Of Ice and Men

With the entire world closed, it looks like it may be awhile before I can do any traveling. With that in mind, I’m re-posting from my original blog. This section follows me and my son's trip from California to Washington DC for a temporary assignment. 

Day 5:

We slept in a little today, did not get up until almost 9 am. We woke to a drizzling New Orleans morning. We went to the French Quarter in search of breakfast. At one point, I said something to Kenny about not seeing any real eating establishments on Bourbon St. Kenny pointed out that there were several strip clubs, a brothel or two and bars galore. He also pointed out the gentleman losing his breakfast in the street. As he put it, Dad, we’re in the middle of the freaking red light district at 11 in the morning, what do you expect to see?

New Orleans

We left the Big Easy and headed North East. On the radio the disc jockey kept going on and on about the horrible weather. They announced all kinds of businesses and schools that would be closed today and tomorrow. It started to rain a little bit, but was nothing to get real concerned about.

As we moved out of range of that station, we switched to another station that kept talking about Snowpocalypse 2010. Kenny and I both were thinking “ you must be kidding.”

Later, once the sun went down, we realized that the roads were turning into a sheet of pure ice. We ended up driving at about 20 mph for several hours. When we approached one of the several accidents sites and realized that a police car had run off the road, I told Kenny it might be time to stop. We looked for a place to stay, but there were no hotels along that stretch of highway. I have to say, it was one of the more scary drives I have had.


We made it to Georgia and the roads instantly got much better. We made it to the hotel at a little after 12 pm. Tomorrow we should complete the last leg of our journey and arrive in Alexandria.