Day 24: New Orleans

We woke up, packed up the tent, and went swimming in Kincaid Reservoir which is part of the National Forest. I'm always confused when lakes have beaches at their swimming area. The sand doesn't quite feel like sand, and it definitely looks odd far away from the shore. We can handle dirt and rocks, ok guys?

So then we were off down to New Orleans. In Baton Rouge we picked up a ton of traffic and monsoon levels of rain (we definitely saw some downpours on this trip, but this was still an impressive one... possibly second only to a storm we drove through in Indiana). Kiddo looked a bit sleepy, and I got scared - I was not about a nap this day, not when I wanted her to go to sleep on the early side so I could enjoy drinking and relaxing in New Orleans (this totally sounds selfish to me, but I need to just own it). So... I finally broke out the portable DVD player. She knew I brought one of her favorite movies, but she didn't know about the player until I handed it to her. I didn't want her to miss everything outside of the car because of movies. But I also am at least a tiny bit realistic about how hard long car rides are. Anyway, it worked like a charm.

We were staying with a relative of a Philadelphia friend - again someone I had some sort of tenuous connection to, but had not met in person before. She was out at a movie when I arrived. Her roommate had already given me a beer when I got a text that the movie was over, "herr yet?" I was unsure if it was a typo or slang. Either way, I was immediately busy giggling about Herr Yeti, aka German Mister Yeti. Which of course lets me link to the greatest thing the internet has ever produced. I think that's only my second external link on the blog. But really, it's that amazing.

I don't have any pictures of New Orleans because I only scratched the surface of it. However, this was more than my Vegas experience, which had nothing to do with Vegas (note: I still don't regret that choice... we spent time in Zion and then hung out with cool people... I still just think it's funny I didn't even go to Vegas proper, let alone the Strip).
We were in New Orleans itself (although I didn't see the French Quarter or any historic sections), and you could smell the bayou. I actually would have really liked to drive down to "the end of the world", and it was on a rough draft of the trip, but I cut it during planning stages.

My host has had some sadness in her recent life, and drinking with me was a distraction.

The further along I go, the more I think this is about connections. Connecting with the earth, the dirt and the rocks, the mountains and lakes. With different regions, places and cities with various subsets of culture. But mostly it's about connecting with individual people. I am traveling the country, searching for connections and forging them everywhere I go. 

Sometimes it's people I already know, and we are expanding and adding to what we have... but often we're strangers, and the course of our night together is forming this new connection. The connections are sometimes just surface things, sometimes more intimate conversations. Some of it is a question of compatibility... but so much of it is what we open ourselves up to.