Thru New Mexico to Utah

We bee-lined from Austin to Zion National Park in Utah, which meant three day of very solid driving, mainly through New Mexico. While we didn't make many stops we took time to check out "Sky City", an acoma pueblo settlement. Acoma is the tribe of native americans in the area, and a pueblo is their settlement. Sounds cool, right? We were stoked to do the 1.5 hour tour of the ancient sky city and it ended up being the biggest dud of the trip. Kind of neat to see the old houses made of packed clay, set atop a dessert mesa (hence sky city) but the tour consisted mainly of being touted around to women selling clay goods outside their homes, feeling awkward for not buying it, and hearing about all the movies previously filmed there. Basically, we had expected an ancient city and had instead found a living tourist city.

This is a street in Acoma Pueblo, "ancient" mud houses

The cathedral

It's a really moving experience. The outhouses add so much.

Enjoying the mesas

The scenery throughout New Mexico was pretty cool, and just as you'd picture...we could definitely appreciate where Punte Norte, a local Summerland B&B, got it's decor.

Austin, beautiful Austin

We left the Mudbug Festival and our crawfish behind, and traded Louisianan's gumbo and jambalaya in for Texas' BBQ, tumbleweed, and cowboys. With only a few days in Austin before Bryce flew home, we had a jam packed time!

Before even arriving in the city, we caught an AAA baseball game, our "local" Round Rock Express team. The stadium was great, Bryce taught us how to fill out our score cards properly, and all in all it was a great start.

The Round Rock stadium

Enjoying the game

From the game, we got ourselves checked into our city campground and hit the road for our first Texan experience. Food. Our time in Austin consisted of a few main themes:

1. Food. Mainly BBQ.

2. Live music

3. Watching movies

Unfortunately, the only pictures we took centred around food, which to our defense, was a definite highlight.

Franklin's BBQ...a top rated joint. You have to be there well before noon to get any food at all--they are so popular the door shuts when food sells out

My lunch sandwich at Franklin's...beef brisket with coleslaw. Now can you see why it sells out?

Quite the spread of food at Salt Lick..coleslaw, beans, potatoes, beef brisket, sausage, pork ribs, and chicken. Phew!

Salt Lick BBQ...pure mass of pure deliciousness!

Topic #2, live music. Austin is known for an eclectic mix on the live music scene. Everything from country to rock to jazz to blues to reggae can be found among the numerous bar filled streets. This is one of the reasons Austin beat Vancouver on our personal list of "coolest cities to live". We had a good night out which finished with a rather late night at a bar that was just hopping. Hopping past the point of any bar I was in during Florida's spring break madness when Kuldeep and I were there in university. That says something.

Of course we also took in all of Austin's culture. The State Capitol was lovely, and the tour inside was awesome. We took in a big state museum which was fantastic and learned all about Texas' cowboy history.

Bryce and I lovin' the Capitol building

Topic #3, movies. Bryce follows a couple movie blogs and had heard about the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. AWESOME! It serves dinner and drinks during the movie...and really good dinner to boot. There was the biggest, best movie seats you can imagine with a long table in front, and the servers were dressed all in black so as to not be disruptive during the film. You would write your order down and place it upright in a little holder so that they could come collect it. Nothing better than sitting back watching The Bridesmaids (we loved it--go see it!) and having a watermelon-seared feta salad with a glass of white wine....movie and dinner for $20.

The final highlight of Austin was it's great active/healthy living feel. The home of Lance Armstrong (and we checked out Mellow Johnny's, his bike shop) the city is chalk-a-block full of great cycling and running trails, people out everyday, all day working out. We managed to get out for three or four runs along the river trails through the downtown core, followed by a dip in Barton Springs pool. A seriously great lifestyle.

From NOLA to Austin

We left New Orleans heading west. Our first stop, a few kilometers out of town, was an old rice plantation.

