Day 22 - Omelet to Camelot

Phew! 500 miles from Panama City to Jupiter, running down the spine of Florida. Nearly ran out of gas on the turnpike - air-con is real a fuel hog apparently. Blew past the Garlits Museum in Ocala (sorry Kane, weren't expecting it there; maybe on the way back.) Landed by luck in a nice motel: soothing sea breezes, surf sounds and sunshine. Bought wine, cheese, olives etc and watched the sunset on our balcony overlooking a big marina, then slept soundly with the doors wide open.

Thanks again to Kane for the laptop; it's saved our bacon more than once. Besides, blogging, hotel-booking, news and friendly contact, it's let us stay on top of banks and phone companies that are intent on ruining our vacation. We found that $10k had dissappeared from our TD TFSA accounts, and thanks to email, were able to discover that Coast Capital had failed to make an arranged transfer, bouncing the cheque we'd sent to TD. Then, with less than a month and little more than an hour on my new Telus phone, I just about died when the first ebill was over $500!! Again, email to the rescue and all is well again. These things would have been a festering mess if we weren't able to go online to uncover and deal with them.

And GPS! Here's a HUGE shout out to Jill for suggesting it! I'll never travel without one; it makes those terrifying highway interchanges a breeze, accommodates our random driving style with aplomb, never getting bossy, tired or irritated. Truly revolutionary.

Found by the wayside: clean, green and prosperous ranches, farms and rolling hills in N. FL; miles of verge awash in purple flowers; tiny dark brown pigs; wild palm forests; prisoners pruning trees; pelicans; birds of paradise; state troopers galore; Suwannee River sign, complete with score; long, long bridges and miles of elevated hwy over swamps; RBC and TD Banks; bugs, bugs, bugs on the windhshield and not a squeegee kid anywhere! But no bugs by the water, so we sleep with doors wide open and fresh winds blowing. Weather: perfect!

Day 21 - LA MS AL FL

4 states in 6 hours, but nowhere near enough miles. Made the strategic blunder of booking a hotel in the Florida Keys, and then opting for the scenic drive along the northeast coast, with speed from 25 to 65mph, but lights every 1/4 mile. By 8PM we were only in Panama City, way behind schedule, and will have a long reroute tomorrow through Tallahassee to pick up the freeway. Still, we were glad to have seen Pensacola, which was another surprise, featuring many beautiful old homes. The road east was over white sand dunes, miles offshore, along which stretch condo towers and homes large and small, but mostly large, on tall pilings, many of which are for sale (the homes, not the pilings.) Dinner was at a doubtful little 24 hr Omelet House, but the rough-edged staff were a riot, and had everybody in the place talking freely to one another, over eggs, grits and good coffee. Real southern comfort. Avoid Scottish Inns at all costs: true Scots would blush.

N'awlins

Where to start?? First, there's little sign of flood damage, recession, or even restraint here in the French Quarter. The delay in Texas meant we arrived quite coincidentally in the midst of Jazz Fest, so Saturday night was packed with revelers, drinks in hand, crowding the narrow streets from curb to curb. My kids would LOVE this place! Music rages from every doorway. Bourbon street resembles nothing so much as a circus midway: barkers with placards beckon from blaring pubs and cafes; busty women in not much, lure young men to their deliverance; buskers, hucksters, jugglers, and pantomime; masks, silverface, drag-queens, dykes; bikers, wedding parties, tattooed men in tight shirts and hungry-eyed women; it's all there.

CNN reports 400,000 visitors, and warns of high crime, but other than the cost of liquor, no felonies were seen. The few cars that dared navigate the tight passages mostly sat idling behind goups of uncaring, drunken strollers. It's a place for the young and restless, although the high proportion of galleries and REAL antique shops suggest a more well-healed traveller, of whom we saw few. Nowhere have I seen such a selection of unique artwork, crafts and jewellry, much of it N.O.-specific, but some, like the Louis-the-whatever gilt cabinets and Faberge eggs are more museum than Mardi Gras. There IS a bit of an odor about the place, however, and more than once, showers of wet slop rained from overhead balconies as we passed underneath. Like Paris, there's dog shit on the sidewalk, but unlike Paris, there's horseshit in the streets, and bullshit in the come-ons.

Robbi TOLD me to take my camera to dinner, but I foolishly declined, so I have no photos of the night crowds, or the black dude with the heavily modified lo-rider, with tilt-up Lamborghini-style doors, and matching LIVE bald pythons on the roof! Or the three-wheeled motorcycle that resembles my Slingshooter, only way cooler. Maybe tomorrow. Our hotel is a lovely 17th century piece, nicely appointed, just 1/2 a block from Bourbon Street. It even featured free live porn in the next wing, but Robbi closed the curtains and wouldn't let me watch, spoilsport. So it's back to DIY. Why do I have to do EVERYTHING myself?!

