I opened my eyes in complete panic. My body numb and shaking, my head pounding, and the outside of my skin tingling from being so overheated. I looked around realizing we were still in the parking lot of the Gator Tour we had just taken and all the other cars had left. All the doors and windows were open for anyone to come steal everything we had. The the sun was beating down on the top of the van and I had no idea where he was. “Babe?” I yelled out, but no response. I sat up with a messy bun on the top of my head and stood crouched over like I do every day. I was panicked and needed to find him and ask how long I’d been asleep.

Just as I was about to step out of the van, out of the corner of my eye I found him. All I could see was his right arm dangling lifeless with a open fist. I turned around and scurried over to him with an oncoming feeling of hysteria in my gut. I peered over the driver's seat around his shoulder only to realize he was out cold with his phone still in his left hand and his left leg stretched out leaning through the open window. “Babe?” I whispered a couple more times nervous to shock him in such a deep sleep. After no response, my voice adopted a whimper, and I started bellowing a little louder and shaking his shoulder. At this point I thought he was dead and my life was over. I thought I was in a Southern horror film. His eyes finally opened after one last jerk to his shoulder, and he looked up at me cross-eyed and stunned, just as freaked out as I was.

We both sat there just staring straight ahead in complete discomfort of what the hell was going on, knowing we hadn’t passed out from the massive Po’ Boy and bomb crawfish meal earlier in the day at Swamp Boys (must go). We questioned in our minds how within just a few hours we went from having a celebratory high five as we did over each state line as we approached the coast in Mississippi, to passed out right over the Louisiana border in a “town” called Slidell next to a swamp with gators everywhere. We sat there on Yelp as I whined with a splitting headache and slow eyes, begging him to get me to air conditioning immediately. After a short amount of time, I got impatient as I usually do and jumped in the driver's seat, fired up our G20 van, and pulled out of the Gator Tour parking lot making it literally 100 feet before pulling over in the parking lot across the street and surrendering to the heat again.

Our plan was to make it to New Orleans, just 40 minutes away, but that seemed nearly impossible with our given state. Instead of finding a bar with air conditioning, I had a change of heart and demanded our new plan was not to just camp out in the van in NOLA anymore, but get an Airbnb. I knew in my heart that after passing out so severely, it was time to get a place to stay. It was 91 degrees out at 7 p.m. with 70 percent humidity, and Wanda, our van, was air condition-less. She was customized beautifully to make us comfortable, which she was in most cases, but she was hot.

We chose to drive across the country in the middle of the summer and take the Southern route. I knew it would be hot, but my body has not been conditioned for this weather growing up in the northeast, and it had finally caught up to me. Ever since New Jersey, I have been traveling day in, day out in 90 degree weather with blistering sunny days, high humidity, and ice cubes in a bandana snuggly wrapped around my forehead dripping down my muggy, sweaty, fragile body. I looked awful, and this was completely against my sense of fashion, mind you. This bandana thing, but I couldn’t have given less of a shit what I looked like since Nashville. I was just surviving at this point, and we had thousands of miles to go.

We finally scored a spot in the Bywater area in NOLA and made our way there. We drove along the coast, which was our usual choice other than some shitty bland highway. The coast took more time and put more miles on Wanda, but was worth the experience. We cruised West over questionably high bridges lit with the suns golden light, caught up in the beauty of the silhouetted beach front houses that sat high on stilts facing the Bay. We exited right into New Orleans unaware of the scene we were about to roll into. We descended down the ramp into a little neighborhood with rusty cars and fenced in properties. The further we went the more prominent the butterflies in my stomach became. We entered onto a three lane road with a divider in the middle that was lined with trees into a neighborhood that I was suddenly eager to turn around and get the fuck out of there as soon as humanly possible. On the left side of the car we laid our eyes on a “different” part of the neighborhood passing us by at 30mph. The road was lined with boarded up houses and people that had their eyes fixed on our vehicle wandering through their hood. There were fires being burned in trashcans and people with hoods and t-shirts on were staggering down the street hollering at others sitting on the stoops of the dark abandoned looking houses, for God only knows what. I heard him under his breath exclaim, “Holy Shit, this is insane...” and then an eager “Babe you can go faster...” After that, I knew I wasn’t just being a vulnerable white girl that was out of her league. This was serious. It was ghetto, it was broken down, it was poverty, it was hungry for crime, it wasn’t Kansas anymore. You had not even the closest doubt in your mind these people were strapped with illegal weapons and would jump you for as little as your turkey sand which even if they preferred tuna. I exclaimed out loud my discomfort barely moving my lips nervous someone would see and shoot at us. “We are not fucking staying in this neighborhood correct?!” I asked and was relived to hear the answer “NO." In the five weeks I was on the road traveling, this stuck so vividly in my mind; regret still to this day that I didn’t hold my camera up to photograph the rawness, the scariness, and complete sadness I felt when seeing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina still after all these years. Especially as a photographer who craves to document things like this. I chose not to, this was just different and there was (in fairness) I’d say 30 percent chance I would have made it out of that situation alive.

We arrived at our spot five streets away, and Leslie, our landlord for the next couple days, greeted us graciously, told us to remove all valuable things from the inside and outside of our car, and sat there for a while telling us about growing up in NOLA and gave us great advice on things to do. All the while adamantly reminding us NOT to walk any where after dusk; always drive or take an Uber, which we didn’t take seriously until many locals we met all said the same thing. The next couple days were spent wandering around New Orleans eating great food, seeing beautiful architecture, meeting some sweet Southerners, and ringing in a birthday. We saw cockroaches the size of a pig in a blanket, ate incredible grits and fried green tomatoes at Elizabeth’s (must go), walked Bourbon Street late into the night, and stayed at a place with an extremely haunted back room with an energy so heavy, I refused to have anything to do with it. I'm not kidding, the energy was so scary, we slept separately in tiny single beds in the front room both nights. With that said, I had the ultimate NOLA experience and after writing this I’m realizing how excited I am to visit there again. It’s experiences like this that are so rich and will be forever in my mind. It was hot, it was scary at times, but it was also beautiful and every time I’ve told this story everyone listening has had a laugh, and I’ve had a smile on my face. Which is the reason we do things like this. It’s the soul purpose for it all. Why we experience.

All photographs by: Gina Panarello

Minolta 35mm