The Trip South

The eight of us set off at 5:00 am on Monday, January 23, from Pasco, WA with lots of prayers and good wishes from family, friends and church members. Our trip took us through Salt Lake City and then on to Atlanta, where we learned our first important rule of travel. That is, Never Travel Through Atlanta If At All Possible! The trip was delayed a half hour at a time for about 5 hours until weather conditions got better and Delta found a pilot and co-pilot for our plane. So, with only airline snacks as food all day, we straggled into New Orleans about 8:30 pm, only to learn a second lesson. That was: Don't Rent A Car from Enterprise! Although all the other car rental agencies were open, Enterprise had closed at 8:00 with a "See you in the morning" note on their counter. What to do, what to do???? Luckily, the director of the Samaritan's Purse camp was there to meet someone, so he took our luggage and some of us. The rest of us went with a church member who is working in New Orleans. He and his wife kindly came to the airport and took us in their SUV. We left the moldy smelling airport (an odor we were to smell in one degree or another the whole time we were there), drove by the Superdome and Convention Center, passed the cruise ships housing policemen and FEMA workers, and over the bridge to Gretna, to the Dick White Center, where we were finally able to lay out our sleeping bags and get some rest.