Day 29 - Memphis, TN - Nashville, TN

Let me just say, I love the south. Not that every place doesn't have its own problems, but everything seems so laidback here. Maybe its the southern twang or the fact that everyone is wearing either flip flops or cowboy boots, it's just a really nice vibe.

Pretty early I woke up and got out of the hotel because I wasn't quite done with Memphis yet. I had to go to Graceland. Even though I'm not the biggest Elvis fan, some of his stuff is pretty good, it's as much a part of America as anything on the mall. It was actually pretty fun, its not that big of a house actually. But as much as anything else, it's a museum to 70's style. The jungle room especially is pretty awesome, green shag carpet, faux fur sofas, fake jungle plants and a waterfall wall. After going through the tour and hearing about his life and all he did, his grave was actually pretty moving. Even though he isn't exactly my favorite singer, he certainly changed the world so you have to show your respect.

After Graceland it was on to Nashville. So I'm actually a fairly big country music fan...but my hatred of Toby Keith sometimes overshadows that. I dunno, something about him just annoys the living crap and since it seems that he's all you hear on the radio, I end up not listening to much country. That being said, I was really excited to reach 'music row' otherwise known as lower Broadway. I really just expected to see a few guys playing and have a beer or two. Turns out it was the night of the monthly listener appreciation concert at the Hard Rock. The whole restaurant had maybe 150 people in it as Jake Owen gave an acoustic concert. For those of you who haven't heard of him (I hadn't.) he's actually pretty famous, his CD is on the billboard top 100 right now already gold. He was just awesome, I watched the whole thing and bought the CD the second they offered it. It's great too when you see an artist who is obviously so happy to be where he is, he stayed to give an autograph to everyone and take pictures. So he has a new fan. After that, I headed across the street and watched these amazing guys play old time bluegrass for two hours. These guys were great too, and all of it was free! (well except for the $1 PBR's)

I got back to the hotel fairly late but I feel pretty confident that I got a great slice of Music City. Now it's on to the mountains and eventually home.

Day 28 - New Orleans, LA - Memphis, TN

So apparently motel 6 of downtown Memphis has been having wireless internet issues, hence me not being able to post yesterday. I had thought about doing it last night right when I got to Nashville, but honestly it was about 6 and I was already burning daylight in a really great place. So I'm going to attempt to post now for both days, becuase holy crap a lot has happened and New Orleans is a long way back (more than 600 miles actually).

After waking up at 10 after the night on Bourbon street (I think thats pretty respectable.) I headed out to go around the French quarter a little bit before heading to Tennessee. When I was touring the city during the day, I did see more of the damage than I had before. Even though for the most part the 'city' wasn't affected as much, if you look a little closer you can pretty quickly see signs of what happened. Randomly I'd notice that every few buildings still had boarded up windows or was abandoned. There are still ravaged homes that obviously just haven't been reclaimed even in the quarter. I struck up a conversation with a local, as I usually try to do and we got to talking about the hurricane. He made a really good point, he was saying that people in New Orleans (at least him) generally disliked the question of whether or not some places would be 'rebuilt.' Something I hadn't really thought of because you always hear of the rebuilding effort, but whats the point of rebuilding a house for someone who doesn't plan on coming back? Most of the affected areas that are still streets of rubble were populated by the lowest economic brackets. Those people, generally have nothing in New Orleans to go back to and many have restarted in Houston or wherever they happened to end up. New Orleans is almost like a kid wearing his dad's shirt, there's way too much city for the amount of people still here. Now that's not to say that there aren't FEMA trailer parks in a lot of places, but 'rebuilding' will only happen at the rate that people come back and therefore give a reason to build at all.

Anyway, after getting my HRC pin I headed on to Memphis. It took most of the afternoon, they're about 350 miles apart. I got there about 7pm, a nice Motel 6 about 15 minutes walk from the entertainment district. This is another place that's just about too much fun. The more southern/western cities I go to, the more I realize how much of an anomaly Houston is. Beale street is almost as hopping as Bourbon street. Tons of bars and restaurants, all with open doors and live music spilling out onto the street. It just so happened too that Wednesday night is Beale Street Bike Night, which meant that at least 1000 motorcycles were parked along the road. I'm not generally a bike head but some of these were pretty awesome customs and Harleys. Anyway, after walking around a while, I settled in the Rum Boogie Cafe and had about the best ribs of my life. The music was great too, this woman on stage was channeling Aretha it seemed. I was there until almost 1am before she was done. I don't know how her voice held out but I could have watched her for hours. Free shows, yee haa.