The plantation tour was really interesting. It lacked much hard information on plantation owners, crops, slaves or anything much in general, and instead focused on the story of a few generations of one family. It was enlightening to hear more about some actual people from the period, rather than just numbers. The tour leader was a creole fellow a few years younger than us and he was an excellent presenter. He was very engaging, if not a little strange. I think the most interesting take away was that slaves were supposed to be treated differently, under France's Code Noir, in Louisiana than in the other southern states. I don't know if they were actually treated much better in practice, but there were rules and consequences surrounding slave abuse and separating slave families.

The Laura Plantation

From there we headed over to check out Avery Island, the home of Tabasco hot sauce. It was not too much of a detour and it seemed like a fun thing to do. Company tours had also been pretty good to us in the past. Tabasco ended up being a bust though. First we had to pay an entrance fee to get onto Avery Island (the only thing on Avery Island was the Tabasco Factory, so the free tour was a bit of a trick), then the Tabasco factory tour was ridiculous! The tour started with a woman describing how Tabasco is made. By some poor fortune we ended up being in a tour filled with a bus load of mainly french speakers so after each sentence the woman would stop and a fellow beside her would pick up and translate, the only thing being that he wasn't that good at it so half the audience would be chiming in translating for him. It was a confused din. Then we watched a video which basically said the same thing the woman said but with moving pictures, and was followed by some advertisements for Tabasco by a woman dressed in shoulder pads and a floral scarf. Bryce, being a fashionista, had a field day ridiculing her clothing. After the movie we all shuffled out of the auditorium to walk past a non-operating bottling line, which as can be imagined looks like a bunch of stainless steal machines. Then we left. The plus of the whole experience was getting to try the whole Tabasco line of products and getting free small samplers of four of them, which have been really great for camping. If anyone asks you to try it though, Tabasco sweet and spicy ice cream is not pleasant.

Meg on the Tabasco Express... The highlight of our visit to Avery Island.

That night we headed for Lafayette where we were hoping to meet up with Chef Joe from New Orleans, unfortunately he was busy catering an event and we couldn't get any time with him. We did check out a restaurant he suggested which turned out be just okay unfortunately. We were hoping he would hook us up with a funky hole in the wall local restaurant, but it ended up being a giant, high throughput Cajun theme restaurant. We then made our way downtown to see what was going on. It wasn't too busy a town and unfortunately we just missed a live concert downtown. We settled for a one man cover show and a few drinks on a patio instead.

We spent that night at a KOA beside a busy highway, one of the large interstate affairs, so we didn't sleep all that well and were almost thankful when the sun came up so we could get on the road. Meg and Bryce went out for a run while I did laundry and we made for our first stop, another National Park. The park was associated with the wonderful parks we visited in New Orleans so we had high expectations. Unfortunately they were not really met. Our first activity, which we raced to get to, was a ride down a bayou to learn more about Cajun country. New Orleans and the plantations were all Creole French. The original french inhabitants took on the name Creole French (in Louisiana Creole seems to basically mean, native to Louisiana, so there are creole French, creole black etc) had got there first and the Cajuns (an Anglicization of French Acadians) who had been expelled from Canada got the second rate interior land and swamps. The boat ride basically consisted of a fellow driving us slowly down a river/stream/bayou while he waxed philosophical about life. I think he had just read "Ishmael", because there were strong hints of agrarian vs. hunter/gather societies in almost all of his answers. Also, almost every one of his answers started with "10,000 years ago...".

Meg: "How many rice crops are grown in Louisiana per season."

Dude: "10,000 years ago... (10 minutes).. and then they grew rice... (10 minutes)... and then they brought over slaves... (10 minutes)... two."

It was actually much to his credit that the fellow always answered the question in the end. It almost got to the point that I started applauding when he finally got to the answer. I mean to digress so greatly with every question and still answer it in the end was an amazing feat. Half the time I didn't even remember what the question was by the time he was done. Meg started semi-rudely interrupting him in order to accelerate answers, since we only had three hours with him and we had many questions. There were also two other Cajun women on the trip who were able to answer questions in a more direct fashion.

Cruising the bayou.

