New Orleans to Tallahassee, Florida

Tallahassee, Florida to West Palm Beach, FL

Larry’s Comments

Wednesday, February 14, 2007:  :Happy Valentines day!  After breakfast at the hotel, we checked out, found our way out of the Quarter and headed east on I-10.  Suddenly we could see the kind of destruction Katrina wrought – whole neighbourhoods destroyed.  Miles of it.  It wad horrible.  There are trailers in some places, but others are just deserted.  Some highway exits are still closed.  At Pensacola we turned south and visited a small stretch of the Gulf Islands – lots of white white sand.  We stopped for the night near Tallahassee.

Thursday, February 15, 2007: Tis last day of this phase of the odyssey was a simple run to Lantana.  It took  most of the day and we arrived tired and thankful for our own bed.  We left Burlington 31 days ago and have traveled 12001 kilometers.  It was lovely journey.  We were very fortunate to have good weather for most of the journey.  And good roads!  At this time of the year there were few places that were crowded, and so we were able to take our time and enjoy the sights.  There are many highlights – of course the visit in Nelson was one of those.  As well, Yellowstone and particularly the early-morning excursion to see the animals was amazing.  The other National Parks were all terrific -  Zion with its beautiful cliffs,  the Badlands, Mt Rushmore.  The Grand Canyon is so beyond description that it must be seen to be believed.  San Antonio is a lovely city.  And New Orleans was a complete change and a very exciting place to be.  What a great trip!  Now we’re relaxed here for several weeks before completing the circle

[ I did a stat summary of the trip

Distance:  12001km = 7457miles

Fuel: 1102 liters for 11629 km of it

Mileage: 9.18 liters/100km

MPG:  24.8 miles/US gallon

            29.81 miles/Imperial gallon

The “Test” thing at the bottom of this page is me trying to resolve why my main system’s FTP program garbles the uploads.  It seems to be an incompatibility of the FTP program ( Total Commander ) with this computer; it was fine with the laptop.  On this main system I have changed to FTP Commander and it all works fine now.  

I think Jan did a great job on the blog.  I enjoyed typing it up and updating the web on route.  It gave a very good summary of the day for me, and the process gave a good view of the condition of internet access while on the road.  It is virtually guaranteed that you will have internet wireless access when staying at any of the name-brand motels anywhere.  The national parks were variable; Yellowstone had none but Zion had good service in the lounge/dinning room while Grand Canyon had rumour of service at a particular point in the park but I couldn’t find it (nor did I waste much time looking as I was too afraid of falling over the edge, LOL! )

Opening the condo was not without excitement.  The main water valve leaked overnight and we spent a large part of today trying to dry out the under-floor in the hall outside the watertank closet and under the carpet beside the bathroom.  We got a plumber to temporarily stop the leak and he is coming back in the morning to replace the 2 main valves.  Over the years this is the 3^rd time something like this has happened; this time we are replacing the 2 valves with modern “ball” valves which should greatly improve the reliability.  The water extractor part of our carpet cleaner was great to suck up the water quickly so glad we had that.  ]

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