So thats Wednesday, time to keep heading home, towards Nashville.

Day 27 - Houston, TX - New Orleans, LA

So Houston is definitely an island of boring among a sea of awesome I think. Two hundred miles west, San Antonio and Cowboy Culture, two hundred fifty miles east New Orleans and a constant party. I guess Houston is where everyone goes to work and then goes other places for excitement. Houston is also a place of transition I guess, I mean I know that in San Antonio I was in the 'West' and once you hit the Louisiana border you're definitely in the 'South.' The feeling is entirely different, yet Houston seemed like neither.

Anyway, so this morning I got a little bit of a late start but that was fine, I wasn't really planning on doing anything else in Houston just heading out to New Orleans. It took me almost an hour to get out of the Houston suburbs, even without traffic. A little bit after noon, I reached the Louisiana border. Within ten minutes I saw a sign for 'Crocodile Charlies' a cajun restaurant with a lunch buffet. Now let me say, I'm not generally a fan of buffets but in the case of a type of food that I'm not real familiar with, its great to be able to try so many different things. Holy crap in a bag it was about the best food I'd ever had. Not only that, but I was assured that I had entered the south because my waitress Candice, referred to me as "shug," and "sweetheart." Southern twang like whoa and a pat on the back before I left. Crocodile nuggets, boiled crawfish, jambalaya, gumbo...I really need to learn how to cook this stuff.

The drive was actually pretty cool. I was going on I-10 over the Atchafalaya Basin. I'd never heard of it before about two months ago when there was reference to it in the book World War Z (great book btw). For about thirty miles, the freeway is three stories over rivers and swamps. It's like a neverending bridge but you'd better hope you have gas because obviously there's nowhere to stop. Eventually I reached the outskirts of New Orleans. I'd expected decimation, but instead I just saw a lot of new construction. There were a few boarded up windows still but nothing too bad. It wasn't until I got off of the interstate, about 3 miles from the hotel that I really saw the affected areas. Whole streets where not a single house looked sturdy. Rubble in the streets, every window boarded up. I don't think I was actually driving through the 9th ward but still, it didn't look a lot different than it did a couple of years ago. It was a little eerie too, driving on the I-10 over the city, if you remember thats where thousands of refugees were stuck for days. It was funny though, I'll bet that if you took the right way into the city from the airport, you could probably completely forget that anything ever happened here.

The French quarter was just as vibrant and fun as it ever was, well I assume anyway. Granted it was a Tuesday but still that place was hopping. The whole area is really beautiful in an old ragged way. That might not make much sense, but its the opposite of so many 'clean' places that seem sanitary and dead. This place was kinda dirty, I'll be honest, but it was so alive and had so much character to it. The buildings were covered in wrought iron railings and balconies. Bourbon street is just one ongoing party. No place charges covers and almost all of them have live music. You can just walk from club to bar to club, holding your drink, listening to music and having a good time. I never felt uncomfortable or like I was in a dangerous area, there were certainly enough cops in case anything got too out of hand. I think I was out until about 2am, mostly watching these guys who were putting on a jazz show in 'The Blue Bayou." I had just an awesome time, and I'm very glad that I know my limit very well. Not only is it cheaper to only have three, but watching some of the people at the end of the night, you could almost feel their hangovers in the morning. No thank you.

So tomorrow I'll be doing a few things around here and ending up in Memphis, TN. It's a good thing that I'll have a gym where I'll be working...I don't know how much more Southern food my 32" jeans can take.