After that mind boggling boat ride we headed up for what became another bit of torture, a video on the history of the Cajun people. The history itself was really interesting and pretty sad, but the video was ruined a bit by this little female voice that represented an anthropomorphic Acadia. She would pipe up now and again throughout the video expressing her deep devotion to the people of Acadia who eventually became the Cajuns. Usually while she talked she would sound pretty upset and there would be a strong sound of wind blowing. It was pretty over the top and took away from the video. The exhibits at the little museum associated with the National Park was really good though and helped fill in the gaps that were still missing from the philosophical boatman, and terribly upset video.

In all we had all but given up on Cajun related tourist destinations, they just weren't very well polished. Before throwing in the towel though, our final stop was checking out at a small town music hall . It was basically the Cajun version of the Grand Ole Opry. It was a live show broadcast on both radio and television and featured Cajun musicians and we were lucky enough to be there on a concert night. We arrived a little early, in time to visit another exhibit on Cajun history (which was identical to the one we visited after the boatman) and learn how pig cracklings are made (the big take away was, with great difficulty) and sample them. When the concert arrived we bought a bag of popcorn and sat down in our seats. With the start of the first song we were having a great time. The music was really lively and almost immediately old folks in the audience were up two stepping around. This, of course, got Meg going since she loves old people doing pretty much anything let alone swinging around a dance floor, but it added visual entertainment for Bryce and I as well.

Our fairly poor low light shot of the Cajun music program. If you look hard, you will see the woman holding a portable fan for her husband.

From there we headed north. We were aiming for Shreveport where the world famous Mudbug Festival was in full swing. Before we got there though we wanted to hit up some live Zydeco music. Sadly we had to skip the Zydeco festival that was happening in a neighboring town due to time constraints, but we figured we had to get at least a hint of it. The Lonely Planet indicated that the bar Slim's Y-Ki-Ki in Opelousas had live Zydeco every Friday so we plugged the address into our GPS and made our way there.

I can't lie, the evening started off weird and at no point did it start making sense. First we show up and the changeable-text sign outside the bar indicated that the evening entertainment was being hosted by Triple-D social club as a wrap up of some sort of trail ride. Not sure exactly what was going on we stopped by and asked the really friendly fellows at the door what was going on, whether there was live music and whether we should go get dinner. The answers seemed to be loosely that there was going to be a live Zydeco band, there would be some food served (Louisiana comfort food, red-beans and rice), and that imminently a bunch of people would come in from a "trail ride". We also asked if it was a public function since pretty much all the guys seemed to be wearing matching black t-shirts with something about triple-D on them. Though they seemed on the whole to be surprised we wanted to come, they indicated that the public was allowed. After a bit of pondering we decided to maybe go eat dinner, get a cheap hotel room (we decided to have a night out of the tent*), and then come back.

After some fried chicken we were back at the bar asking similar questions, and the answers were similar again. The band was coming on soon, there would be food, there was some kind of trail ride just wrapping up and the place would pack out any second. We were encouraged to get in soon as it would be difficult to get a drink at the bar soon. Another fellow outside chatted us up a bit and gave us the advice to maybe have a few drinks before we went in order to save money over bar prices. He was drinking in the parking lot as he said this. Being no spring chickens to the bar scene, this made sense to us and we decided to head back to town to get some beer.

Before we got on the road though a friendly person who introduced herself as Slim came up and talked to us (her business card actually had her full name as Sexy Slim, so she was being humble). She was the vice-president of a social club whose name I can't remember right now, but consisted of three words all starting with the letter D. Thinking I had put two and two together said, "Oh right on, triple-D, you guys are hosting the party." No, they were actually three-D, and their motto was "because we're larger than life and jump out at you". As she said that she made a little upper body lunge in our direction to demonstrate. We asked her a little about these social club things and it seemed that people in the clubs really did go riding around on horses and raised money for good causes. She invited us to head back down south for an event 3-D was hosting, but we figured we would remain loyal to the triple-D crowd.

We went out and got our beer and came back and had just opened our first can when we realized that we were the only people drinking in the parking lot. The fellow who had given us the advice must have been part of Sexy Slim's crowd and was off to a new party and everyone else was just milling about beer free or heading into the bar. We figured what the hell though, it wasn't every day you get to drink Old Milwaukee in a parking lot in Louisiana, and continued to have a few more discreetly.

