And so...

The All Who Wander Tour wraps up its last night in style, staying at the Hotel D'Oro in Santa Nella after a long, uneventful run up Highway 5, the Highway of Extreme Monotony. This hotel is the oddest place, this huge mission style hotel in the middle of B*F* nowhere - it's really cool, and I always wanted to stay here and get the story. Apparently it WAS a mission, built in 1974 by a man who had a dream of establishing missions in California (unaware, perhaps, that the Spanish sort of beat him to it.)  It was then turned into a sort of small shopping mall which failed, and then was reconverted to a hotel. We have a very nice room on the second floor with a balcony, and intend to enjoy the balcony, spa, pool, and the grounds (which they light in the evening.)

In summary, it was a great trip - a great adventure, in ways I expected and in ways I didn't.  We saw an unbelievable amount of stuff, and wished we could have seen more. Both of us are a combination of ready to go home & ready to keep going; we're flat broke and coming in on 7 cylinders, but happy to have been able to make the journey.

M and I seem to be getting along decently, and Dapple and I are getting along decently, and M and Dapple - well, they're on again & off again, depending.  She never failed to get us where we wanted to go, never left us stranded, and M wishes we'd had cooler weather so we could have spent fewer motel nights and more camper nights - he likes the camper, and said I did a good job of making it home-y.  I'd have liked the chance to cook more camper meals, at least on the nights where we ate gutwrenching Chinese or Wendy's (since nothing else was open.)  But she has been rather a high-maintenance trip companion, finicky and capricious.  I used to have a friend who said "incrasyncrasy" instead of "idiosyncrasy" and that's what I'd say: the old girl has her incrasyncrasies.  Her behavior is unpredictable - just when you decide she only falters uphill, or in the heat, she'll run through the desert without complaint and then choke on the straightaway in the evening. She'll lock herself and refuse to open, or decide she doesn't want to start at all for a while, and has to be coaxed with a can of ether. M says she made her bones on this trip, but in the next moment he's ready to smack her with a hammer. (He probably feels the same way about me, but he ain't got MY pink slip.)

There are a lot of memories and impressions that didn't make their way on to these pages, and probably won't show up in the photos, but are mementos I bring home. The smell of the piney woods in Georgia.  The familiar sight of Dapple's dappled hood in front of us as we put in long car hours. The joy in using a bathroom without someone standing two feet from me on the other side of a stall door, blow drying their hair and asking me where we're from.  The kindness of the man who followed us off the freeway to tell us that our tahr was low and warn us that we were liable to blow out that sidewahl in this kinda heat, running a low tahr like that. The Sikh in the Needles convenience store, trying to figure out if the bean burrito was vegetarian, reminding us we were back in the melting pot that is our beloved California. Sonic drive-ins.  Fried chicken on every corner. Hand-lettered signs everywhere. Draped Spanish moss in the Carolinas, red cliffs in Arizona, ghost towns and Talavera tiles. It's all coming home with me.

Our trip notes, from a discussion in the truck today as we cruised Highway 5 to home:

_______

If we could go back to one city:

 M: Austin. I'd like to take a mandolin lesson from Ben at Fiddler's Green. I'd eat at food trailers. Check out music clubs.  Talk to Mrs. (friends) about Mr. (friends) and his railroad career and WWII.

Me: New Orleans.  I'd walk the French Quarter at night and listen to the music.

If we could explore one state or area:

M: South Carolina. Check out the Sea Islands, visit the Gullah people.

Me:  I'd start in Charleston and go back through Savannah, explore the Gullah culture, drive down to New Orleans and see the Louisiana bayou country.  (I changed the question to “area” so I could get away with this.)

They couldn't pay us to go back to:

M: Farmington.  

Me:  Farmington.

Most Interesting Stranger:

M: Leo the cab driver in New Orleans.

Me: Ditto. 

Most Novel Experience We'd Have Again:

M: Playing music with (my cousin in Charlotte.)

Me: Watching rabbits play tag in a graveyard next to the Waffle House.

Most Novel Experience We'd Never Have Again:

M: Seeing a !@&^%# church every two minutes. 

Me: Tornado.  In any form, anywhere, any time.

Best Meal: 

M: Breakfast at La Posada in Winslow. (Ed note: they have the most amazing cheese and green chili scalloped potato dish thing, you could feel your arteries slowing down.)

Me: Ribs with red beans & rice in uptown New Orleans. 

Worst Food: 

M: Ruby Tuesdays in North Carolina. It sucked. I thought that was generally the worst meal we had.

Me:  "Chinese" food in Holbrook, AZ.  Fried Pork Nuggets. Eyechhhh. 

Best Campground:

M: Carlsbad, New Mexico. Had the swings you liked. Nice atmosphere.

Me: Austin, Texas.  Shady and pretty and we had time to go for a swim in the evening.

Worst Campground: 

M: Ojo Caliente, because of the mosquitos.

Me:  The Zed & Jed's in Charlotte, because they had NO BATHROOMS and creepy people. But we stayed for free!

Best Hotel:  

M:  The Andrew Jackson in New Orleans. Ambience.

Me:  The Andrew Jackson, because it was so quaint.  But I loved that indoor pool in Taos.

Worst Hotel: 

M: The one that smelled like cats. I think it had grasshoppers.  Yeah, that was in Fuquad, Texas. Want me to spell that for you?

Me: Yeah, the Bates Motel with the plague of locusts. That was my birthday.

