Sunday March 24th: New Orleans

We motorhomers formed a little group in a corner of Walmart Pensacola car park. But not in a circle, covered-wagon style, against the marauding Indians, in case you were wondering. It’s now just 200 miles to New Orleans and we arrive by early afternoon.

The first thing we notice is the huge levee across the road from the campsite, holding back the waters of the mighty Mississippi. Later on we climbed up the bank to find a tarmac footpath/cycle track on the top that runs all 12 miles into the centre. Great idea.

We walked along the path and from that elevation could appreciate the size of the Mississippi and its importance for shipping. It is navigable for 1,800 miles, as far as Minneapolis. The port of New Orleans claims to be the centre of the world’s biggest port complex. The airport is right here too and the next photo catches a landing plane in the evening light with some shipping on the river. It’s a bit dark, so you’ll have to use your imagination!

A programme on TV just before coming to the States linked the two previous photos. A commercial passenger aircraft heading for New Orleans developed engine problems and the pilot realised he wouldn’t quite make it to the runway. What do you do in an area of swamps and marshy lakes? He spotted a flat area on a levee, like the area to the right of the tarmac path in the first photo but without the power cable pylons. He then made a perfect landing: all passengers unharmed. The landing site was quickly located and the passengers bussed away to onward destinations. Job done, you might think. But now we have a plane with wheels slowly sinking into the soft riverside soil. So a quick-fix repair was made to the engines and the pilot took off again while it was still possible, and flew the short distance to the airport. Round of applause for that man! 

Staying with the Mississippi, on our first day in the city centre we took a Steamboat trip. The Natchez is an old style stern-paddle wheeler. It’s a replica, but looks convincing.

There’s an informative commentary on the 10 mile trip downriver, with lunch and a jazz band, so a pleasant two hours. You can see the brown muddy colour of the Mississippi waters. Before the boat sets off, an organist plays a steam organ located on the top deck. This echoes loudly over the whole dock area in ice-cream-van quality tones. Here's the organist & organ emitting steam, looking like more like a hog roast barbie than a musical instrument.  

Still with the Mississippi as our theme, just down from the campsite on the riverbank is a bronze statue of two bare-knuckle prizefighters. It commemorates the first heavyweight boxing championship of the world, in 1870, on that exact spot. “Gypsy” Jem Mace of Beeston, Norfolk beat Tom Allen, another Brit, for a purse of $2,500. In 1870 bare-knuckle fighting was illegal in the UK but still flourished in the USA, particularly in New Orleans. “Gypsy” Jem had been a talented violinist, of all things, but was a big-time gambler so had nothing left from his very sucessful boxing career.