Finally, it came time to enter the bar. From the outside it sounded like a DJ was playing some sort of club scene music, but the fellow up front assured us the band was on (at this point you may be aware, as we were not, that the fellows at the front felt that DJs are bands). We made our way and our first impression was, again, how all the men seemed to wearing the triple-D t-shirts (though the girls were sort of dressed up like they were in a booty-licious music video). We headed up to the bar, got a few beers, and settled in at the last table to check things out. The dance floor wasn't super busy for most of the songs, a few regulars who got up and grooved, but occasionally there would be sort of a club scene remixed zydeco song and then the floor would get hopping. There were two DJs, a really big fellow, appropriately (though hopefully not ill fated) DJ Titanic, and a smaller fellow whose name I didn't catch as he didn't too many shout outs. It was a cultural experience to watch people dancing and grinding away and we were enjoying ourselves. The highlight though was when one of the guys we were talking to at the start of the night came by and pulled us onto the dance floor for one of the popular songs and hooked Bryce up with the girl who was without doubt the hottest girl in the bar. It was really fun being up with everyone and Bryce worked his best moves and after the song ended we decided we had reached the night's peak and called it.

The next morning we were all feeling pretty good and excited for the event to come. After a few hour drive, we arrived in Shreveport where the Mudbug festival was going down. Mudbug's are crawfish, which seem basically to be prawn sized lobsters. We came all this way out of our way (Austin, our next destination was now well south of us, when we we started it was a little north-east) to the party mainly as an excuse to try crawfish as they are meant to be eaten. That is; freshly boiled, covered in some kind of seasoning salt and spread out on a newspaper. We tried them and in the end our takeaway was, pretty good, but a real pain to eat. The technique for eating the crawfish is basically to rip off the upper body and then, while sucking with a fair amount of effort, squeeze the little tail till the meat comes out. We proven to be poor at this task, but after speaking with our neighbours it sounds like we got a bad batch and our crawfish were too small for easy eating. By the end of our first dose though, we were pretty salted out, and really covered with mudbug juices and forgo a second effort. After trying a few other local carnival delicacies and listening to some of the local acts (Who were quiet good, with both musical tents hopping) we called it a festival and got on the road. We decided to make a few miles to Austin before the night fell.

Crawfish

In retaliation for Bryce absconding with my Mudbug wife (perhaps in the madness of the event) I am eating Meg

*Actually, I just realized that I never mentioned this before. Meg slept in the car every night except the first Bryce was with us. We had the illusion that we could all fit in our two man tent so didn't ask Bryce to bring one down with him. It turns out that we could fit, exactly, with no gap between any of us with Meg between Bryce and I with her head at the opposite end. As can be imagined Meg very soon overheated in Louisiana's hot night and Bryce and I awoke the first morning to find Meg sleeping on the ground outside the tent complaining of the bugs. After that she slept in the car where she was evidently pretty comfortable. Also, because Meg was the smallest she was in the backseat of a pretty overstuffed car, all in all, Meg was sort of a displaced person for a few days.

Meghan trapped beneath our cooler as the car's contents shift.

We're almost home, but....

...we're going to keep posting the rest of our trip until we reach the end. We're busy putting kilometres on the car in order to get home, so check back in about a week :-)

New Orleans...NOLA as they like to call it

Our camping in New Orleans ended up being the worst we have had during our trip. It was the closest we could get to downtown, but it was still a 15 minute drive to get to the French Quarter. It was a big white gravel lot that had no trees; this was not only unattractive, it also led to some extremely hot, sunny wake up calls. As an added bonus we were locked behind a gate from 5pm on since prostitutes and drunk people wandered the major street outside the park. It was to this delightful scene that we brought Bryce after picking him up at midnight on our first day in New Orleans. I don't think he was too impressed. It grew on us a little though over the few days we were there, as there was a nice pool and hot tub which came in handy during the few hours we had to relax while we were in the city.

