We've been thrown under the bus again! 

Well maybe not under it but we will be riding it for the first 60 miles of our trip. The spillway opening I posted about earlier this week was supposed to relieve some of the potential flooding in New Orleans. However, the way they did that was to open The Bonnet Carre Spillway 12-15 miles west of the city and drain some of the excess water 5 miles north to Lake Pontchartrain. While the tactic may very well help remove a lot of water from the Mississippi River, it will divert it straight at the Amtrak Train tracks that follow the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain. Here's a link to the story of the opening which has only happened 11 times since being built in 1931. 12,000 cubic feet of water per "second" is being diverted and the fear is that it may wash out the solid land & pilings the Amtrak tracks are laid on. I've added the info and location to our trip map. The bus detour won't affect the arrival time in Chicago so it's no big deal and will add to our story/adventure.



My sister left Indiana this morning to drive down. She'll visit/stay with our brother Tim in Milton FL (20 miles away from me) till Friday morning when I pick her up to begin our Amtrak adventure. We had talked about me driving up there and having her husband drive us to Chicago, or take a bus, and starting our trip from Chicago. However, unpredictable winter weather road conditions could have caused us lots of problems. It was more predictably doable for her to be able to look at the forecast and drive the 11 hours to Pensacola even if she had to come a day early if the weather was bad.