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First New Orleans Road Trip Day 4

The fourth and final day in town probably doesn’t deserve it’s own post, but I’m sticking with the pattern here. The day actually started terribly. Scott and I met in the hotel lobby, as we did the previous morning, but this time there are people everywhere outside and the streets were blocked. Normally, that probably wouldn’t be a big deal, but we were really hoping to be able to drive the car to more locations. This meant we’d be walking. And we did a LOT of walking. So much walking, that my foot felt like it had a pulled muscle or something. After limping by some buildings that looked abandoned (but were probably lofts), we stopped at a cool looking Greyhound station by the Superdome, where Scott took a few pics. After checking out the greyhound station, we finally decided we were gonna go to an abandoned nursing home on the other side of the river that Jeremy told us about. Probably not the best idea to walk there, so we summoned the first cab we saw. A few bucks later, we were dropped off right in front of the place. Seemed like a pretty old building, but it was holding together pretty well. I’m guessing it was abandoned in 2005 like most of the city. It was fairly creepy because it was pretty much wide open, and just knowing the probability of all the old people that have died there. That, and the decomposing opossum or giant rat or whatever that we found. Surprisingly though, we didn’t see anyone living or hanging out here either. The place had some pretty old bathtubs, fixtures, and some good decay, but the best part was undoubtedly the little chapel inside.

It had about an inch of water on the floor and beautiful stained glass windows, which made for some nice reflections (also why all the pics from inside are purple). Unfortunately, I hear the windows are now all broken and all the pews have been removed or destroyed. When we were there, there were plenty of remnants of life. Prayer cards, bibles, and hymnals were all over. One book still open, sitting on the pedestal. These are always the most amazing kind of explores, when it seems like the people left unexpectedly and just abandoned all their possessions. It makes your mind explore the possibilities of the situation that signaled the end of these places. It’s obvious what happened in New Orleans though. Many people stayed home for Hurricane Katrina, not expecting the levies to give way and flood the city. I’m sure the last thing they were thinking about were their belongings, especially materials from a nursing home or stuffed animal prizes at an amusement park…

We walked out, pretty confident that we’d find out the way back to the hotel by foot before the girls get kicked out at check-out time. Another example of how we’re always wrong. We walked a pretty good way, my foot still killing me, to a gas station to grab some snacks, thinking we’d just proceed further down the road to some kind of ferry that would bring us back across the river to the hotel. Instead, we walked until we realized that we’re probably in one of the worst areas of the city. We confirmed that (to each other anyway) when we saw some dudes fighting in the street at like 10am. Considering I have hundreds of dollars worth of gear on my back, we decided maybe we should change course or call for help. By now, I’m being a real vagina about my foot, so we decide we’ll just call a taxi. Unfortunately, we weren’t aware that taxi drivers apparently don’t know that area very well either. After standing on the corner paranoid for at least an hour and fielding several phone calls from the taxi guys, they finally found us and picked us up. Our crazy vacation was finally coming to an end, but we knew this was a city we would have to return to. Here are a few shots from the nursing home.

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