But. It was time to head
to NOLA and the Gulf. As I was
settling into navigating, I suddenly remembered something my tweenage ears heard during my
earlier trips to the area – complaints about the roads. To be frank, there are no direct routes
anywhere in the Atchafalaya Basin. The
map has the scattered appearance of roads that have been haphazardly planned; roads
that follow channels cut into the swamp deep enough to carry barges and spider
webs of back roads leading to
small communities, side of the road dives and
clusters of trailers and homes. And
then, there is Highway 90 and I-10. This
is, of course, where you find anyone and everyone else in Louisiana trying to
get from place to place. Literally. Everyone.
Final assessment: we enjoyed the museum. It is touted as one of the best museums in
the country. We would agree. The best exhibit for Ross and I was the
overview of the entire war and its battles at one of the very first points in
the museum. There are several
interactive aspects of the museum including one that has become semi-normal in
national quality museums. At the ticket
booth we were given a set of “dog tags.”
The tags contained a number and website.
We then stepped aboard a train where we picked a soldier to follow
throughout the museum. We were told we could
collect the soldier’s story as well as other images that would be stored to our
online account as we toured.
Traffic. Is. Everywhere.
Semis. Are. Everywhere. So much
so that on I-10, semis are limited to driving in the right-hand lane leaving
you and everyone else fighting for position in the left-hand lane hoping that
when your exit arrives there is a gap in the semis big enough to let you
through. This is how we drove to New
Orleans. We should have just put the car
in neutral and allowed the traffic to carry us the entire way – we would have
saved a little gas.
Somehow, we arrived in downtown New Orleans. Out of desperation, we dipped down off of the
weaving, winding elevated highways onto Poydras Street. New Orleans proper is thankfully laid out in
a properly gridded albeit one-way network of streets that are well marked and
easy to maneuver. Slowly directing our
path to Magazine Street and the World War II museum, we had to jockey to make
it to the designated parking area. With
relief, we donned our tourist gear.
Final assessment: we enjoyed the museum. It is touted as one of the best museums in
the country. We would agree. The best exhibit for Ross and I was the
overview of the entire war and its battles at one of the very first points in
the museum. There are several
interactive aspects of the museum including one that has become semi-normal in
national quality museums. At the ticket
booth we were given a set of “dog tags.”
The tags contained a number and website.
We then stepped aboard a train where we picked a soldier to follow
throughout the museum. We were told we could
collect the soldier’s story as well as other images that would be stored to our
online account as we toured.
This was a highlight for the boys. My solder, a navy pilot, died in the war and
went missing in action until 1993 when the wreckage of his plane and his burned
personal effects and bones were
discovered and shipped back to the states to be
buried in Arlington Cemetery. Sam’s
soldier had the best story – he and three others bluffed a town full of German
soldiers into surrender by telling them that they were an advance unit of the
American forces. Ross registered as a
war correspondent, but the lines at the interactive kiosks were so long – he didn’t
want to wait to hear his information.
We, of course, bought the “full package” which included an
interactive submarine experience and the 4D movie, Beyond All Boundaries. The
submarine experience is ominously called FINAL
MISSION: The USS Tang Experience. So
basically, you know you are going down at the end of the 11 minute show. Like the larger museum, as you stand in line
to go in, you are given a soldier and a battle station. The Hicks family manned the radar. Our job was to pinpoint enemy ships to
sink. We did our best – although the
boys got the gist of what we were supposed to do just a tad bit quicker than
mom and dad. We learned after the sub
was inevitably sunk that only 9 of the 80 sailors on board survived the
experience. Ross’ sailor was one of the
9. The rest of us didn’t make it.
Beyond All Boundaries
is a movie that took five years to make and features several well-known voices
including most notably the narrator – Tom Hanks. The movie was great – we kind of wished the
tank and airplane sequences would go on a little longer because your leather
seat vibrated in a massage chair kind of way. The film did a nice job of explaining the
importance of the conflict and its pivotal role in world history. It’s worth the expense to see it, if only to
experience a snow storm in the middle of an eighty degree day.
We, of course, bought the “full package” which included an
interactive submarine experience and the 4D movie, Beyond All Boundaries. The
submarine experience is ominously called FINAL
MISSION: The USS Tang Experience. So
basically, you know you are going down at the end of the 11 minute show. Like the larger museum, as you stand in line
to go in, you are given a soldier and a battle station. The Hicks family manned the radar. Our job was to pinpoint enemy ships to
sink. We did our best – although the
boys got the gist of what we were supposed to do just a tad bit quicker than
mom and dad. We learned after the sub
was inevitably sunk that only 9 of the 80 sailors on board survived the
experience. Ross’ sailor was one of the
9. The rest of us didn’t make it.Beyond All Boundaries
is a movie that took five years to make and features several well-known voices
including most notably the narrator – Tom Hanks. The movie was great – we kind of wished the
tank and airplane sequences would go on a little longer because your leather
seat vibrated in a massage chair kind of way. The film did a nice job of explaining the
importance of the conflict and its pivotal role in world history. It’s worth the expense to see it, if only to
experience a snow storm in the middle of an eighty degree day.
I do feel I need to go back to see the museum again on a day
when there aren’t so many people. Most
of the folks attending that day were older; I assumed veterans of the war
themselves or
children and direct descendants of veterans. There was a woman in a wheel chair who
stopped at an exhibit showing letters that soldiers wrote to their loved ones
back home – touching the glass in a heartbreaking way. There was a room full of elderly folks –
silent – all eyes trained on a brutal video showing the landing at Omaha Beach and
memorializing the thousands of soldiers killed on the D-Day beaches. There was an elderly man having difficulty in
the Soda Shop maneuvering his motorized chair through a cluster of teenage
patrons.
In essence, I was unable to focus on the exhibits because of
the real life drama occurring directly in front of me. Instead of reading or listening, I found
myself wondering how these exhibits played to people who experienced real loss
as a result of that war. The total death
tally for the war was 75,000,000. There
are at least as many families, sweethearts, mothers, fathers and siblings
directly affected by the human sacrifice.
How many of those were right before my eyes and to whom I owed
deference, silence and respect.
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| Rips on the Lake |
We finished the movie about the same time the museum closed,
so we hopped in our car and took a deep breath.
Time to head back up on I-10.
This time, we went north to Mandeville.
We visited partly as a nod to my cousins who lived there for several
years and partly so we could travel the Pontchartrain Causeway – the world’s
longest bridge over a body of water.
When you are that close to a superlative, you have to partake.
We ate dinner in Mandeville at Rips on the Lake which is on
the
shores of Lake Ponchartrain. I
pulled my restaurant trick at this spot and had the waiter pick my dinner. While the boys dabbled in stuffed crab and
fried whatever – I consumed a terrific Blackened Grouper, grilled vegies and
potatoes. We ate on the porch, enjoyed
the sun, sipped tea, talked about basketball with the waiter and had a
leisurely, pleasant meal. When finished,
it was time to hop back in the car and head to our final VRBO stay – The Biloxi
Condo.
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| Lake Ponchartrain |
