Walking to New Orleans

I briefly commemorated the one-year anniversary of hurricane Katrina by rereading journal entries from my trip to New Orleans with Christine in 1992. Sadly the entries are paltry compared to all I wrote about going to Memphis the previous year.
Looking back I see I had a narrow view of food then, I recorded liking neither gumbo, or jambalaya, and we went out of our way to have breakfast continually at the Waffle House, ironic considering I've since taken to shunning most chain restaurants.
Speaking of, we would have spent the entire week camped at the Motel 6, our chain hotel of choice, but we arrived during the New Orleans Jazz Festival and the entire town was booked. We had to stay on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain in Slidell in a hotel that catered more to people who were permanent residents, than to out-of-towners. There was a pool in the center court that was filled in with dirt. I wonder where all those people are now?
The recorded memory that stands out the most was our trip through the Honey Island Swamp with tour guide Ron where we listened to women from New York try to beckon to alligators by making "mooing noises" and watched as "an older couple in matching red sweat suits video taped the entire tour." There were snakes, and all manner of birds, a pig that lived with some locals and came out on a dock to get a look at us, and of course alligators.
We fed them marshmallows.

song: Walking to New Orleans • artist: Fats Domino