Coast reminded me of some sci-fi Mad Max world. Scary. My uncle Bob is a truck driver and he had warned me that this was a volatile area, he'd narrowly escaped being killed and robbed for his truck in New Orleans, he'd overheard some people plotting it out.

Safely away from this harrowing encounter (and not wishing to backtrack), I took the first road I saw to the south, which wound me through some swampy woods, made extra-frightening by their unfamiliarity, the sense of being lost in an unfriendly place and the general air of desperation in the area. I passed worn trailers in the thickets, scabby houses with too many derelict vehicles in the yards, barking dogs and FEMA trailers all swirled throughout the brush. I eventually found 90 again and thanked my lucky stars, though there was just as little to see there. At some point I crossed into Louisiana, it could've been this bridge, but wherever it was it was unmarked, so I have no idea. Whoo-hoo, welcome to Louisiana.

Not having studied the map well, I was expecting to come into Slidell, (a large suburb of New Orleans on the northeast side of Lake Ponchartrain) before too long. I kept going for miles and miles and miles, wondering why I wasn't hitting it or at least seeing the lights from it polluting the night sky. It turns out 90 goes southwest and avoids the town entirely, and I was actually on a very narrow strip of land which eventually turned into the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. If you remember from my Georgia entry, nighttime + wildlife + scooter = bad idea, so I was nervous to be on the road anyway, and there were almost no cars and no businesses or development (if there were a few houses they might've been abandoned like so many others, in any case, few signs of life...it was a lonely feeling). If I'd run into trouble on that stretch I'dve been up Shit's Creek, sans-paddle.

At some point in this sandy, quiet wilderness my odometer ticked over its 7,000th mile and I celebrated with a photo. Eventually, after 30 or 40 miles of inky Louisiana nothingness I came upon the fringes of the city of New Orleans, which I will write about in my next installment. Lots of sad tales and adventures to come, my friends, so stay tuned...

Posted by pj at December 1, 2006 11:56 PM

Comments

Posted by: Christie at January 11, 2007 04:50 PM