Tripometer – 14,841 mi
Gas Gauge – 1152.255 gal
Location – French Quarter RV Park, New Orleans, LA
Lodging – $150
Cans of OFF – 4
We took off this morning to the Natchez for our steam wheel tour of the New Orleans Mississippi river front. We arrived at the docks well before the boarding time and found ourselves a nice seat to drink some coffee and watch crowds of international tourists bungle about the waterside. Some 15 minutes before boarding the calliope aboard the Natchez roared to life with old timey tunes screeching across the water
with an almost unpleasant tone. We noted with delight that the calliope was grossly out of tune when the organist(?) started playing but by the second or third song (and assumedly after the pipe organ had warmed up completely) was well in tune and somewhat beautiful in a steam powered kind of way. It’s no wonder that these instruments were used to attract patrons to these ships back in the day. They are tremendously loud. The sound carrying across the water at the time in history where they were used calliopes must have sounded almost unworldly.
The Natchez was built in 1975 using historic manufacturing techniques and repurposing several key components from decommissioned steam wheelers at the time, including the steam engines and steering system. We had a lovely lunch on board and proceeded to the aft deck for a wonderful view of the shores of the Mississippi as we listened to the captain (or narrator) describe the various sights along the way. Towards the end of the cruise we paid a visit to the engine room to see the steam engines under load propelling the ship down the river. It was fascinating to watch the old equipment (the steam engines were built in 1923) perform its functions without the benefit of more modern tooling. Perhaps the most fascinating of all were the oiling systems used to keep the various moving parts moving freely. In modern equipment we have grease fittings and seals to keep everything slippery. However in this era the oiling was often done by simply bathing equipment in oil or dispersing it across surfaces by relatively rudimentary means such as metallic arms dipping into a tray of oil and dragging across the surface of something that needs to be lubricated. The boat traveled about 10 miles downstream from the heart of New Orleans before turning around and heading back to Riverwalk and the docks, passing scores of other ships on the river from tug / barge combinations to full sized tankers and container ships. This is a tremendously busy shipping route.
Special Note: We left the Natchez without receiving a complimentary book of Natchez Matches. How could they not provide Natchez Matches? Someone in their PR department needs to be… fired.
After our cruise we finished what shopping we had not done in the French Quarter and went back to the trailer for the evening. At this point neither of us are feeling truly well since Kelly first got ill on Tuesday. We’re not sure if our nausea is a result of some phantom illness or if we’re causing some of the difficulties with the extremely rich foods we’ve been eating. We have looked for salads and other less rich food but it has been a real struggle for us to find. On top of the food issue, we’re tired of constantly running from one attraction to another and need a few days to recoup. The cost of this RV park has put us both in the mind to see and do as much as possible in this area to make the cost of our lodging seem worthwhile. Physically and mentally exhausted, we went to sleep tonight looking forward to leaving New Orleans for a more relaxing destination.
And quieter! We need to go some place quieter! The constant noise at night from the traffic on the interstate to the hooligans carrying on just on the other side of the RV park wall is slowly driving us insane. Others in the RV park, in their big hard-walled RVs surely don’t have the same problem with the noise that we do with a thin piece of canvas between our sleeping heads and all of the commotion outside.