What we'd do differently:

 M: Fly. Much easier and cheaper. (Later amended to: No, I wouldn't have wanted to fly. But I would have put new tires on the truck before we left.)

Me:  Do it in three months, or six. Take a portable air conditioner.

Things We Missed from Home:

M: My old car. Would've been fun to have taken on the old roads.

Me: My kids. But they wouldn't have been fun to take on the old roads.

______________________

Thanks for taking the trip with us.  If the three of us are still speaking in a year or two, maybe we'll run the All Who Wander Tour #2 - The Northern Route!

homeward bound

Got up early this morning, skipped the shar and hit the road, thinking we'd put on some miles while it stayed (relatively) cool.  The thoughts ran something like this:  if Dapple couldn't deal with the afternoon heat, we'd find a town, let her rest, and amuse ourselves sightseeing or junk shopping or even check into a motel, sleep some, and plan to run in the evening/night to catch the cool. We were gearing up - well, I was gearing up - for the long run across the Mohave desert to Barstow, where there's not much of anything on the highway and you KNOW the temps are going to be fierce.

We stopped in Winslow for brunch at La Posada, an enchanting restored railway hotel.  It would've been easy to while away the afternoon there - the grounds are charming and the restored inside featured several art museum rooms and a large traveling display of the Women of Winslow.  But we didn't have the day to spend, so we settled for wandering downtown and through a small museum, and of course visiting the famous Corner before we got back on the road.

The highway out of Kingman was a holy terror for me, steep, windy, narrow, and cliffside - replacing my roasted-alive and flash-fried fantasies with thoughts of tipping and rolling into a flaming ball of Dapple at the bottom of a canyon.  Fun, that.  Of course Road Warrior is amused no end by this, but HE'S driving.  I'M on the cliff side.  Dapple the Brave choked some, but made it to the top, where we BOTH took a rest.

The top of the road made it worthwhile, though - a totally unexpected little kitsch western town, right there at the top of B*F* Nowhere Mountain, and it's full of BURROS.  We did see some burros on the drive up the mountain, but I didn't get photos, and Road Warrior kept assuring me I'd see more, and of course I thought, "Well, how the hell does HE know?"  But he did know, because he's been to Oatman before.  The burros just wander the street and hang out, though from the look the one gave me I do not think they are exactly TAME.  Anyway, the town looked like a Disney town, way overdone, and the idea of wandering irritable burros appeals to me for some reason. 

It was downhill from there, literally and figuratively, as it had been a very long road day and M was driving through Big Rig Hell, where the trucks go by constantly at very high speeds, and dark is NOT your friend.  We crossed the border back into our home state at Needles, where we gassed up and noted the time and temp - 7 p.m. and the thermometer can speak for itself.

After failing to find an RV park in Barstow,  or any RV park farther on that had BATHROOMS (Hey, I don't ask for much, but...)  we found the Boron Motel and turned in.  A decent day for Dapple the Brave.  She does stumble some, and hills and heat are difficult, but she set sail across a long desert today and brought us all the way here.  A pat on the back for the old trooper.  Oh, and Dapple, too.

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Runnin home...well, limping home

Road Day #2, punctuated by Dapple the Brave's.....uh, issues.  M could not get the spark plugs out as they has been tightened beyond beyond, so we spent the morning getting a shop to do it.  Sailed out of Tucumcari with optimism, but it was short-lived.  Dapple began to hack and sputter shortly into the trip, and it became a matter of figuring out how we might choose to get home from the next major town.  We were getting up each slight grade at way below highway speeds, with a whole lot of psychic pushing.

Just prior to Albuquerque, the weather suddenly went rainy and cooler, and she straightened right out and ran like a Swiss watch. SHE DOESN'T LIKE HEAT.  Ran all right all the way to Holbrook, where we have settled into a KOA in very pleasant temperatures.

So...we are good for now, but it's gonna be touch and go for the next two days getting home.  Temps are very high in areas like Barstow, and there's no way out of crossing the desert.

We might be illustrating the old saw:  Did very well on our vacation, left in a $300 camper and came back in a $75,000 bus...

In the meantime, the Arizona skies were simply spectacular on the way. Also, I rescued a toad from the swimming pool at the KOA.  So all is not lost.

from the Tucumcareh KOA

Road Day today. Looks like the rest will be all road days as we run for home; one would think that nothing of interest would happen on a Road Day. One would be wrong. For one thing, Dapple kept us amused all day today - after the had the screw removed from the rear tahr, she then developed a shimmy, which proved to be messed up front tires - so two new tires went on. Then, as he day progressed and the heat increased, she started stumbling and missing like she was fuel-starved, which (checking my pocketbook) she cannot possibly be. Vapor lock? It's a mystery. What we know is she does NOT like the heat of the day.  We passed one bank tower that told us it was 108.  And I'm not sure that was the peak heat, either.

We called it quits in Tucumcareh, after I think M noticed my nose was pressed against the window in each new small town. Once it cooled, though, Dapple smoothed out and I gave up my fantasies about breaking down by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in the Texas Panhandle and being found as dessicated skeletons weeks later; still, I was ready to hang it up.  We'd drive alongside an amazing electrical storm for many miles, sheet lightning and fork lightning hitting the ground, so I was working on some new fantasies of being flash-fried in our metal camper instead of being slow-roasted into roadside jerky. We cruised some cute Route 66 motels but decided it had cooled enough to try camping again, so we're at the KOA, where we do not have the right cord to connect to power.  However, there IS a pool, and M is going to check and possibly replace spark plugs for Dapple in the morning, and I am going to SWIM.

