Aug 23 - TX

August 26th, 2005 | By April | 1 Comment »

Day 22 - Some more driving in Texas, taking highway 287 north, it was a scenic drive. The green rolling hills turned into more flat plains with cacti and rock outcroppings, and always a distant view of the horizon. At night as we made our way further north it turned into more of a cattle country, the smell was the main give away.

To our surprise as we drove through one small town a truck pulled up beside us at a stoplight and had a quick conversation with Jason about the bike on the back of our car and the gas mileage. You can never think people are not friendly here – how could you when there are signs stating their slogan mile after mile “Drive Friendly�?. Though, not all the drivers drive very friendly – some tended to like to get right up on your bumper going 80 mile an hour when the speed limit is 70 until you finally have a chance to get out of their way. In a VW Golf, a big truck or SUV (popular choices of vehicles here) it can be quiet intimidation knowing if I had to stop quickly their car is going to bash right up to my steering wheel.

Drive Friendly, the Texas way!

Texas is green too… very beautiful country side.

Aug 22 - TX

August 23rd, 2005 | By April | 3 Comments »

Day 21 - Austin is a very nice city. We are staying with our friend Tess, who is currently taking her first big exam right now to continue in the economic phd program at U of T. We have just enjoyed lying around a comfy house washing all of our belongings – clothes, the car, and ourselves. All I can say of Austin right now is that the neighborhood north of the campus has a lot of well kept homes and a lot of trees and gardens, some more well kept than others. And Jason is very happy to be out of the humid heat of the east and into the more dry heat of the west.

We celebrated Tess’s ½ mark on her test taking with some cool party hats and cake. Than, she took her first night off in the past month of studying and we went out for a drink and dinner to continue celebrating. Tomorrow she has to start studying again for her second and last big exam on Friday. GOOD LUCK TESS!!!!!!

Aug 21 - TX

August 23rd, 2005 | By April | No Comments »

Day 20 - We woke up with a dead battery this morning. The night was very warm, even with the windows cracked down, and so we were turning on the car vents for some air circulation. The last time I turned them on, I fell back asleep before I turned them back off and Jason woke up to a flickering of lights in the dash boarding telling us that we have spent too much of the car’s energy. Our car is a manual and we tried push starting it, but we drained too much of the battery to get it going. That lead us to testing out our AAA membership. The test went well, we were up and running after they finally found where we were ‘resting’.

The country side in Texas slightly reminded Jason and I of back home in Washington. The heat is now dry, a nice change from the past 19 days of our trip, the grassy hills and trees are different from the east coast and defiantly tells us that we are coming into the western part of the states.

We went down to Crystal Beach before heading up to Austin and enjoyed our last swim in the salty water for quiet awhile. It was the most relaxing enjoyable swim I have had this trip. Most of dips in the ocean so far have been not as simple as people usually experience when they say ‘let’s go to the beach today’. At South Beach a huge storm system was moving in all around us and blocked out the sun right as we stepped into the water (no rain but no sun), Crystal River the sirens went off, and we took a swim at Grayton Beach State Park with a little fish that kept wanted to play with us and trying to nibble our legs. Which is cute for awhile, but when it didn’t stop and starting going for my waist which I started to find be too aggressive for me and I got out of the water. Which I am sure the fish was happy to have it’s space back again. So, this time we were able to stay in the water for as long as we wanted and the waves were not too big, the sun was out, and I didn’t want to ever leave.

Jedi at the beach in TX

Aug 20 - LA/TX

August 23rd, 2005 | By April | 2 Comments »

Day 19 – We took route 90 (future interstate 49) down along the southern part of Louisiana, the Cajun area. Stopping outside of Houma at Bayou Black Airboat Swamp Tours (www.bayoublackairboattours.com 504.628.2508) for a tour of the southern Louisiana’s wetlands given by Wayne Ponthieux Jr. It was a very informative and excellent trip through all the different parts of the wetlands that they have, though we learned that non-of them are what the swamp use to naturally be. He also was very informative with providing information about the history of the area and it’s lifestyles. The pictures below show some of the animals, plants, and landscape that we rode through.

baby gator

riding through the swamp weeds that are taking over the open water - they were accidently brought up from S. America

A lily field

Lily flower

a gator protecting her nest, but unknown to her - the hunters already took her eggs for farming the babies - they release 1/3 of the eggs caputered back into the wild after 2-3 years - the other 2/3 used for meat and leather.

Gator being fed a veggie - didn’t make him too happy…

more swamp

and more swamp

an owl - really cool … watched one try to land on the top of a tree and fall sideways down to the next branch - they are very big birds and I find them very fascinating.

pretty gator

an alley of trees

going back into the main canal

Behind the boat - it looks like a hurricane as we drive by…

Our guide and boat

Our swamp tour took a bit longer than we expected so we hightailed it to Texas that night to make sure we were in Austin by the next day. We decided to take our first night sleeping in the car at a rest-area right across the Texas boarder.

Aug 19 - AL/LA

August 23rd, 2005 | By April | 1 Comment »

Day 18 - Today we drove through Mobile, Al and followed Interstate 10 west through Mississippi to Louisiana. Mississippi was only a drive through state for us at the moment with tons of road signs for Casinos and New Orleans was our destination tonight. We found our way through the garden district of New Orleans to the Prytania Park Hotel (800.862.1984 – www.prytaniaparkhotel.com) that is conveniently right on the trolley train path. It was a wonderful clean hotel with people that were extremely nice and they had wireless internet. The price was very reasonably and it takes my vote to stay in if you visiting. We walked down to the French Quarters to enjoyed an evening of eating, wandering, and people watching. The location we picked to listen to some live music was at the Tricou House, in their small bar next to the restaurant, were the 711 Bourbon St. band played. It was the liveliest most interesting group of people to form a band we’ve seen play. The group was made up of a bunch of random guys that looked like they had just met in a train station. Very diverse, but all very rough looking.