Aside from our accommodations, New Orleans was a great city! It really had a nice vibe to it and the locals were really keen to talk to us and give us suggestions on what we should see. Through talking to people we had fantastic Po-Boys (Which seem to basically be like a big sandwich made from French Bread-the filling of choice was battered, fried shrimp with melted cheese and roast beef gravy), had a great walk in a swamp, and caught some really good live music along Frenchman Street which evidently is where the locals go to party.

The Three Amigos, together again. In the background is Jackson Square.

I guess I am getting a little ahead of myself. Our first activity in New Orleans, fairly early the morning after we picked up Bryce, was to do a great National Park-led tour of the French Quarter which explained the history of the city, starting way back with the native peoples in the region and bringing us up through the Spanish, French, and finally American influence. With that bit of history under our belt we visited an exhibit on Hurricane Katrina which brought back our memories of the news coverage of the event while at the same time giving more of the details behind the news. There was also an excellent exhibit on how and why all the levies failed in the city which led to all the flooding. On a lighter note there was also an excellent exhibit on Mardis Gras, the parades, and the krewes (krewes seem to be like crews, with more pageantry) that run them. I had to hurry through that exhibit a bit as I had spent too much time with the levies so I can't report much other than how seriously they take the ridiculousness of the event. Over the top costumes, floats, invitations, etc.

They were moving some of the parade floats around while we were.

One of the great costumes up for viewing at the Mardi Gras Exhibit.

We wandered the streets a bit then headed back to camp for a bit of a rest before heading back out for the evening. It was really hot down there and it was nice, if not necessary, to escape the weather now and again. That evening we headed back into town for what the Lonely Planet indicated was the best Po-Boy restaurant in town. Unfortunately it was closed, but, like I mentioned earlier, thanks to friendly advice we were able to find a place which really might have had the best sandwiches in town. They were amazing. Better than you would think a sandwich could be. Also, being on that end of town we were able to check out St. Charles Avenue, a beautiful and famous tree and wonderful-old-home lined street. At this point we attempted to round out the day with a visit to one of the city's above ground cemeteries but they all seemed to lock up early. Before heading to bed we had a few beers and I had a cigar (I forgot to note earlier that we checked out a cigar store where men were hand making cigars in the shop. It was funny, evidently it was Cuban tobacco seed, grown in the Dominican Republic, and then made in America. It was a good cigar for all of that.) while we sat in the hot tub. A pretty good start to our time with Bryce.

Me, eating a Po-Boy. It seems like Bryce is cheering me on a little bit, but I think he was actually just enthused about how good they were.

The next day began with another fact filled adventure when we sat in for a Creole cooking course. The course might have been the best (non-free) bang-for-your-buck activity we have done on this trip. It was two hours long during which an engaging grandmother told stories, and the history of New Orleans while making several regional dishes. The dishes included gumbo, jambalaya, bread pudding, and pralines. They were all delicious. We also got a local beer while we ate lunch.

The three of us with our little cooking instructor.

After that we made our way to another national park in the region. This one was in a proper swamp instead of the city. Half the park was closed as a man had gone missing off the boardwalk the previous day (amazingly he survived four days in the swamp!). From what the ranger indicated, copperhead snakes were generally found only in the part of the park which was closed so we weren't that heart broken and we still had a few kilometers of trail to work with. The intro sign indicated that things we might see on the trail were basically turtles, snakes, and alligators. The edges of the path were heavily grown in with low bushes, so our hearts were all racing as we walked mostly single file, down the middle of the path waiting for something to lunge out at us. Nothing did. We did see many, many snakes though and eventually even some young alligators. It was a cool walk and was neat to see all the animals.

Some of the cool creatures we saw in the swamp. We only got one blurry photo of the snakes, but we saw alot of them too.