Today's other highlight was stopping in the Jesus Is Lord Travel Center for gasoline. I do not think I could do it justice with words, and you would not believe me anyway, so I will post pictures.  I'll also go back to yesterday and add a photo of the Bates Locust Plague motel.

Incidentally, in Amarillo (along with the JIL Travel Center) there was a hand-lettered sign for The Bates Motel and Taxidermy Shop. I would've stayed there.

Note the temperature at 8 pm!

in Dallas

Two Men Enter...

A friend writes of the "heat dome" in the news - I guess we're under it.  I hope we're both able to leave!

I'm writing this in a tire shop in (pause to inquire) Wichita Falls, Texas.  And I don't have any words to describe this heat.  It's like opening the oven to remove food that's been roasting at 450, only you can neither shut the oven nor remove your head.

Of course, you CAN go inside and get out of the heat. People in the South (notes on "South" later) do love their AC.  For some unGodly reason, they like to run the AC right on down to about 52 degrees, I think. So moving in and our of doors seems to be a flip-flop pattern of death-inducing heat>freezer burn>death inducing heat.  Seriously. It's just downright weird. I had goosebumps on my arms in a restaurant night before last, yet it was well over 100 outside.  I go outside to take the chill off, and then run inside because the first few minutes of AC feels so awesome - but within a few minutes my teeth are chattering and outside I go.

So. We ran from wherever we were day before yesterday to Dallas, TX, to visit with a dear friend - we were later getting there than we'd thought we'd be, since Dapple was fickle and demanded several stops, including one to pull a screw out of one of her shoes.  But we did get there, and were offered gallons of very welcome sweet tea, and chatted for a while.  We then all took the light rail into the Deep Ellum district of Dallas and had a great dinner, walked a bit, and then took the rail back.  At that point we decided to put a hundred miles or so behind us while the air was cool (Dapple prefers cool weather).  M drove while I dozed, and we finally pulled into the Bates Motel (I don't recall the name, but that's descriptive enough) in Alvord, Texas.

Now, the Bates motel didn't have a king room, but they had a queen and it was around two in the morning, so we took it gratefully.  M parked while I unlocked the room.

Me:  Careful walking, they have grasshoppers so big they have to shoot 'em.
M:  Grasshoppers aren't that big a deal.
Me:  These are.
M: ......................Oh.

The Bates Motel seemed to be having an inconvenient plague of locusts. The proprietor ran right out and showed me to shut the door to the room quickly, you see. So the grasshopper plague doesn't get in.  Standing outside the room was an interesting exercise - the grasshoppers randomly arrive in your lap or up your skirt, seeming just as startled to be there as you are.

We were so tired we didn't even notice that the room had almost no lighting; we fell into bed and didn't wake until eleven when the innkeeper called the room to insist we check out.  M negotiated a half-hour for our shars, but we moved right along and were back on the road.

Dapple had developed a shimmy that makes for interesting conversation while driving - the sort of conversation you used to amuse yourself with as a child by thumping your chest while talking.  So we stopped at a tahr shop here, where they told us that the two fronts are shot, and they're now installing two new/used tahrs.  M has a theory about why those tahrs ain't no good, and if I get a chance to write a Dapplelogue, I'll explain that. In the meantime, the girl gets new shoes, and we're in a waiting room, waiting.

Under the Heat Dome.  Amazing.  And now, having dawdled and Dappled away extra days on the way out, we will be running for home, doing long driving days punctuated by gas stops. (In this terrain, on long driving days, a gas stop is very exciting.  I can get out of the truck!  I must need SOMETHING in that little store - look, they have Coke Slushees!)

now doesn't this place trip YOUR creep-o-meter?

 Testimonial to Gorilla Tape - put on in Utah & driven through high winds, tornado, torrential rain, and incredible heat, and still holding strong!!





















.

Ninth Ward Tour

Leo Sam Johnson drives a cab in New Orleans, but he's only one part cab driver. He;s also a preacher, pianist, pool hustler, real estate speculator, autobiographer and general sage.  "I don't do a thing until I know all about it," he told us.

Leo doesn't have much on common with Mistuh Jim, the homeowner we met just outside the French Quarter yesterday afternoon. Mistuh Jim told us that he's a Libertarian, and he was sitting in a porch chair in front of a couple million dollars' worth of his prime New Orleans real estate. He offered to let us take pictures of his lovely side garden and told us tht the chain with the padlock was called a "smiley" - because if you whup someone with it, it wraps around their head and the padlock takes all their teeth out. There's no graffiti on HIS block, Mistuh Jim told us.

Leo used to have  piece of New Orleans real estate, too, but Katrina took it out. He sold it, apparently at an almost complete loss.  He says a friend told him it's fixed up real nice now, the nicest on the block, but he hasn't been back to see it. I asked him the same question I asked Mistuh Jim - where's the Federal money, the FEMA relief, that was supposed to help repair the flood damage? The question made him laugh. Nope, he said.  There wasn't any money, or there wasn't enough money, and he said some people got it that didn't even have storm damage; as I think back, I realize he didn't exactly tell me that he got money, or that he didn't, himself. He had a place up in Natchez, and that's where he lives now, but he still comes down to drive his cab.

Leo told us some of his story as he drove us around the Ninth Ward, the hardest hit by Katrina's aftermath.  Parts of it look somewhat rebuilt, with derelict houses standing right next to shiny new homes, evidence of building activity, homes for sale, and mostly occupied. Corner stores still stand, and churches, and signs for businesses say, "We'll be back," although when those signs went up and how good those promises are, it's hard to say. But as we go close to the levees, the landscape begins to change.

