Thursday, November 29, 2007

Day 7--Gulfport, MS to...

Day 7--Gulfport, MS to...

We woke up in Gulfport to find that the major tropical storm everyone had been so worried about was a little bit of rain. Never woke us up or anything. No oil platforms awash into the motel parking lot or anything we'd see on the news. Oh well.



We had decided we'd try to make it home today, giving us Sunday to "unwind" before the dreaded return to work on Monday. So we mostly just headed straight home on this Saturday.

We went through the little dogear of Alabama and saw the Battleship there. Only from the parking lot, where we took a couple of pictures, and kept going. The freeway goes into a tunnel that goes under the river :-O









We stopped at the border of Florida, where I was moving to, after having lived in the Pacific Time Zone my whole life. I was finally a resident of elsewhere. I was informed that this was referred to as "L.A." or "Lower Alabama", and the conflict I had always been taught was called the "Civil War", shall now only be referred to as "The War of Northern Aggression".



Oh yeah, it was a little windy. You normally wouldn't see that verticle piece in the center of that building, as it'd be blocked by the flagpole...but it's leaning...



The only thing to note on this stretch through L.A. was it was nice & green, and we got a flat somewhere outside of Cottondale, FL. No biggie, just lather up with enough DEET to give skin cancer to a Rhinoceros, and go put on the spare.



The bugs are out in full force.



I didn't run over the gator here...and he still smelled...



A nice family in a Jeep with LA plates stopped to help, but it was just a flat tire. Thanked them for checkin' on us, but we're fine. Here they are...look like they were moving, too...



Rained one other time that day. I could just load up a bunch of scenery shots, but most were blurred, as we were just trying to get home. Just a lot of bugs and rain...







I still want to know what exactly this place is...





We made it all the way back to St. Petersburg (604 miles...most we drove in a day) without really anything else to report, other than a lot of places I want to check out while I'm our riding around! We didn't finish the last CD of the book (we have since), but it was interesting to listen to most of the way, and we may have to learn more about Jack K and his whole story...

Adventure totals:

2955.3 miles
3 rainstorms
8 states
1 flat tire
4 national parks, WITH Passport Stamps (all in 1 day...in Arizona alone!)
0 tickets
1 Book on CD
2053 pictures
Bunches of other stuff...


As a Post-Script of sorts, while looking up how to Spell Jack Kerouac's last name online to type this up, I discovered a few things interesting to me. After he got famous from writing this book, he moved to St. Petersburg, where we live. In fact, his last home is about 5 blocks from ours. He died in the very hospital in which Maria was born here in town. Not a big deal...just more of that wormhole Twilight Zone shit that started in New Mexico...

http://www.pbase.com/pzo/jacks_house

Monday, November 26, 2007

Day 6--LaFayette, LA to...

Day 6--LaFayette, LA to...

I could feel the humidity before I ever even opened my eyes, and I knew we were in the South. All we had really thought about doing in Louisiana was seeing the French Quarter. I am not a huge fan of crowds and big cities at all, and the mere thought of going to Mardi Gras kind of makes me twitch. But it was just a regular day, we would be passing right by it, so why not see it and say we'd been there. Other than that, we had no desire to even be in Louisiana, let alone stop for anything. How wrong my preconceived notions were to be.

This is a parked train. This dirt section is someone's driveway. The whole road just before Avery Island was like this...the train tracks separated the houses from the road, and cut through each driveway.



We had spent much of the previous 2 days just moving to make up distance. We were only going 2500 miles total, but we wanted to see and do a lot. But now we were in the South, and close to home. We had talked to a friend at the wedding we went to the night before we left, who is a huge Tabasco fan. He carries a bottle with him in case a restaurant doesn't have it, and puts the stuff on everything...wouldn't surprise me if he put it on his Capt'n Crunch. He had mentioned wanting to go to the Tabasco factory in Avery Island, LA. Well, since we were ready to sightsee a bit, we thought that sounded good enough. Hell, he said they give tours, so there must be something to see.