Okay, so 'tomorrow' the streets were empty and the place looked half asleep again. It WAS Sunday morning, though, and there were people still coming back to the hotel at 4;00AM, so maybe they were tired. We walked as much as we could, in tight forays between the start, middle, and end of the Talledaga race, where the 'big one' couldn't wait until lap 8 to happen, and Carl Edwards was punted high into the catch fence on the last turn by unlikely race winner, rookie Brad Keselowski, who hadn't led a lap all day. We never made it to Jazz Fest, there being so much music in the streets here that a trip way out of town to sit in the hot sun to hear mostly local musicians didn't make a lot of sense to us. The shops here are a feast for the eyes, and I could spend many days and dollars happily browsing.

Day 19 - Morgan City

You just never know: saw a Bear Crossing sign just before a dead 'gator on the road; maybe it was killed by the bear. Armadillogeddon continues unchecked. Oh, the humidity!

It's oil rig country; a flatbed carrying 40' twist drills sped past us for the coast, and refineries rise up out of swamp forests. The concrete roadbeds buck and hump like a cheap roller-coaster. I'd take a picture of the landscape, but any place you can pull over, it all looks pretty much like prairie, so I'll take one near Winnipeg that should suffice for the whole trip. We feared for our tires, with every seam in the the road tearing rythmically at the treads. It makes a good audible speed guage though: when it gets too loud, slow down! Over the bayous, the highway is elevated on huge causeways, but there's nowhere I'd dare stop for photos. But we did stop for waffles in Morgan City. We'll try again on the way out of town.

Day 18 - Austin to Lafayette

Watched a great Van Morrison concert on Austin City Limits last night. He's better than ever, and a real balm for the ears. The miles just click on by. Other than being a lot greener, the landscape is pretty flat and featureless. There are some pretty spots, and wealthy looking ranches mixed with abandoned century-old buildings and forlorn dilapidated shacks. So many broken dreams! They love their heros down here; we passed George Bush St, Lyndon B. Johnson State Park, Martin L. King Jr. Memorial Hwy, even A.J. Foyt Parkway! Along with Old Potatoe Road and Nutty Brown Lane, it all kinda fits.

The Huston suburbs go on forever, with roads 6 lanes wide, 60mph fast, and stoplights every block. FrEAkY driving! Dead armadillos, the Sidney Opera Houses of the animal world, litter the shoulders, their little legs in the air, poor things. Plenty of battered deer carcasses too.
Christian radio fills the dial: lots of anti-Muslim, anti-gay sentiment mixed with cowboy music; pretty depressing.

Crossed the Gulf of Mexico this afternoon and into Louisiana. 5 days to get out of Texas...phew! Into genuine bayou country. Had to use the air-con for the first time; for some strange reason, til now our trusty Element has been pumping nice cold air through the vents, even with the ambient temp. in the high 80's F. Maybe it's humidity related. Stopped outside Lafayette for the night at a gas station/casino/restaurant complex, which seems a popular combination hereabouts; had our first ever taste of real shrimp gumbo: mmm...mmm...GOOD!

On the road again!

'Dinner' last night was at the only McDonalds in the world that makes inedible fries. Okay, so they're ALL technically inedible, but these were hard as rocks. We'd have gone back to Chuy's, but our digestive tracts are apparently not as robust or forgiving as Mr. Madden's.

Went for a run along the deserted streets while the morning was still cool. Nice to get a bit of exercise after days of sitting, laying, eating & drinking.

Back on the road, unbroken desert morphs into low mesas, ancient lake beds of rock, broken by time. The ground is covered with stones, yuccas, & prickly pear, and it's easy to imagine gunfights in the outcroppings, but hard to imagine anybody traversing this land on foot or horseback. There really is a town called Road Forks down here, and a Junction! If anything, Texas is TOO big, and they've run out of names: 3 days at 80mph and it's still going.

Fredericksburg, an old German town and one of few places to have had, and respected, a treaty with the Indians that allowed it to prosper, is FULL of tiny perfect homes, preserved with obvious pride. One store had a beautiful selection of intricate yet inexpensive quilts which were, alas, made in China. Robbi couldn't bring herself to buy one, though I wish she had.

The scenery rather suddenly turns quite green, with extensive pecan orchards and prosperous-looking farms and ranches, though the ground is still largely rock-strewn. Behind fences are camels, bison, goats and turkeys, & lots of cows, horses and deer, the latter mostly torn up by the roadside. Almost tore up a 4' snake ourselves, searching out the Bernini Sculpture Ranch on a back road.