Mistuh Jim told us his story on the New Orleans street after a heavy rain - or more accurately, between heavy rains.  It wasn't really a story.  He gave us his politics and his philosophy. "Don't resdistribute the wealth," he said. 'Redistribute the poverty."  He has the idea that moving the very poor out of the urban environment and back out the countryside would solve a lot of problems. There would be work for people, and healthier lives.

"Loafers," Leo Sam Johnson told us. "They loaf here, they'll loaf wherever they are."  He and Mistuh Jim seem to agree on one thing - that many of the people in the Ninth Ward who were displaced weren't the sort you want in your town. Sam says the city owns many of the derelict properties, and they aren't in any hurry to rebuild and have the same population move back in. Sam tells us the Bible explains that, telling us that people grow up to live what they hear. He leaves us to imagine what they heard, down here.

He explains this to us as we drive into the surreal area down by the new seawall. This was once dense housing, neighborhoods, blocks of projects, businesses and churches and repair shops and schools.  It's now gone feral, concrete slabs all that's left of all those homes, mattresses and tires and oddly placed rowboats washed up when the water receded.  The trees and weeds have gone wild and taken over the roadways, which are made of deep wide pits, cracks, and huge heaves of asphalt. "The city hasn't repaired these roads," I comment. "They were like that before," Leo says.  It's hard to believe, but he says it is so.  How can a city leave roads impassable like that?  "Crooks," he tells us. He and Mistuh Jim agree on that, too.

I don't know Jim's full name, but I know his kitchen servant calls him Mistuh Jim. He told us that when he explained why he no longer supports school vouchers. "Mistuh Jim, a voucher don't do me no good. I cain't afford the other half of the money, and I ain't got a car to get my boy to a better school anyways."  Mistuh Jim sits on the board of several banks - banks he claims didn't make high-risk loans nor have to do any foreclosures. He's big, blond, well-fed, and came from Alabama.  He's certainly done well for himself in New Orleans, a city that the Catholic Church is ruining by owning so much land they don't pay taxes on, according to Jim.  Leo Sam Johnson is the 72-year old son of a Natchez sharecropper, out where Mistuh Jim would have us redistribute the poverty. He doesn't have an opinion on whether the Catholics cause the city revenue problems. "He might be right, at that," he muses.  Leo got stabbed in the head four times in a bar, fought a dishonorable discharge from the Air Force, teaches music theory. The autobiography he's writing will be vivid.

When he disagrees with is, he does it carefully, with charm. Of course we're  customers, and we weren't Jim's, and of course both men feel they've seen enough to know that they're right. What they don't know is much of each other. I wonder if Mistuh Jim got any of that flood relief money, and if Leo Sam Johnson has ever driven him across town. Same city, two worlds. I wonder if Mistuh Jim ever goes down to the Ninth Ward and looks at the apocalypse of all those lives, or if he's bought up any of the cheap flood-devastated properties that now sit decaying.   And I wonder if his two big solvent banks would approve a loan for a cab driver who would someday like to buy a duplex in this town where he used to live.







.

Nawlins

We rode the streetcar line last night, uptown into the Garden District, and saw beautiful homes in a part of the city that was unaffected by flooding. This is olllld money here, and a rather gracious way of life. M enjoyed the working streetcar line, being used not for touristry but for transportation, and I enjoyed the animated conversation the driver was having with a passenger, who was explaining (as much as I could get through the syrup of the accent) all about women and how to handle them. M sneaked his camera out and filmed some of it.

We rode the Algiers ferry across the Mississippi River, and walked quite a bit, and then ended up catching a cab the last few blocks to the hotel.  The driver said it was a short fare but he was sympathetic to "you young people."  Man, I felt old, but was grateful for the cab anyway.

This morning are going to tour the 9th ward - M arranged with a cab driver last night to drive us around for an hour or so, since the idea of driving Dapple through that area really doesn't seem wise.

It rains here.  Understatement.  When we arrived yesterday, I was amused by the rain slickers and umbrellas for sale everywhere, and the shop signs asking you not to bring your wet things inside - but now I understand.  Supposedly it dumps rain every afternoon, but we've caught a storm front and it was dumping when I got up, too. And still is.  You can sit or walk out in it, because it's warm, but it's all very wet and you'll never dry - too much water in the air for any sort of evaporation; you just sort of steam off gently.

It explains why the gardens are so damn beautiful - my impression is that gardening here is a matter of discouraging anything you DON'T want.  I don't recognize much of the local flora, but I did recognize the loquat trees on the street.

I'd have liked to walk the streets of the French Quarter last night and hear some of the music, but it was late when we got back to the hotel from dinner (ribs, and the best red beans and rice I've ever had) so we  just turned in. I think M may have been tuckered out by an hour-long political argument he got into with a wealthy local homeowner - learned some things about local economy and as always, the chance to meet fellow voters of a different stripe is fascinating. Left M muttering darkly about West Coast secession. Not a bad idea.  Many of the places we've been feel foreign enough to require a visa.

.

The Wall

I suppose every long trip probably has its low spot, and I think last night/this morning were mine.  If you're reading that in between the lines, I may as well out with it.  I don't seem to breathe well in this climate, and I was tired and taking things more personally than I ought, no doubt; this morning, I had a headache, and I was hungry and sweaty and way too full of albuterol (probably the cause of the headache.) The thoughts were a bit black.