From the swamp we made our way back down town. We were heading towards a city park for some free live music when we came across Antoine's Restaurant. It looked really neat from the outside and after some humming and hawing we decided to go in and check out the display cases. The bartender saw us come in and invited us on a tour of the place. It was then that we learned how famous it was and got to check out the many dining rooms in the restaurant, several intended for select groups (like Mardi Gras parade Krewes). Aside from just being a cool restaurant there was also alot of history stored in the people themselves, evidently some of the waiters had been there for generations, as had the patrons they served. After the tour we made our way to the park for the music, which sounded good. After awhile though Bryce was reasonably burning out and we went in hunt of coffee. This didn't seem available anywhere, beer yes, coffee no. We settled on some Coke and headed back to camp.

We decided that night would be our big night out in New Orleans. Unfortunately cabbing back to the campsite would have been too expensive so Meg volunteered to be the nights dd. I think probably she regretted that in the end. Our first act of the night was of course a stroll down infamous Bourbon Street. We had walked in and out of Bourbon Street a few times, and I have to say even at 10 am some of the bars and their patrons were starting to ramp up. By the evening the whole street was going crazy. It was great! A really fun, party atmosphere, with people walking down the street with giant cups of beer or large musical-note-shaped plastic glasses filled with some alcoholic drink, probably a hurricane. Speaking of the hurricane, that was our second drink of the night (the first of course being a quick beer as soon as hit the strip). The hurricane is a local favorite and we stopped by the bar which invented them and each had one. We had heard a saying surrounding the drink which I can't remember fully, but went something along the lines of "Drink one and you're feeling no pain, drink two and you forget everything..." (I think drink three probably involved dying or ending up in jail). Anyway, the saying was bang on, it was a smooth tasting drink with alot of alcohol and it started our evening well. While we had the cocktail we also had a chance to talk to a couple of local guys who were hanging out at the bar. They were really nice fellows and one of them, Chef Joe, gave us his number so we could give him a shout when we were upstate a bit (where they lived).

From there the night got a little vague honestly enough. I think we popped by another bar along Bourbon and then headed over to Frenchmens street, we had been told this was the street that the locals party at. At first the street seemed a little quiet, but we soon found the busier area and checked out a few bars with some really good live music. At the end of the night things get really fuzzy as we were hanging out with a fellow and he bought us a few whiskey and cokes. Meg reports that the last thing we did before heading home was crash a somewhat private after party at a Bourbon street bar in order to go to the washroom.

We weren't feeling great the next morning as we slowly, very slowly, packed up the tent, gathered our belongings and left the gravel lot behind. It was about 1pm by the time we got on the road and somewhat appropriately since I was feeling half dead we headed for a graveyard to check it out while it was open. The graveyard was pretty neat with many of the mausoleums dating back centuries. We had an animated, though fact free, discussion on what happened to each of the bodies as the next one was added in. We then checked out another Po-Boy shop (good, but not as good as the first one) and decided to check out a jazz talk held, again, by the national parks system (they are well set up in New Orleans with national parks). The talk was excellent, covering the history of jazz through slavery and share cropping and religion, but including live songs along the way by really excellent musicians. It was an audience participation kind of music and we had to do our best to clap along with time to the music (as if we were chopping wood evidently, and if we missed time we got our hands chopped off, or at least ridiculed by the main presenter). Buoyed by the music we decided that the right thing to do next would be go for a run. I really didn't think it was that good of an idea, but Bryce was pretty hell-bent that it would make us feel better. I didn't, I felt sick. The other two seemed to have a really nice time though. We headed over to a KOA on the west, and heading-out of town, side of New Orleans and setup camp for our last night in town.

Some of the cool mausoleums in the above ground graveyards.

Jazz, as evidenced by the National Park mentioned earlier, is a big thing in New Orleans and we decided we couldn't leave town without seeing some live. Bryce had chatted up a fellow the night before and got some good advice on a place to go, but through some strange googling magic we ended up going to a completely different location (unknowingly). The music ended up being really cool though. At first we thought we had been taken for the price of cover. The band was three middle aged guys dressed as if they might be doing Sunday yard work. Then they started playing and we knew we had been robbed. It was a cacophony of sounds without coherence. Slowly though the music started taking shape and it was really grooving. It turns out it was totally improvisational; one of the guys would start wailing on his instrument as a solo (there was a stand up base, a guitar and a drum set) and then the other two would get the rhythm and start falling in and the sound would just evolve from there. Though it was really cool sounding, the night before caught up with me eventually and I almost fell asleep off my seat so we headed back to the tent. As a side note on jazz music, as awkward and difficult as the start of each song was to listen to, it was even worse watching the few brave souls who decided to dance to it. I think in an alternate setting people would have suspected they had a disease of the nervous system.