Wow! This Island is nice! Took the tour of the factory. Being a Friday, the workers were mostly off except for the tour guide and the store workers. The processing plant was closed (they work 4 10-hour days Mon-Thurs). But the tourguide told us all about the history of this Island, which was also a massive salt mine. The family was already well-to-do with the salt business. Someone gave a pepper tree to one of the family long ago, and he tinkered around with it until he created Tabasco. It's been a family business for several generations.









They buy the barrels from Jack Daniels (they once use them once, for 1 year) to let the sauce cure in there for 3 years. I am pretty sure they said they reuse them several times before finally chopping them up to make charcoal starter out of, but I forget exactly.



They make it with vinegar and salt from their mine...otherwise just their special peppers that can only be picked once they get to be the color of a little painted stick each picker carries (called a Baton rouge, or red stick...they do a lot of this French thing in LA).

Several generations back, since the hotsauce thing had done pretty okay for the family, one of the family decided to bring in all sorts of exotic flora and fauna, to make a jungle paradise. That was one of the highlights of the trip, aside from the gators in their ponds. They had bamboo from everywhere, a canopy to drive through, a once stolen Buddha statue about the size of a Hummer 1, and a bird sanctuary. It was a very nice, self-driven tour...take as long as you like.











Gators:











I'm not sure this is a problem specific to Louisiana, or the whole South:


Then we headed to New Orleans. We weren't looking too forward to it, as I said about, but we figured what the hell, at least we will drop in, take a couple quick pictures, be out well before dark and then say we'd been there, if even for 5 minutes. Turned out it was pretty damn interesting, and we stayed for about 5 hours.



We had wanted to see a NOLA cemetery, saw one on the way in, but counted 3 different gangs within a block of it, so we weren't gonna park there. Tourguide in the French Quarter told us not to go there alone, and which streets not to go down.



We signed up for a Ghost Tour with Ernie, our guide. But it wasn't to start for a bit. So we asked for a good place to get real Cajun food, and were directed to The Gumbo Stop. Had a bowl of Jambalaya and one of Gumbo, but I can't recall which of us had which dish. We both picked things with no red meat or bird, so Maria could eat both and we shared. Both were good, but I don't know how it compares to other versions, as it's the only time we've had it. I loved the inner courtyard of the old building, though.







One of the main reasons we both loved it so much was because of the architecture. It is definitely an unusual place in 2007, and they seem to have done well to preserve the buildings, even though they've been modernized a bit. The "Ghost Tour" was as cheesy but as fun as expected, and we got to see a few things we would have missed meandering on our own. I could posts several hundred pics here, but the place should really be seen, so I'll just post a few here.

My buddy from NOLA told me afterwards that this is the first apartment building in the Western Hemisphere.







This guy was cool:




Only Maria's photo eye could make me look this good:







Maria got our palms read, and it was a fun little experience, overall. I definitely want to go back and explore more of the history of the city. It really is fascinating. We were there with no plan, on a Friday night, and the Police were warning the palmreader and other street vendor types that they had to be gone by midnight because a tropical storm was headed that way. So we made our way back out of town.

We stopped in Slidell for a Pizza, and then went on the rest of the short way to Gulfport. We had hoped to visit some friends, but they were up in Ohio racing that weekend, so we just hunkered down in a motel off the freeway to ride out the Tropical Storm.

Total miles traveled this Friday were only 242, but we spent most of the day enjoying the Louisiana coast! We will definitely go back! Louisiana proved to be our biggest suprise of the trip, as we both enjoyed it immensely!

Friday, November 23, 2007

Day 5-- Wichita Falls, TX to...

Day 5-- Wichita Falls, TX to...