We drove around residential areas of NO, which was interesting - so many houses that look untouched since Katrina, with the spray paint markings still quite visible.  We drove around the French Quarter, and finally parked and walked around (I wanted to souvenir shop, he doesn't like that sort of thing) and admired the architecture.  We tried for beignets, but got ignored in the too-busy Cafe du Monde, so we left.  We tried for muffaletta, but couldn't find anything easily edible.  I really needed a saving grace.

We walked past a tiny hotel, the Andrew Jackson, right down in the French Quarter, and M decided to go in and inquire.  So for a reasonable rate (who'd have thunk?) we are staying in the FREAKIN CHARMING little old hotel with a garden in the back, in a little tiny room that looks very French Provincial, with the requisite oh-so-effeminate desk clerk.  I mean, it's beyond charming - I have to post pictures.  So things began to look up. 

And it turns out that two doors down is Community Coffee, where I was able to get a hair-raising cup of Louisiana Dark, which went to work on the headache - and one of those completely jaw-dropping downpours started immediately, and I mean DOWNPOUR (this place requires a lot of capital letters) - it just dumped, and people coming in were soaked all the way to the skin and dripping, and nobody pays this any mind - it's just New Orleans weather.  So we sat, and he did the crossword and I did nothing, and I began to settle a bit and find my happy place. 

I mean, I'm in NEW ORLEANS.  With nothing to do but please myself and explore


Must go - will try to write more later.

long day, redux

Greetings from the Travelers Rest Motel in B*F*, Mississippi. Which means I do not know what town we are actually in, although I know we passed through Biloxi and Bay St. Louis.

Another lonnnnnnnnnnnng driving day. We left Valdosta and went through many states, about forty I think, and some of them several times. Georgia, Florida, Alabama - well, just scribble over that part of the country with a crayon and you'll hit the places we were.

The notable thing today was weather.  I noticed the same thing passing through Georgia the OTHER way - there's some amazing rain. For example, you got your mist, and your drizzle, and your sprinkle, and your rain, and then you move on into heavy rain, and downpour, and buckets, and torrents - keep going, and you'll get to Georgia. That's how it is.

Weirdly enough, everyone slows down to 20 mph and puts on their emergency flashers and keeps going.  Until it gets worse, and and goes into Can. Not. See. A. Thing. type rain, Then they keep their flashers on and pull over to the side of the road, so you have a long line of cars pulled over ON THE FREEWAY, all flashing and waiting for it to let up a little bit so they can proceed. Having seen this coming AND going, I have to believe they all keep needlepoint projects and worthy nonfiction books in their glove compartments, since it seems so matter-of-fact here.

So we drove through that and on out the other side, stopping for lunch in a tiny little one-block town cafe where everyone said hello to us as they came in.  I ate a grouper sandwich and sweet potato fries, following my habit of ordering Weird Food I Don't Have At Home. Tonight, though, tonight - well, M managed to drive us to within spitting distance of New Orleans, bless him, and he's not feeling well tonight, so we ate Taco Bell. But hey - it was Taco Bell within sight of New Orleans, which is NOT the same. It's NOT.

I'll close with some accumulated notes of my desktop. The trip HAS taught me a thing or two.

-----------------

Clean is relative. There's clean, and really clean, and clean enough, which is yesterday's clothes if you haven't done wash. Or the coffee cup that got rinsed out with cold water and no soap. And you give in to the fact that there's lot of West Texas on the floor and that it'll sneak back in just as quick as you can sweep it out.

Douglas Adams was right about the towel.

Hot is relative. There's hot, and really hot, which means I can't stand it and let's go down to Pam's and sit in her air conditioning, and then there's Texas hot, which is a different animal. Texas hot means you must shoot someone immediately.  I get the whole handgun thing better now.

If you don't read the toothpaste label, you will have to learn to love Pink Bubblegum.

Don't put cut melon in a camper refrigerator that's cooled with block ice and then drive through the desert thinking you'll get ice in the NEXT town, because you won't and you'll be sorry. Bitterly sorry.  And don't say I didn't tell you.

The next town isn't any bigger.

It is possible to sweat way more then you drink, but it makes you dizzy.

It doesn't get any better than this. Eat now.

That whole I-hate-wind-in-my-hair thing?  So over it.

I will never say a bad thing about Verizon again. It's been the most useful thing on this trip.  Second most useful?  My travel coffee maker. Then the high velocity fan M threw in at the last minute, the drying rack I made for the closet, and of course the tool kits.

Sleep knits up a whole lot of raveled sleeves.

Put it away. For God's sake, put it away now.  You'll never remember that you put it THERE.

----------

There you have it: the sum total of my wisdom, today.  And now I am away to knit that sleeve. New Orleans tomorrow!

.

Jawja

From Valdosta, GA, in a dump motel we checked into at 1:30, after tooling a nice-looking RV park for quite a while and never finding a 30 amp connector that we could plug our cable into. I voted for no power, which means no fan, but M felt it was still too hot to sleep comfortably.  I gots no problem with motels, but I have difficulty, as does he, when it's this late and we can't find a place. Scratttttchy, y'know.

Dumps work for me.  I have Crocs sandals that I can shower in, and I don't give a good ^%#!!# about much else.  Sooner a dump motel than an RV park with no functioning bathroom - been there!

We left Charleston about four-thirty this afternoon, after picking up a repaired Dapple, who seems to be happy with her service (ought to be, she said darkly.)  We'd spent the day wandering downtown Charleston again, seeing the synagogue and revisiting the rock shop I liked, as well as having lunch in a Low Country restaurant (pecan fried whiting with slaw, fried okra, pickled cucumbers, and so on.)

