Installment Deux!

When I last wrote from the Savannah Public Library, I was looking out on a beautiful courtyard on a warm, lazy southern evening. The view from the Austin Public Library is not quite as scenic - I'm looking at a parking garage and it is pouring rain. Fortunately this change in scenery is not representative of a change in the quality or character of our trip. Although I did not leave my enthusiasm in the old south, I did leave a piece of my heart (story forthcoming).

We headed out from Savannah without a specific destination, knowing only that we wanted to spend some time off the major interstate highways. This meant that we couldn't use Gwen (our GPS) since she doesn't understand our human desire to sacrifice efficiency for the joy of seeing and experiencing the country. Within a half hour of being on the road, Chris had fallen asleep and I had unknowingly deviated from our planned western route to head directly north into central Georgia.

About an hour later, Chris woke up for long enough to figure out that we were off track. We turned Gwen back on, and followed her until the small dirt road she put us on was no longer passable. This road had apparently been out of use for long enough to be reclaimed by the land - and all without this fact being noted by whatever national map registers are used by the good people of Garmin. At this point we were in something of a land that time forgot. We saw a gas pump that, if I didn't know better, I might have guessed had existed before cars did. We also saw a long abandoned house sitting on a private lake with it's own dock, slowly rotting away in the middle of nowhere.

As we continued on, we passed huge industrial farmlands with thousands of acres of crops that we could not identify in perfect rows. That's when we zoomed past a fruit stand. We turned around and walked up to a farmhouse along the road where a girl of approximately 18 years was selling watermelon and a couple of other odd fruits. We chatted with this pretty and charming country girl before settling on a bag full of what Chris later called "love plums." Chris called them that because when we got back in the car I immediately declared that "I'm going to marry that girl." We later realized that I would have a hard time finding her even if I wanted to, since all we really know is that she sells watermelon somewhere in East Central Georgia.

We eventually made it back on track, heading west towards Alabama. By the time the sun was low we had been driving all day and had settled into a deep contentment. We laughed a lot and listened to pensive but happy music. There was one big group of clouds in the sky, which formed the shape of an old man, wearing a straw hat, smiling with one ragged tooth sticking up.

We ended up in Montgomery, where we saw the church where MLK Jr. pastored and helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. From there we went on to the Civil Rights Memorial and Museum, where we were touched by the power the words and images. The museum focuses on 40 "civil rights martyrs," whose deaths were documented during the civil rights movement. At the end, the scope is widened to acknowledge the persecution faced by all marginalized groups by telling the stories of a murdered homosexual person, a biracial person, and a victim of the genocide in Darfur, among others.

We left Montgomery for Mobile, traveling again by country roads after our great experience in Georgia. We learned that the country isn't all historical building, farms, and attractive watermelon sales people. A lot of the country is just country - unimpressive woods and the occasional modest home.

In Mobile we ate dinner at Brick Pit BBQ, which we highly recommend. The owner talked to us a bit about how the oil spill had affected him, to demonstrate the way the effects trickle down. His business was hurting because people who would have stopped there on the way back from the ocean weren't going anymore. We saw what he meant the next day when we drove past miles and miles of beautiful but deserted beach around Biloxi, Mississippi. The owner had also lost his long time manager, who had been hired away at $85,000 a year by FEMA.

We spent the weekend in New Orleans, and were luckily able to stay with a friend of mine from high school who I hadn't talked to in about six years, Hallie Dietsch. Hallie was a great host starting the minute we walked in to find a freshly made blueberry coffee cake waiting for us. The highlight of the weekend for me was a show we went to on Saturday night at a small music club. The artist, Kermit Ruffins, is well known locally as an outstanding trumpet player and performer. While listening to great music we met some cool people including the most attractive neuroscience PhD student in the world and a 6'7 goofball from Mobile who repeatedly tried to hook Chris up with a female friend of his before eventually appealing to me to pass on that "if he holler's at the old lady, some shit will go down."

Texas is different from the rest of the South. We've had a great time so far, which I will recount in a future entry. A final thought: they take meat seriously here in the South. By following recommendations and by our own luck we've had great ribs, brisket, sausage, pulled pork, chili, burgers, and hot dogs. No one, however, is saying "oh you have to go to so-and-so's, they have the BEST SALADS!" I might be a yankee wussy but my digestive system needs a rest.