In a Subway in Ozona, a guy who had once worked in Guelph recognized my Sleemans t-shirt and recommended an old-fashioned Texas-style BBQ in a tiny place called Driftwood, 10 miles or so outside of Austin. The place was so hidden in the trees that we almost missed it, but the smell of hickory smoke caught us, and we knew we'd struck gold, cuz the place was huge, and packed, and the meal of pork ribs, potatoe salad etc., served on broad old wooden tables with slab benches was fully satisfying.

Miracle on Broadway!!

Wonder of wonders, our new card arrived in this god-forsaken outback, less than 24 hours after a final, desperate plea to Visa. All the way from Burlington, ON, Mom's hometown! And the bogus charges we reported yesterday have already been credited back to us. I am MORE than impressed! Hope they catch the varmints, too, and by criminy, the chances look purty darn good. Having already paid up this AM for a third night (yes, the motel is on Broadway; it's the middle sign on the right in the photo below) we of little faith will take the evening to re-group, re-direct some pre-authorized payments, make some whoopee, eat some salsa, and head on outa here with gums blazing at sunrise! WooHoo!!!!!!!!

Van Horn 11:00 AM Tuesday

Busy,

busy

town!

Disaster!

Awoke to find our Visa card had been compromised somewhere in Nevada. Down here, most gas stations require foreigners to leave a card with them until they've filled up, or else ring up a fixed amount first. Dopey me, I'd always done the former. Some SOB swiped my number and used it to pay his utilities, which seems particularly dumb, and shouldn't be too hard for Visa to track down, but meanwhile we're stuck in here in bustling Van Horn, TX awaiting a temporary card to be delivered to our motel. We LIVE by that card, so this has been a major reset, and we were making such good time, too!

The only thing here of note is Chuy's Restaurant, which John Madden has declared his 'Hall of Fame'. He stopped by annually, in the Madden Cruiser, being afraid of flying, and has written about it often, as his favorite Mexican eatery. He even has a chair reserved for him in front of the big screen. (Jack told me that Madden conceived that yellow stripe they superimpose on TV to indicate the downs line, or whatever it's called. Clever!) Along with the memorabilia, Chuy's also has the largest collection of business cards I've ever seen, literally covering every inch of wall and ceiling space in the foyer and halls.

GETTING here was deceptively uneventful. 80 mph zones make for some swift travel: Arizona stays on standard time all year, so after 14 days without changing our clocks, we swept through two time zones yesterday. And $1.94/gal gas is easy on the wallet, even if some station staff are not. We passed by Roswell, NM without incident, and stopped near where Geronimo surrendered, ending the Indian wars in the US. Now East Indians own the motel, and have been very nice to us; and there are great smells coming from their quarters. We're sleeping between road and tracks again, unfortunately but at least the trains lay off the whistle when blasting by, and boy, do they blast by!

Day 14 - Tombstone

Drove to Tombstone, where the main street is still dirt and the stagecoach hauls tourists around. It's a wee bit Disneyfied, but the bikers don't seem to mind, and we drank Sasparilla and were glad we came.

Bisbee is an old mining town that's managed to hang onto it's past with dignity, adding some quirkyness along the way.

Stayed the night in Douglas: you can see Mexico from here! Hi Morgan!

Day 13 - Scottsdale still

Jeremy, Suzanne & Lilly arrived. He's a travelling mechanic for HeliQuest, and seems very happy. Lilly's a fine little dog. Jack led me on a hot hike over the desert hills behind their home, and to the library for $100 worth of books on CD for $13, to keep us awake through Texas. Robbi cooked a big, fat Greek dinner, and we were joined by Viki's friend Alana. I stayed up til 2:15AM as Vettel and Webber topped the podium after a rather dull, rain-soaked race. Still no joy for Ferrari.

Day 12 - Chihuly!

Viki took us to the Botanical Garden, festooned in bizarre Chihuly glass work. Fantastic stuff!

Find more here: http://www.chihuly.com/

Jack was caught in a 3' dump of snow in Denver, and missed a GREAT steak dinner. Robbi & I stayed up late for F1 qualifying in China; Vettel on pole for Red Bull!

Day 11 - Jack & Viki's

J & V's lovely home is near the desert, yet their garden is full of flowers, palms, cardinals, and quails. Jack flew off to Denver while we searched for peccaries in the local cactii. After lunch, Viki's 79-year-old mom Gwen schooled me righteously at golf! Viki served a great pork tenderloin cooked in sauerkraut (not what you'd think!), and we played bridge and drank scotch until everything was a blur.

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Day 10