Drove on down to Savannah and tooled around the city by truck; we both wanted to park & walk a bit, look at the buildings, but it was much like San Francisco in that if you arrive by car, you can't GET RID of the car. Literally not ONE parking place.  So we drove, instead.  If we were to visit again we would definitely take public transport in to the old downtown area.

Savannah is also tree-lined and draped with Spanish moss, sultry, and lovely.

From there we hit the road and drove purposefully toward Valdosta and made it, late at night. I am ashamed to tell you where we had our dinner, but we were tired and not sure what if anything lay ahead on the road, so I will tell you that the sign had a little girl with red pigtails. Gah.  So far we have mostly managed to avoid chains, fast food (not counting M's awful addiction to bear claws wherever he can get 'em) and big box stores - I did ask him to let me run into a Target the other day, but he talked me out of it.

We heard our first irritated horn at a stop light today, which made us both realize that although we are slow and cumbersome, no one down here has that California impatience. Hell, people at home honk at me in the Scion if I'm slow off the mark;  in such a tearing hurry to get there fifteen seconds before anyone else does.  You don't see or hear that here, even in the more trafficked areas, and then of course we have been driving the lesser highways and not the congested places.  The owner of the shop that worked on the truck said yeah, more and more people were moving down from the North who don't have that old graciousness that we've found here. "And we don't lahk it," he said flatly.

So - up early and on the road, with the possibility of making New Orleans tomorrow night, if we don't find something fantastically distracting.  We're both sort of yeah, we're gonna keep right on - look, a bird! sort of people, although we may see different birds (but HE has they car keys) - anyway, he knows that if I had my way we'd still be exploring Dayton, Nevada. If it's not a flea market it's a rail museum, or the oldest synagogue in Charleston, or public access to the beach, or a cemetery with graves from the 1600's.  Always some thing or the other to wonder at.

I'm 54 today.  My mother, if she were alive, would've been 95 yesterday.  That's why I ate the okra, for her.  I still don't like it, Ma. ;)



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leaving Charleston

M returned with a rental car - the last one they had - having found a good place to do the work on Dapple.  We took the rental and headed out to explore Charleston, running through the old downtown again and then off into the poorer residential areas.  I noted that the looks we were getting were less than friendly (unusual down here) and M dryly pointed out that we were driving a police car (a black Mercury Grand Marquis.)  I suppose we'd have gotten more friendly response in a big old blue camper.

I should have noted that we headed off in a major thunderstorm, pouring rain and incredible lightning and thunder, but still 85 degrees or so.  You walk outside here and your glasses fog immediately, as though you have just leaned inside the dishwasher.  The rain let up, but the lightning sort of kept on - we walked down the pier at Folly Beach tonight and watched the sky light up every one to two seconds. Incredible weather.

I got to walk through the downtown outside market and look at the sea grass baskets, beautiful work (not affordable) and watch the women weaving them. There was also plenty of kitsch, Pakistani goods, t-shirts, and stuff of the sort you'd buy at Fisherman's Wharf, but I enjoyed my flea market fix anyway.

The Gullah community is still strong here, with a particular Gullah patois and culture. There are Gullah restaurants, but we haven't gotten a chance to sample the cuisine.

I did eat fried green tomatoes, though, because they were on the menu, so how could I not order them?  It's thing I can say I tried. My take on it is that someone had useless tomatoes that would not ripen, wondered what to do with them, and had the Southern brainstorm that anything's better fried.  Well, green tomatoes have very little taste, so you're eating pretty much fried (fried stuff.)  I'm all for frying the hell outta deep fried fried stuff, having been raised by a Southern woman. Fried chicken, fried socks, fried air, fried green tomatoes. Yes ma'am.  But I won't be practicing recipes for fried green tomatoes, sorry.

Here's what I do know: we were talking yesterday, and if we had to choose one place to come back to so far, one place to spend a few weeks exploring, M would pick the desert - the soothing long vistas and muted delicate colors, the geographic formations of time and huge power, the pueblos and peoples who lived peacefully in harmony with the land for so long before "settlers" arrived; but I would choose this land, with its heavy perfume and hanging moss, the weight of heat and water and rolling thunder in the air, the smell of brine and sea, the brutal beautiful history.  I'd come back here.

lots of this

Starskovitch & O'Hutch-mobile

that history again - the slave market

Charleston Charleston

Well, Dapple got her Southern Belle on and demanded a Spa Day, so we're here in Charleston at the La Quinta Inn for an extra night. Lots to see and do here, besides shar (no small thing, that) so we'll be as happy as clams, or oysters, or shrimp, which are here in abundance.

We got in late last night, limping a bit, and the La Quinta was not exactly quaint but it served - turned the ignition off with a sigh of relief from all three parties involved, cough cough.  Did the shar thing and took a cab downtown to rustle up some late-night seafood - a Forrest Gump moment:  we had the shrimp appetizer and then the fried shrimp and a shrimp taco...could not fit any shrimp gumbo, shrimp salad....but would've, if we could.  No such thang as Too Much Shrimp.  Then wandered the gorgeous downtown and French Quarter, immaculate and stunning, really unreal in its Old South beauty, and of course the requisite flower-perfumed warm air at midnight.

M is off this morning Dealing With The Truck, who is The Truck when she behaves that way (although M believes they have forged a partnership together, that she has tested us and found us worthy.) I'd swim, but my suit is in the camper, and I'd clean the camper, but the camper is in the camper, so there you are. Or there I am. And here he is now, with news, hopefully!