That was it for New Orleans. We had had an awesome time in the city and we are all pretty convinced that at some point we will be back for Mardi Gras. Actually that wasn't totally it for New Orleans, somewhere in all of that we went for a driving tour of the lower 9th ward. That was the really poor part of town that got so much press coverage after the flooding. Mainly I was hoping to find some of the rebuilt super houses I had read about in a few places and luckily we were able to find some just as we were leaving the area. Also though we saw alot of the poverty and broken down shacks that are so associated with New Orleans since the flood.

Just a shot of the French Quarter. As can be seen there is some lovely iron work, nice balconies and it is hard to find parking.

Emm Eye Ess Ess Eye Ess Ess Eye Pee Pee Eye

We had five days to get from Nashville, Tennessee to New Orleans, Louisianna where we would pick Bryce up from the airport and begin our ten day adventure with him. We chose to drive south along the Natchez Trace, another scenic route well known in the world of US driving trips. Most of this route was through Mississippi state.

The Natchez Trace was historically the route that farmers, plantation owners (well..maybe not the owners but their workers) and merchants would travel from the south of the Mississippi River back up north to their home. Before steamships were invented, merchants would sail/barge south on the Mississippi with their goods in order to sell them to the bustling port cities. Rather than slowly paddle up river to get back home, they would disassemble their raft, trade the boat's wood for a mule or two and ride back home.

The drive was beautiful and we had enough time to take make it in a leisurely pace. Perhaps the most exciting thing along the drive itself, aside from the greenery, were the ancient Indian mounds. Not that exciting to gaze at, but very neat to think about--over 2000 years ago the Native Indians would bury their loved ones with personal belongings in these large ceremonial mounds. We spent a few nights at great campsites, did some fishing, cooked some good meals, lost Cameron's glasses (luckily they've since been found and the campground is kindly mailing them home), and had a couple good runs along the walking paths.

Cam loving the camping. Thanks to Julie and Mike we discovered the beauty of cooking corn on the grill. And please, this is grilling, not BBQing..there is a difference.

Beautiful driving through Mississippi.

Me in my prime. I've discovered I love fishing.

We detoured off the "Trace" as it's affectionately referred to, and made our way to Clarksdale, Mississippi...yet another hotbed of musical history. Ike Turner was born here, along with a slew of well known blues musicians. We rolled into town and went straight to the local blues bar, where we spent the night bopping away to live music.

We spent the next day driving along Highway 1, next to the Mississippi. Our Mississippi River spotting failed for the most part as we quickly realized there are levees that run the whole course of the river and block the view of it. We were able to detour into a little industrial port along the way and catch a glipse of the flooding waters though.

Our next highlight was BB King's birthplace, Indianola, MI. A couple years ago I never would have known who BB King was, but friends Crystal and Dave got me hooked a while ago and so I was quite excited to learn more about him. Of course, Cameron already knew who he was, not because I taught him, but because he's smart like that. The BB King museum was yet another spectacularly done exhibit and we learned all about his poor upbringing and crazy lifestyle that has kept him on the road for the last 60 years doing concerts almost daily.

On our way to Clarksdale we stopped in Tupelo. This is teeny tiny house that Elvis was born in, and lived until he was 3 years old. At that point, his parents couldn't afford the house anymore and had to move in with Elvis's grandparents.

Elvis and his folks

Perhaps one of the best meals of the trip was in Taylor, MI. Catfish (one plate blackened, the other grilled) at a little divey looking restaurant

We had to do it. We had to try Sonic, a drive-in restaurant. Thinking it would be "old-fashioned" and serve us with a table attached to our car window we were excited. Instead we got a to-go bag of food and a greasy smelling car.