Trolley transportation for New Orleans.

Night scene at bourbon st.

A food investigation. Ever since entered North Carolina (I think it was than) we have seen signs along the roadside for Hot Boiled Peanuts. Depending on the area sometimes they were seasoned – like in Louisiana they had Cajun hot boiled peanuts and somewhere else had garlic hot boiled peanuts. They were also sold once in a while at the gas station. I had never thought of boiling peanuts and it seems like an interesting idea. So, we have to try them out of course before we leave the south. They boil the whole peanut, shell and all, and ours was just handed over to us in a zip lock bag. They are very interesting looking and smelling. I kind of liked them and Jason found them a bit too odd. The texture was similar to firm butter, they softly smushed in your mouth in a pleasant way, but the taste was a bit odd for us. It could have been the seller that we bought from, and so it inspires me to try to make hot boiled peanuts again at home to see if I can make some to my tasting.

This was at the rest-area where we got our boiled peanuts - there was free NASA tours of there rocket testing lab, which we unfortunately didn’t take advantage of.

I assume concrete slabs keep the coffins from floating up when there is flooding….

Aug 18 - FL/AL

August 23rd, 2005 | By April | 2 Comments »

Day 17 - Heading west and aiming for Alabama, so that we can make to Austin, Tx in the next few days. We went through Panama City and continued along to the coast. While driving along the coastal road, we came across a town that look very familiar. And to my surprise it was Seaside, FL. For all of you architecture buffs, this is the one we read about in school. At first I thought we had entered Disney Land but after getting past the “town square�? we realized that it had more to offer than first expected. For those who didn’t study Architecture or Planning, Seaside is a new urbanist community that based its town planning on Mixed-Use buildings (retail shops and offices on the lower floors and apartments on the upper floors) and pedestrian streets and neighborhoods. (there are books written on the city, but that is the $.02 explanation). In theory, the city is like a utopia, and in many ways the reality is as well. But for me, the city has been homogenized more then a gallon of milk. Every house look like the one before and the Volvo parked next to the BMW that was next to the Audi and so on, showed the city had very little economic diversity. In fact, most of the homes had signs with the owners names and original location to prove that this community was only a beach resort full of vacation homes for the ultra rich. For me, Seaside was an ideal theory, but put into unrealistic practice. I really did love the streets and the density of the housing, but when you over refine and homogenize the buildings, the landscape and the people you start to get a bit boring… well that is just my opinion. - Jason

Seaside, FL

Grayton Beach white sand dunes

We reach Alabama today and as if someone took a hammer to the landscape there were hills. I knew Florida was flat and had water seeping out of it like a spong, but not until we crossed the Perdido Creek into Alabama did I realize how accustomed I had become to non-changing elevations.

We camped that at the Gulf State Park in Alabama, and I have to say that it was one of the least enjoyable state parks we have been to. The facities were clean and decent, but it felt more like a public campground area than a state park that is trying to preserve and care for the natural surroundings. In the morning they drove around all the campsites with a de-bugging fog machine, which is very unpleasant thing to wake up to especially while your jogging and they drive right by you. My thought is that it’s a state park and bugs are part of the environment and ecosystem we live in, I might not enjoy them all the time but it’s just how it is, so seemed a bit backwards for a state park. They were still rebuilding from the hurricane that hit them last year, so there wasn’t much natural foliage or trees around making the park feel very bare and cleared off. Over all the park seemed not as geared toward the natural surroundings as all the other parks we’ve been to, it was very disappointing.

On the topic of state parks one thing I noticed about the past few days, and I am not sure if it is because of the area’s that we are in or the change in how people camp now, but the last few parks we’ve been to they didn’t have the choice of just plain tent sites. They are all RV sites with water and electricity hook-ups which creates the price of camping go up about $5 a night. It made me sad, and my wallet more empty, to see the RV’s taking over the simple style campsites that are more economical and use no services. I wonder when our lifestyle will become simpler again, and not always have the need to bring our home comforts with us everywhere we go.

Aug 17 - FL

August 23rd, 2005 | By April | 1 Comment »

Day 16 – On our way towards Tallahassee we made a side trip to Crystal River to see what was going on with the manatees in that area and ended up at a public beach. So, of course, we took our first dip in the Gulf of Mexico. It was not as salty as South Beach in Miami – that was the saltiest beach we’ve been to so far – but it was very pleasant and refreshing. Jason and I were eyeing a big dark cloud system that was off towards the east of us and hoping it was going past around our nice beach area…. though after about ten minutes a 5 second blast from a siren that sounded as if we were going to get bombed answered our question and we all had to get out of the water. The siren sounds to let everyone know that they need to get out of the water due to some type of danger and than you listen to the radio to see what the danger is. The danger for today was a thunderstorm coming our way. So, we decided to try and out run the storm for awhile and keep heading northwest with the black clouds in our rearview mirror

We camped that night at Ochlockonee River State Park which was an average state park, with a nice river running right by the campground and some very playful squirrels running up and down the tree trunks and jumping from tree branch to tree branch.