"The truck is getting fixed. We have a nice car. And if you want to, I will take you to the beach."

Not a man of many words, sometimes. But you know, I just ain't gonna worry mah purty lil head about it.  I'm going to get him to drive me to the HUGE downtown market.

I actually have at least ten damn mosquito bites, but don't tell HIM. ;)

I added photos to the last two entries, so check 'em out if you've a mind.



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in my mind i'm going to Carolina...

M., talking to himself while driving just now:

"Where'd you go on your vacation?"
"Oh, we went to Mercury."

Which is to say it's still hot. 100 degrees where we are, and that's without factoring in the humidity. So, yeah.

Where we are is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  Hokey Town. For the last 60 miles we have been passing through the most gorgeous country, and it's JAMMED with the most incredible hokey billboards for this place; you are instantly transported into a late 1950's station wagon with three kids in the back seat screaming that they want to go to Pirate Adventure or the Mermaid Show, while you and hubby have every intention of seeing that Elvis impersonator they say is so good. While M was muttering about Mercury, I was photographing a sign saying "I Got My Crabs at Dirty Dick's." I got one a ways back advertising Gay Dolphins and Fireworks. Haven't been able to upload pics for a while, but I'll share when I do!

So - we left Charlotte with regret this morning.*  I got up and said, "We're going to rent a place here for a month, and you will play old-time music and I will begin to learn bones, bodhran (not sure how that's spelled but I now know it's pronounced boron, and rhymes with moron), dulcimer and clogging."  M agreed, even though it's hotter than hell AND every mosquito in Carolina has him on GPS.  He has been chewed alive - must have a hotter skin temperature than mine. In revenge for his usual teasing, I inspected my calf this morning and said in a Southern accent, "Ohh dear, I have gotten my SECOND mosquito bite."   As the old story goes, I don't have to be faster than the bear...

We spent several days in Charolotte, immersed in the most beautiful countryside and music; I'll leave my poor descended-upon cousins their privacy, but they were incredibly generous with their homes, time, talents.  I know a science teacher who is REALLY going to enjoy the film footage and stills I took along the way. We also checked out the Charlotte Light Rail System, were taken to an art gallery for a photography exhibit, handled and played some beautiful mandolins and bodhrans, swam (okay, floated on noodles, so sue me) in a warm lake, talked history, drank sweet tea (insider discovery - you order half-and-half, and they mix plain tea with sweet tea so it's not so syrupy and it's really good!) Overall, a wonderful visit, and for someone like me without much family it's novel and fun to discuss shared relatives and family past.

And now we are back on the road, running for the coast (Charleston, I think) and then on to New Orleans, truck willing. Dapple is still a little overfueled and seems to be firing on 7/8.  We had new (used) tires put o in Charlotte ("your lady can sit by the fan,") and one seemed to have a slow leak, so I was back sitting at the bottom of a loading dock in a beat-up computer chair in front of a big fan, playing pennywhistle and staying cool while they tried to find the leak. Dapple's other quirk at the moment is a capricious passenger door lock, so sometimes she won't let me out, and sometimes she won't let me in, and sometimes there's no problem at all. It's a mood thing, and we live with it - feeling muley this morning, Dapple?  I'll just climb out the driver's seat. It's very low-rent and amusing.  Like sweating, I am getting good at it.

So, impressions of the South:  air like hot soup. lush greenery. thinking it's cool lovely lush greenery and then I remember we have the AC on in the truck. ubiquitous: churches, Bojangles chicken. hand-painted signage. brick buildings. kudzu sculptures. entire tree branches swathed in sci-fi spiderwebs that could easily catch birds. my desire never to meet the architects. the incredible sudden perfume - myrtle? honeysuckle? magnolia? in the car as we go down the highway. paper fans. Jesus Is The Light. ma'am. if you meet someone's eyes. you greet them and ask how they are. road names - bobo newson highway, top drawer st., bubba lane. accents sometimes so thick i literally have no idea what someone just said.

Tire guy to M: "You thak the razzle naggit ah hoonsen rah baddit?"
M: "Sure, that's fine."

He actually does understand them.  Comes from driving a variety of nationalities. But thick Carolinan is beyond me.

I wanted to know HOW HOT IT REALLY WAS, just the way M counts his mosquito bites, so when I went in the gas station convenience store I asked the clerk.

"Do you know how hot it is here?"
"I surely do. That's why I'm stayin' in HERE."

Pictures later, if I can do it.




* For some reason, I am compelled to add that the futon we slept on last night was bought many years ago as an emergency accomodation for Peggy Seeger. "We can't put her on the FLOOR!"  So I've now slept in the same bed as Peggy Seeger.  Why does that make me so happy?

And now I also have to add: while I was writing this, M pulled off the road and drove down to the beach so I could dip my toes in the Atlantic.  We've now gone coast-to-coast, the Road Warrior and I, in Dapple the Brave.  Did you think we'd make it?  Well, we did!

lunch in the Watermelon Capitol of SC

We can afford this!

Well, who knew?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

banjo in the studio

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love feral houses.

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lazy lake evening

We had an afternoon of floating in the warm lake, and excellent dinner on the porch of this lakeside home, and I am again sitting in the Cicada Symphony contemplating a cup of after-dinner coffee. Life is good.

our traveling avatars: Hula Girl & Gorilla Dude.

Cake or death? Oh, cake, please.

extry

A few extra notes today about what we've encoutered in the music scene and otherwise.