We were up with plenty of time to make it the rest of the way to Dallas and meet our friend for his lunch break. We saw that Texas was indeed as flat as we had felt it was driving all through the night before. At one point, we stopped to look at some cows and stretch our legs. Other than that, we went straight to Dallas.



A lot of critters in Texas:



We met at a Texas-style steakhouse, which my vegetarian girlfriend found helpful. But it was Texas, so he wanted us to eat someplace "Texasy". The ribs were allright, but I doubt they were Texas' finest. If so, Texas is in trouble, 'cause I've had better ribs in Los Angeles.



If you know her...you'd know how funny this is:






We had planned simply to drive straight through Texas, other than to say hello to our friend, but while Maria was in the restroom, I made the mistake of asking what there was to do around there. He mentioned Dealey Plaza. Wow, I hadn't even thought about that. That is someplace I'd always wanted to go, and I had been so distracted by everything else, I forgot about it. I knew we were going there next...i was even on our way out of town...

It was very surreal seeing the whole square where one of the most significant events in American history took place. I had been seeing video footage of the plaza and the assassination of Kennedy since I was in school. It fascinated me then, and it always had whenever another movie came out about the situation. I can't say I'd really "studied" it or anything, but as soon as we drove into the plaza, I knew right where everything was, and how to get around.



The old book depository is now something else, but the 6th and 7th floors are a museum. "The 6th Floor Museum" tour is where we went first. The corner where Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy from is set up to look just as it did the day of the assassination. It is all glassed in, so you can't look out the window, which is still open like it was that day (there is a pane of glass there, so it is sealed, but just propped open to look that way).



The view outside of the window next to that window looks about the same. The plaza all looks basically the same. The trees have only gotten bigger since that day.





Other than the museum, there are no other "official" things to do there, though there are plenty of people selling some form of story about that day. It seemed all of them were selling the conspiracy story. Especially up on the infamous "Grassy Knoll". The orange marked post is where the conspirators claim one of the other assassins was standing. I hadn't noticed the mark until later. From what I knew of the stories, I knew it was somewhere around there. I was close.





It is strange to experience a place that is so ingrained into your brain, but only from tv or something. I have seen so many plays of the Zapruder film, I can roll through it in realtime with my eyes closed. I knew what the x's on the road were for. Shots 1 and 2, where Kennedy was when he got hit. When we left, we took that same path down Elm St. and out through the bridge.



Then we got back onto the road. East of Dallas, Texas turned into more of what we were used to the "South" looking like. Maria is from Florida, so she's known it her whole life. I am from California, though I'd spent enough time in Florida now to know we were getting closer! Very green and wooded from here on out! The plan was to take a right at Shreveport, and make it as far south in Louisiana as we could before we decided to call it a day.

Every time we stopped for food or a break, people were so nice. I sat and listened to two older ladies speaking Creole(?) back and forth to each other while we ate. I enjoy language, and can usually figure out what is being spoken, but I don't think I'd ever heard the language before.

As we sped past on the freeway through Texas, I saw a strange Bull, so I got off the highway, and doubled back. Turns out there were quite a few strange animals there. Bison, Zebras, Camels, Ostritches, and several other odd-looking cattle of some sort. The place was called "Toontown", and I haven't called yet to learn if they are for shows, breeding, or what. But we stopped and took some pics.













The whole rest of the way, it was getting dark. We had been kind of nervous about what the roads would be like in Louisiana, but it was by far the best stretch of driving we had. It was dark once we went South from Shreveport, but the highway was perfect, and if we passed 50 vehicles the whole time between Shreveport and LaFayette, I'd be surprised.



We stopped and ate at a Cracker Barrel off some offramp, and kept on another hour or so to LaFayette for the night. A buddy in CA text messaged me about staying away from some trouble in a little town called Jena that night. A quick map check told me we were far enough away, and we got ourselves a cheap hotel room while we wondered what to do tomorrow. Welcome to Louisiana...



These longer miles were getting old...we needed to see some more sights...

Total miles traveled were only 545.