Davey Crockett's home. Unfortunately you see what we saw. The exhibit inside was all deteriorated and rotting so we didn't really learn too much about the great frontiersman.

With our sightseeing complete, we got back onto our scenic drive and rode the rest of the Natchez out before jumping on the major highways to bring us into New Orleans. What was really wild was the gigantically long raised highways that led into the city. Louisianna has so much water and swamp land and the area leading into NOLA (yes, that New Orleans, Louisianna) had houses raised up on stilts and children going to school in boats--very reminiscent of Cambodia!

Nashville, Tennessee

Our drive to Nashville was non-descript, minus the downpour of rain we fought through. We got camp set up in our token KOA campground in the heart of Opreyland and got to work the next morning seriously exploring Nashville.

First off was taking care of DJ. We had a slow leak in the passenger side rear tire that needed to be fixed and so went into the downtown Honda dealership. We hunkered down in the waiting room, complete with free coffee, pop, popcorn, hotdogs (not yet cooking), wireless internet and the most recent newspaper. For people who have been travelling for ten months this is heaven and we almost considered just spending our day at Honda. A bit too quickly the inspection was finished and showed a nail pucture, requiring a new tire (though Cameron is adamant the tire could have been patched and they were scamming us...luckily the tire is warrenteed). They kindly shuttled us downtown to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum while DJ waited in line to get fixed up.

The museum was just awesome and we saw all kinds of old county music clips and videos...everything from Hank Williams to the beginnings of the Grand Ole' Opry to Roy Rogers to Taylor Swift. In usual form, Cameron and I are the slowest moving people through the museum and the Honda dealership thought we were nuts to spend the whole day there!

Look closely and you will see the cowboy themed changes made to the car...a saddle in the console, guns for the inside door handles. I forget who this car belonged to but it was some big wig country singer!

This picture is for you Dad!

The original blue suede shoes!

With DJ fixed we headed to Hog Heaven, another restaurant recommendation from Jaci and Larry's viewing "The Best Thing I Ever Ate"...and again, the turkey sandwich with white BBQ sauce came up gold! Back downtown to Broadway Street and spent a few hours listening to multiple bands at various pubs/lounges/bars. Nashville is amazingly musical and there is talent everywhere you turn..people come here to "make it" just like actors go to Las Angeles.

Have you picked up on the theme yet? We're eating a lot of BBQ.

Broadway is full of bars, music stores, and ratty tourist shops

We had a wander around downtown, touring another state capitol and learning how unique Tennessee is with some of its governing....now, I say unique, and I know it was unique but already I seem to have forgetten the details...ugh.

Look closely and you will see that sneaky Confederate flag on the desk.

We took in an evening show at the Grand Ole Opry. For those of you like me, you might recognize the name but don't really know what it is...the Opry is a live radio broadcast country music performance that started back in the '40s and have been happening weekly ever since. The show is a couple hours long and performers having 15 minutes a piece, usually enough time to do 3 or 4 songs. The night we were there had multiple old timers that have playing there since their hay day in the 50s (this included Little Jimmy Dickens**..the cutest, smallest cowboy you ever have seen...in his 90s now he still knows how to work the crowd!) and finished with Diamond Rio.

**please, if you never look any links, look at this one. He's ADORABLE!

Grand Ole Opry stage

Cameron lovin' the country

Having had two nights of live music we were getting hooked, and took in a third at the Bluebird Cafe, a long-running restaurant that hosts up and coming singer/songwriters (and also where Garth Brooks was discovered, along with many others). The night was perhaps our highlight of Nashville. The crowd was very intimate--while it was a "sold out" show (you don't actually have to buy tickets, just make reservations for a table) and they had two acts over the couple hours. The first started with 5 or 6 youngsters, ranging from late teens to early 20s, that were developing their music careers. They all had beautiful voices, great songs and basically blew our minds. Included in this group were American Idol discoveries, though we don't watch the show so nobody was recognizable.

That concluded our musical tour of Nashville and we were back on the road...five days to make our way to New Orleans where we would meet up with Bryce (remember him from NYC?).