Day 26 - San Antonio, TX - Houston, TX

It's amazing how different two cities can be that are so close together. I've had an amazing time in pretty much every place that I've been to, including here of course. Sometimes its because of the activity, and sometimes it's just that I've been able to fill in a puzzle piece of this country. It can be really interesting seeing how the culture of a place can be defined by when it sprung up, its geography or its population. San Antonio is about as vibrant of a place as you can possibly find. Everywhere is the smell of enchiladas and churros and people are constantly out enjoying their city. I spent the morning actually going around 'El Mercado,' a big open flea market selling just about everything. It was a ton of fun, getting to bargain with the vendors and getting a few pretty cool things. Of course, I had lunch before I left, Fajitas. It's a good thing that Gene isn't here, if you're not a Mexican food fanatic, you're kinda SOL. Lucky for me, I can have it pretty much every meal and be as happy as can be.

After lunch, I headed on to Houston. To give you and idea of geography, San Antonio is a little bit south of the very center of Texas, Houston is about 200 miles ESE. It's not quite on the water, that's Galveston, but it's pretty close. It's our nations fourth largest city, after Chicago, DC is fifth I believe. Of course that's depending on how you measure population, the 'city of Houston' is kind of like the 'city of Los Angeles' in that it's larger than some states and therefore it's a little unfair to compare it to the 'city of Washington, D.C.' since D.C. is a very small area. Anyway, either way, big city. Certainly the biggest single city in Texas. It shows, Houston kinda starts about 40 miles out. It just keeps going and going. I'm actually staying near 'Reliant Stadium' in a real nice hotel that Priceline got for me. So last night I went out and took their little light rail (there's only one line) downtown. So I'm certainly glad I came but I'm glad that I didn't plan on but so much time here. As it is, I think about one night is good enough. This city is just big, it kinda seems lifeless. Maybe that's in comparison to San Antonio. But walking around downtown there were huge skyscrapers but hardly any people. All of the restaurants and shops were chains and I even looked online at nightspots and they're all in outlying suburbs and randomly assorted. There's no streets like 18th in Adam's Morgan or Market Street in San Francisco, apparently part of that also has to do with a little anomaly in Houston law in that there are no zoning laws. So things get built where they're found necssary. So there's no natural reason for similar businesses to group. Anyway walking around downtown was pretty fun, huge building, and bizarre architecture. I couldn't get a good picture of it before it got too dark, but theres actually a skyscraper with a Mayan temple on top??? Not just looks like one, but is a replica of one...quois? Anyway, I had dinner at the Hard Rock because nothing else really stood out as a 'Houston experience.' I forget that that place actually has really great food. Same everywhere, but really great honestly. I got back to the room about 11 and went to bed.

Now its off to New Orleans or whatever is left of it.

Day 25 - Fort Stockton, TX - San Antonio, TX

o you're probably noticing that this is somewhat late, sorry about that. Unfortunately the hotel last night kinda lied. I can't complain too much since I was staying in more or less downtown San Antonio for $35, but they had said that there was 'high speed internet in the room.' What this actually meant was that there was a computer in my room connected to the internet but SO OLD (seriously like, when I was in middle school kinda old) that it was pretty much impossible to use and since the internet was connected to its IP, no dice. So here I am, about 4pm just checked into my hotel in Houston and I'll post about yesterday and leave my thoughts so far today for the next post.

Anyhow, other than for internet issues, San Antonio has to be one of the coolest cities in the US. I've been finding that each city has a character of its own, San Antonio is just a fun, laidback place. It's big enough that there is a decent sized downtown with lots of restaurants and shops yet not so big as to make driving and negotiating the city stressful. For those of you who haven't been here, the cruz of downtown is known as the riverwalk. Basically, its a canal that runs through downtown from the main artery of the San Antonio river. The sides of the canal are kept like a botanical garden: flowers, trees, sidewalks and waterfalls. In certain areas of the riverwalk (it's about 3 miles all told) there are dozens of restaurants, bars and shops. It's a really neat setting for dinner or drinks and just a fun place to walk around in general. I'm fully aware that I'm here at the best possible time, it apparently gets pretty hot here, but still in the evenings of summer its can't be too bad. The other great things about San Antonio are that it's cheap, and the food is amazing (and cheap, woot).

