Day 6 - Memorial

We packed up to leave today, and made sure everybody had an "overnight" bag packed with all the essentials for our scheduled stop in Tennessee. We were going to stay at a church on the way back, so we wouldn't get so tired on the trip back to Ohio.

But before we left, we had to pick up two Ohio volunteers who wanted to work just a bit more in the morning. They got to work at the women's shelter, and they got to work with the California crew again. So we got to meet the California crew again and hang out for a few minutes while our two volunteers finished up what they were doing and gathered up their tools. We took them back to the trailers and they got cleaned up to do some sight seeing.

When we headed out of Chalmette, we drove past some landmarks that I remembered from my third trip. We drove farther, and passed woodlands and bayous on our way to a landmark in St. Bernard Parish. It was where Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the Parish. There is a stone monument with the names of St. Bernard Parish residents who died in the disaster. We took group pictures there, and we took pictures of the memorial, the names on it, and the metal cross that was placed slightly offshore. The metal cross has a cutout of the face of Jesus on it, and the famous initials "INRI." It is also part of the memorial.

Another visitor to the memorial was a Baptist minister who knew one of the people who died. He told us that we were on the shore of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the infamous MR-GO. He also told us that the foundations of the cross offshore lie on privately owned land that was covered by MR-GO as erosion changed its boundaries. St. Bernard Parish had to face a scuffle with the ACLU about the setup of the memorial because of the cross and the fact that the MR-GO is a public waterway, but the Parish must have won for now.

The Baptist minister joined us for a prayer for a safe trip to Tennessee and then to Ohio. After that, we headed back to Chalmette. There, we ate at the restaurant that let us watch the Buckeyes game. We had lunch there, and I had shrimp stew which tasted very good. After we filled up our stomachs with lunch, we filled up the vehicles with gas and headed for Tennessee.