It's notable that the musicians, here and in Austin, are so open and generous with their time and talent. I chatted with the djembe player last night, and although he'd already put his drum away, he took it back out of the bag to show it to me and talk to me, while M was deep in conversation with the Irish mandolin player. They'd asked him up on the stage to play with them (he declined, not feeling quite up to THAT speed.)  The ice cream social we went to consisted largely of numerous tent jams - old time, Celtic, slow jam, dulcimer, song circle, children's, and so on - and if you join them, people welcome you and thank you afterward for playing with them.

We're not actually all that south here, but trust me, we're South. And it seems to be an extension of the cliched Southern hospitality, which is a real thing - we have THREE offers of places to stay.  People will put you up, and feed you, and help you fix your car, and find you a parking spot, and in general go out of their ways to make you comfortable. 

Is it everyone, everywhere?  No, of course not.  But it's common enough to note. And you really don't get the feeling that they roll their eyes after you leave (well, I could be wrong on that one, but I don't think so.)  Road Warrior is very much of an I'll-do-it-myself-thanks-for-offering kind of guy, and I am trying not to put anyone out, but in the meantime the graciousness is just extraordinary.  I would like to take that practice home, as a souvenir.



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playing catsup

No chance to make an entry last night. Or maybe the night before, either. I don't know, I am sort of disoriented, and we don't have Verizon signal where we are, so I can't remember where I left off!

We covered 750 miles in two days, 500 or so on one day and 250 the next, and I hope we don't have to do another 500 day. It's too hard, physically and emotionally. At 50 mph with stops, the day is just too long, and we pull into town too late and too tired. That is my thought, anyway.

We blew through four states (I might have written this, I think I did.) Louisiana, Mississippi (I remember I wrote this because of all those s's and i's) Georgia, South Carolina and into North Carolina. That's five states. Five. I teach math, I know that.

There has not been opportunity for drumming or writing so I have taken up Olympic Sweating.  I've already advanced  through several levels. Seriously.  It is so damn sticky here, you don't need buttons or zippers, you just stick your clothes on like Colorforms.

So - here is Charlotte, where we failed to connect with cousins on the first night and ended up in Zeb and Jed's Trailer Park again, late at night. No bathrooms.  You will have to explain to ME why the Starbuck's cup you DRANK the fluid out of won't hold -- oh, never mind.  You get the picture.

I believe there is a Zeb and Jed's in every town, waiting for us.  I will NEVER be a snob about KOA's again. I'm repentant. And sweaty.

Today was Music Day - we did connect with cousins this morning, and went to the Charlotte Folk Society picnic and Ice Cream Social (bathrooms!) M immediately fell into the Slow Jam tent and was absorbed, and I wandered, and sang for a while in the Song Circle, and took a clogging lesson from one of my cousins, and ate ice cream, and visited, and generally enjoyed myself. We then headed over to a benefit for a local cancer-stricken woman, and listened to a great blues band, and wound up the day at an Irish pub listening to my cousin & friends play Celtic music. Celtic Djembe, no kidding!

It was a joy to reconnect with my cousin, and my cousin's ex-wife, who is NOT my ex-cousin-in-law but IMHO still my cousin or whatever, and we will NOT have any jokes about family relationships around these parts, thank you.

But I should back up, anyway, and tell about the night before in Atlanta where we could not even FIND the Zeb and Jed's, and we were in crotchety late night despair at the Waffle House (where they all know a thing or two about despair) when the waitress (whose name was Pam, making her automatically all right in MY book) said, awww, y'all kin stay rat here in our back lot, we got plenty of room and thar're shars at the truck stop.  So we slept at the Waffle House, and I did not point out to an exhausted M that the OTHER side of our camp spot was a graveyard. I rather like them, but they sorta skeeve him.  In the morning I watched some bunnies play tag around the headstones, and then he finally got up and we went over and took our shars.

There's no punch line there, only the rather weird fact that churches here have graveyards, little ones, instead of the large amalgamated cemeteries we have at home; and folks are often buried at the specific church they attend. Sometimes, I am told, the churches are torn down and the land sold, only not the dead people's land, so then you have a little graveyard in between, say, the Waffle House and a truck stop. If you come from here you will have no idea what I am babbling on about, but if you're californian you will agree that THAT IS WEIRD.

So. Where were we? Oh yes. In Atlanta at the Waffle House.  We then got to visit with a friend I know from my mad Guinea Pig connections, who welcomed us into her completely cool arty log house and gave us lunch, and the inside of her home sorta made up for not getting to tour the Phoenix Connection homes. Thanks, B!

Now I've completely scrambled the story, because we are in Charlotte now and will probably spend a down-day here tomorrow, maybe doing some laundry, getting some new tires, fixing a headlight, and so on. The route home is sort of up for discussion, I guess.

Anyhow, we are parked at my cousin's ladyfriend's lake home, and I am listening to an incredible Cicada Symphony, and looking forward to getting up tomorrow for a shar. Shars is mighty fine.  For five minutes, until you stick your clothes back on and go out to practice your Olympic Sweating.

The skies when they threaten and suddenly dump buckets....

And just as suddenly it's over and the street is steaming in the heat.

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Road Warrior.

Lots of little houses like this.

I totally would have eaten here, just because.

 

 

 

 

This is a semi trailer at the truck stop. 

 

 

(The small sign in the window says, "No Service
Today - No AC."  I would add, "Jesus Christ, it's hot.")

Clogging lesson!