So you've probably read that I've been eating at a lot of 24 hour diners. Nothing against them, but after a while the food leaves something to be desired. I haven't had a really great meal since Vegas, not that anything was bad just not memorable...fuel so to speak. Well, San Antonio more than made up for it. First, early in the afternoon I sampled a Texas institution, Blue Bell ice cream. Seriously, this is the best stuff ever created by man...especially Birthday Cake ice cream. It's probably a good thing for my waistline that I don't actually live here. So after walking around the riverwalk for a few hours and taking a fun little riverboat tour, I went to the oldest restaurant on the riverwalk, Casa Rio. This place was built in 1946 and still owned by the same family, the guy on the boat told me that it was the best deal in the area. Holy crap he wasn't kidding. Seven dollars bought two enchiladas, a tamale, rice, beans, a beef taco, and half of a plate of cheese nachos. I could eat maybe half of it. Four dollars went to a fifteen ounce Cuervo margarita. Seriously, not only was there a ton of it but it was about the best Mexican I'd ever had. There were actually mariachi's walking around the restuarant too so I got the whole Tex-Mex experience. Pretty great for $13 after tip. I had to laugh though, this riverwalk happens to be what Richmond's canalwalk is based on. You know that ditch on the edge of downtown?? Yeah, that. See San Antonio not only has a very different culture, but also the city got businesses to agree to build before they made the canal as pretty as it is. So instead of just dumping millions into a ditch, they knew that there would be some reason for people to go there. Good job San Antonio, why you so stupid Richmond??

Anyway, on to Houston and eventually the Big Easy.

Day 24 - Roswell, NM - Carlsbad - Big Bend - Fort Stockton, TX

It's funny how plans change and in a lot of ways I am really glad that I'm on this trip alone, just because I can decide to just turn the car wherever I want to go and jet. Most of the time I have a skeleton idea of what to do and a few backup plans but that's about it and sometimes it's come back to bite me but most of the time it makes the trip more memorable. Anyway, today was one of those days where plans changed for the better in a way that I certainly wasn't expecting...

Anyhow, I actually got out of the hotel pretty darned early about 8am. The reason being that one of the tours that I had wanted to take of the caverns was on at 10 and 1, and I knew that the only way I'd get to take it was if someone cancelled so I wanted to be there for either one. Why was the tour such a big deal? Well Carlbad has a few regular walking tours but also they have a 'caving' tour where you actually strap on pads, a lighted helmet and gloves and follow the ranger throuw newly discovered areas while crawling on your belly, climbing etc. Luckily I got there just in time for the 10am tour and someone had cancelled, really lucky apparently because these tours generally are booked months in advance. So I strapped up (they didn't let us have cameras, it would have been crushed anyway) and the five of us headed through 3 hours of chasms and narrow passageways. It was really neat to be able to see what only a very few have ever been able to see. I'm not about to be a lone caver however, it was great with a guide but I think you've got to be crazy to just head into an unknown passage and hope for the best. Honestly, you could so easily fall and get knocked out and never be found. After the tour I actually did the main areas of the cavern and let me tell you, this place is awesome. Luray is cool and all, but Carlsbad is on a completely different scale. The 'big room' can fit the Astrodome inside it. It was made entirely different too, actually forming when underground gas deposits (including hydrogen sulfide) met with water and created sulfuric acid which ate away at the limestone to make the caverns. It actually took me until 2pm to finish touring all of the caverns but I still was out of there a lot earlier than I would have thought. I had figured that if I was lucky then I'd be on the 1pm tour and not get out until almost 5. So I had a lot of extra daylight and I wasn't ready to head to San Antonio quite yet. There was another National Park about 40 miles away called "Guadalupe Mountains" so I headed that way. Unfortunately when I got there I realized that this park was only 20+ mile hikes and roads that are only 4wd accessible, no dice. What to do??

Well I fired up the GPS and found that I was only about 200 miles from Big Bend National Park. For those of you who've never heard of it, it's basically the Western dip of the Rio Grande in Texas. I hadn't planned on going there because I thought it was too far and had I been at the Caverns until 5 it would have been. So I pointed the car and got on the road, luckily Texas speed limits are generally 75 so I was there with about 2.5 hours of daylight left. Big Bend is a lush desert if such a thing can be imagined, with these huge rock mountains in the background. I had just enough time to go on the scenic drive and see the most spectacular sunset of my life. I was able to get up on a rock hill as the sun went down over the mountains. Totally worth the drive and more.