Installment 1

Hello everybody. I am writing to you from the public Library in Savannah, Georgia, a city named by Le Monde as the most beautiful city in North America. You can decide for yourself how much stock to put in a French newspaper's opinion on North American cities. It is, however, quite beautiful here. There are large and majestic trees everywhere, with Spanish Moss hanging down from almost every limb to great effect. The streets in the historic downtown area are arranged in squares and there is an abundance of statues, fountains, and grand Southern antebellum architecture.

Am I sounding too much like a travel guide? Perhaps that is the inevitable result of the reliance Chris and I have developed on two books in particular, Let's Go USA On A Budget and Road Trip USA: Cross Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways. So far these books have been essential for use to decide where to stay and what to do.

We started off the trip on the 16th from Chris' house in NJ and drove straight to DC. In DC we visted the WWII memorial and Roosevelt memorial. We tried to think a little bit about what the USA means to us, before embarking on a trip all though the country.

While out at a bar in DC with friends, we met a guy who had done a lot of road trips and even had a website to provide advice based on his experiences. Among other things, he told us to turn off the GPS and just get lost. Through well over 1000 miles on the road so far, we haven't managed this yet. To the contrary, we are so familiar with our Garmin that just today we named her Gwen. Gwen is quite knowledgeable and very dependable. Although at first her stoic affect made us resent her, we now know that she really wants to help us get around. This is best evinced by the way that she pours pride and satisfaction into the final word in "proceed one mile to destination."

After DC we spent one day hiking and then camping at Shenendoah National Park. We proceeded for two nights to Smoky Mountain National Park. The hikes and campgrounds have been beautiful and we've tried to capture it a bit in pictures. After one hike we stumbled into an Carver's Apple Orchard and Restaurant in Cosby, TN. There we had an awesome lunch while looking out over the orchard valley, with mountains in the background and horses prancing about in a clearing between the trees.

Later that night, before a dinner of s'mores, we went to a wildlife talk where we learned that if a fox has a black tail it is a grey fox and if it has a white tail it is a red fox. Amazing. Also, when confronted with a black bear you should try go through several steps such as making noise and throwing rocks to try make it run away. If none of these steps work, you must fight it and try to land a punch in the nose. Chris and I want to fight a bear while only receiving minor flesh wounds. So far the closest we came was being about 20 feet away from one while in the car.

From the Smoky Mountains, we headed to Charleston, where we camped on a wooden platform in the parking lot of a hostel. These meager accommodations suited us wonderfully as they were cheap and provided our first access to showers in a couple of days. That is, unless you count our swim in a 100 foot waterfall the day before.

At the hostel we met a cool Swiss guy named Patrick who joined us for a great dinner of seafood tacos. Before dinner, we were served beer by a bartender who had just been stiffed of a tip and introduced our new friend to fascinating English words like "thundercunt." After dinner we met up with some other people from the hostel, including a bro from Michigan who never went more than 2 or 3 sentences without talking knowingly about how hot the women in Charleston were and how much he enjoyed hitting on them.

Savannah was our next, and current, stop. Here we've hiked a state park, walked the town, hit the bars and the beach, and had an awesome family style soul food meal at a famous restaurant here called Mrs. Wilkes boarding house. After lunch we had our picture taken while holding a newspaper photo of Barack Obama at the same restaurant last year. The woman who took the photo asked several times if we really wanted "him" in the picture with us. Last night I learned that Chris is a sucker for happy hour bar specials when he bought five drinks all at once last night because it there were two different deals that were apparently too good to pass up.

Amongst our various destinations the car has been one of our constants. Chris says it is our home and we are definitely comfortable there. From the car we are seeing and experiencing a lot. We like to read road signs out loud. A couple of favorites were Maw's Cold Storage and Li'l Cricket Gas Station. Two church signs that we liked were "Free trip to heaven - ask inside," and "if you like ice cream, you'll love our Sundays."

Our days are full and rich and varied. We have encountered good fortune at every turn and we joke that it only rains before or after we arrive somewhere. Wish us continued luck!