What would the Tillners do?: New Orleans

odometer: 18455

gas: 2.35

FYI - yes, I got my hair cut - at Walmart; trailer life baby.

So this city flooded with a category 4 hurricane - no kidding. I'm surprised it doesn't flood every Mardi Gras with all of the urinals flushing considering all of the surrounding water is higher than the city is!

The place is pretty fun though.

We were only here about 2.5 days - and it was a tropical storm for about 2 of them, but we did get in some sight seeing. Walked around the French Quarter for an hour before the skies opened up again - it was right before the Saints home opener against Detroit. For some reason I thought the open containers were only allowed during Mardi Gras, nope, any time you want. We were walking around by 10am and every bar had cocktails and beers to buy and keep on walking with - and quite a few were already doing so - reminding me of the good old game days in Berkeley a little, just even more brazen.

Anyway, saw a tone of that district including Bourbon st until the skies opened again - I had to jog back and get the car to pick up the other 3 because it was raining so hard that an umbrella was useless.

After we were all safe in the car, we did a little car sight seeing in the rain - then both munchkins fell asleep. Missy and I read in the parking lot of our next destination until Zoe woke up again - then we went into:

Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World - this is a company started in the 50's and the owner is credited with really getting the floats to go over the top in New Orleans. The guy studied in France how to make all of the elaborate floats/characters/costumes and then brought it over here. Mr Disney tried to hire him, but he stayed in New Orleans.

The company now has offices in LA, FL and Spain. They make floats for Universal, Disney, and all of the Mardi Gras "rex".

They even make large characters for commercials and billboards - they had a bunch of almost complete cows that are heading out soon for Chick-fill-le's new ad campaign.

Very interesting to see all of the art work, floats, and history of the Mardi Gras evolution.

Zoe made her usual friends at the campground after being there only 15 minutes, the KOA was nice, but in the middle of a neighborhood - a new one for us to see. Wasn't the greatest, but with the weather, it really didn't matter, at least it had cable to get most of the college football games. :)

We were able to try on some of the costumes - Zoe finally warmed up to me in a fiberglass head.

Every float actually has a little porta-potty on it, some even have two. The people in the parades can be on the floats for up to 6 hours at a time - and plenty of ETOH is consumed during that time as well.