Chris gets us lost...twice so far.

Here's the dirt. When we got to New Orleans Chris had all the details: step-by-step directions right to the front door of the hotel. They looked pretty complicated to me, so I suggested I get us to the Morial Convention Center which is only 2 blocks from the place. Nope. Chris had the sheet of directions, so we followed them.

We ended up in a section of town that wasn't quite what we were looking for. It looked like someone was filming an episode of COPS. Good job there, Chris. We survived, so all is forgiven.

The day we left New Orleans we decided to follow Highway 11 northeast out of town. It was the interstate before Eisenhower got the idea to modernize the highway system, so it's just the kind of road I like. Small towns; abandoned motor courts and garages; it's a time machine made out of asphalt. It parallels Route 59, which is the new smooth multi-lane speedway, which we found ourselves on when trying to avoid a small city (the name of which i forget...but I do remember that it was somewhere in southeast Mississippi).

I said, "Chris, find a spot where we can get back onto Route 11." An hour later we were hopelessly lost, and getting desperate. If you've never been to southeast Mississippi, let me mention that it's as flat as a table, with a million short trees, and absolutely no street signs. Not the kind that identify streets, they have plenty of them, but the kind that reads "Meridian 10 miles," or "Biloxi 30 miles," or even "I549." And those street names aren't very useful. They're all named after people who were obviously related. There's Cletus Spence Road, Magnolia Spence Road, Cyrus spence Road, etc. After a while we started seeing familiar sand piles, logging paths, and swamps, so I just decided to pick a direction (hopefully east, although at noon it was tough to tell for sure) and drive until we either hit civilization or we ran out of gas.

By the way, if you want shade in southeast Mississippi you better bring an umbrella. Luckily it was a comfortable 96 degrees and sunny. Good job there, Chris. We survived, so all is forgiven. Beginning to see a pattern? The buzzards down there are quite colorful, though...