Unfortunately, Big Bend is smack dab in the middle of assbackwardsville. The only motels were crazy expensive and kinda shabby. I had told myself that I would find a place in time to finally have a decent dinner that wasn't a 24 hour diner. Oh well, maybe San Antonio. I finally was able to stop in Fort Stockton, which was about 1.5 hour away. Best laid plans...but it was certainly worth it. Now on to San Antonio.

Day 23 - Moab, UT - Monument Valley - Roswell

Today was definitely unexpected, at times a little scary but pretty memorable overall. One of the reasons that I went on this trip mostly alone was that I was fully aware that some things were going to happen that I didn't exactly plan on. When these things happen, I can generally stay pretty calm and take them as they come since its only me being affected. I've certainly had quite a few of these little unexpected episodes since leaving D.C. and they make for great stories.

Anyway, we'll get to that in a minute. So this morning I got out pretty early and headed back to Arches, since it was honestly too late to see much last night. Arches is less well known than some of the other parks in the Southwest but honestly it has some of the most unusual sights of anywhere I've been. As the name implies, there are more than 2000 natural stone arches within the park, some keyhole small and some are massive. I went to a couple, but the more bizarre is called Landscape Arch. From base to base the span is actually 300 feet even though at some points the actual beam(?) is only about 6 feet thick. Apparently in 1990 a 180 ton slab of rock fell the few hundred feet to the ground, hence not being able to walk underneath it anymore. However, I was able to walk right up to it and honestly I think I stared at it for about 20 minutes. I mean, it just doesn't make sense...300 feet across, tons upon tons of stone, just almost floating there...just bizarre.

So after a couple of hikes I headed south to Monument Valley. Most of you have probably heard of it before, or certainly seen the area in movies. It's pretty iconic for Westerns and its really beautiful. Although they call it a 'valley,' its more of a flat plain with these huge red buttes that seem to just rise a thousand feet high from nothing. As you drive into the area too, you pass another iconic movie landscape, highway 191 about 13 miles north of the valley is where Forrest stopped running. It was pretty neat actually, because when you drive to the spot you know it automatically. I recognized it the second I crested over the hill. I had wanted it to be sunny and bright, but the weather wasn't exactly cooperating. It had been raining on and off, and that continued in the park. At first I was a little disappointed knowing that my pictures wouldn't quite come out as well as I'd hoped but as I was at one of the lookouts, the rainstorm changed to a thunderstorm. A desert thunderstorm in Monument Valley, thats something pretty unexpected and pretty awesome in reality. When you experience a thunderstorm on a desert plain, it looks entirely different because you can see so much further. Hence I'd see four or five bolts every few seconds and some might have been 50 miles away. Although the photos might not be quite what they could be, I felt pretty lucky to experience such a rare event.

So on to the really unexpected episode... I pointed the car to the next destination Carlsbad Caverns, NM. Thats not real close, about 550 miles. I knew that I wouldn't quite reach the whole way tonight but I figured that I'd get close. I had to drive through the Navajo reservation which is actually really large, it takes up a good 100 miles by 100 miles. Thing is, the road system there leaves something to be desired, but the GPS doesn't really know that. Well it was directing me and told me to drive from highway 59 to 591. Now 591 isn't paved, but it was really wide and seemed fine. I figured that it was probably just going to be for a minute or two so I turned. Well pretty quickly the road became more or less nothing, as in it became nothing more than a couple of tire tracks. I followed as per the GPS waiting to get back to a main road and then the sky opened up and it started hailing like crazy. So there I was no civilization in sight, driving on what could have been a ditch honestly with no cell phone reception. Not the brightest of moments. The GPS lost me and so I had to try to find my way back to an actual road. I'm pretty sure that I was actually driving on a riverbed for a few minutes and I almost got stuck a few times. Finally I found my way back to the unpaved but large road and just followed that until it got to something paved. Apparently I didn't do too bad because it actually had me saving time from when I turned off the road before. Alls well that ends well, but it could have been REALLY bad.

So here I am in Roswell, NM finally, about 100 miles from Carlsbad so I'll be getting up pretty early to see the Caverns then on to Texas!