Finally we drive into New Orleans, which is amazing! Even though I'm in pretty bad shape we go downtown to Mother's to eat Cajun food for lunch. Alex had a Po Boy sandwich and I had some Jumbalaya. It is SO good but my appetite is gone and I can't eat much more than a few bites. After that we decide to wander into the French Quarter to have a few drinks before we go back to the motel. On every block in the Quarter there are at least three houses for sale. Most of the stores that aren't on Bourbon Street are closed down. We did get to go into the Voodoo Store and Museum while we were there and we got a drink at LaFite's Blacksmith Shop, a blacksmith shop that was turned into a bar in the 1700's and where vampires have been known to drink.
The next day we wake up and plan our day. We're going to get doughnuts at Cafe Du Monde, then walk to St Louis I Cemetery and see the Voodoo Queen's grave, then go to the Garden District to see its layout and houses, then go to Bourbon Street for drinks, then go on the Vampire Tour, then go get more drinks on Bourbon Street.
When we get to Jackson Square it is filled with people reading Tarot cards. There is even an older man and lady playing music. The Cafe has a line around the block for doughnuts and Alex doesn't want to wait in the line so we start walking toward the cemetery. On the way we find Community Coffee House where we both get coffees to go and I get a bagel to eat because I'm hungry. While eating I see a nightlife magazine and pick it up because it has a list of all the best bars in town.
Coffees in hand, we walk to the cemetery. It is falling apart. Even the graves that have been restored are just plastered over with stucco. I felt strange as I walked through all the above ground tombs, brick piles falling apart. At one time while I was in the protestant section I heard a woman screaming to her boyfriend in an apartment not 200 feet from the edge of the cemetery. There was rap music playing. I thought, what a contrast. Nevertheless I was excited to find out that the architect of the Capitol building in Washington DC was buried there with his son. And Plessy of Plessy v. Furgeson was buried there too. He was the man who in about 1900 defied the separate but equal laws on the trains and sat in the white section only to be imprisoned. At the time the supreme court upheld the laws but reversed it in Brown v. The Board of Education.
After the cemetary we walk down to Bourbon street and get drinks at the Olde Absinthe Bar. After this we check out the Garden District only to find that not much is going on. The houses are beautiful to see though and there are so many trees! When we return to Bourbon Street we go back to the Absinthe Bar and have a few beers, spending the rest of our cash. After the beers we go back to the hotel and make some dinner only to return in an hour for our Vampire tour.
When we get to the tour there are probably 75 people waiting, so they split us up into three groups. Our guide's name is Louis and he's a fourth generation New Orleanser. He tells us great stories about vampires in the French Quarter and I love walking through those streets at night. There are gas lanterns still glowing outside of houses and you can see inside the huge windows into the parlors of the old houses. The yellow light reflects off flowers and vines growing on black fences, and drunken people stumble down the street singing songs. At the end of the tour Alex has written down some things for us to look up online and we're both feeling better and happy to have come to New Orleans at last.
Oct 17, 2009
Oct 15, 2009
One Giant Long Motherfucking Drive
So, it started on Wednesday in Montana.
It was snowing, lovely sleet snow. I was sick, really fucking sick. Candice drove the ENTIRE width of Montana in sleet snow that day, but we made it across the border into Wyoming. Unfortunately, that left us in 32 degree snow, but we had factored this and had planned to get a motel room. No point being sick and cold at the same time. We bathed that night, just beautiful.
The next day, Candice drove again, all the way to Nebraska, across the corner of Wyoming.
Wyoming, even though the weather was disgusting, is a pretty dismal place. Temperature wasn't much better when we got there, still snow, still cold. But, we managed to stay in a really seedy motel that had a nice collection of drunks scattered around, and what I think was a crack den in the next room. Oh, and I was still sick, getting worse, and finding it hard to do anything and breath at the same time. So much fun.
Friday, even though I was sick and unable to breath and move, I decided I could drive, so we split the driving through Nebraska. Thank fuck for that. Candice told me her dad had driven through Nebraska and never, ever wanted to do it again.
I share his feelings on this matter.
I NEVER, EVER want to have to visit Nebraska again, let alone drive any part of it. It's flat, depressing and boring. So much so that there was not one bumper sticker in the TWO State Parks, or any gas station we stopped at. Apparently, even Nebraskans think their State isn't worth celebrating on the back of a car.
Once into Kansas, it was getting late and we needed to get to a campground. This achieved, I started to set up the tent. It took me 10 mins to get two tent pegs in as I just couldn't catch my breath. Candice had to help me finish putting the tent up! She made up Chicken Noodle soup, I was hungry but I didn't have any appetite. Four spoonfuls and I was done. I looked at my phone and this was when we realized we would be in for a long night.
Wunderground said the temperature was going to get down to about 25, with winds up to 25 m.p.h; oh, and freezing rain in the morning.
We went to bed at 5 pm knowing it was going to be rough. And it was. I got half hour naps here and there, huddled under all the blankets with Treacle, constantly worried the tent was about to tear off the top of us! When we woke in the morning there was a sheet, yes a sheet, of ice covering the whole tent, and it was seriously fucking cold.
I was a mess and couldn't even help her put down the tent, I just had to sit in the car as it warmed up, trying to catch my breath. We then just started driving again and made it through to Missouri, and warmer temperatures.
We stayed at this massive campsite, filled to the brim with giant RV's. Even thought we were exhausted, and needed the rest, we could only stay one night there because they were booked up for the weekend. We decided to hit up Branson, and then camp just over the state line in The Ozarks, Arkansas.
"Just over the state line" ended up being a three hour drive through The Ozarks, but we eventually found a campsite in a forest on the top of one of the hills in the mountain range. It was great until we couldn't light a fire because all the wood around was wet from the previous week of rain, and then the next installment dumped on us. We spent the next 36 hours in the tent, in varying degrees of rainfall, but we needed to not be driving. By the second night, everything in the tent was wet, sorry, soaked. We sat reading, I read Bill Clinton's autobiography, which worked out handy the next day! By 7 in the morning we were done and just threw everything in the car and headed to Little Rock.
In Little Rock is the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. A seriously Fucking Awesome place!
I can't explain here how great this place is but I URGE you to take time out of your life to go there. (Those of you who know me know that I don't say that about very many places at all.) It is an experience that person should have. They have his Mustang and Presidential Limo, correspondents between him and many famous peeps, and a recreation of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room! When you look at how much he achieved in those eight years, it's truly humbling, and gives hope for the next eight years.
We dried all our stuff at a laundromat and stayed at a motel in Hot Springs, childhood home of Bill Clinton.
Hot Springs is run by the National Park Service. It's a strip along the street that contains the bathhouses that used to operate there. They were more like old school spas that catered to rich people wanting to fix their ailments. One of them has been restored to look like it did at the peak in the twenties and is a museum you can wander around. It's interesting to get a snap shot of life at a different time.
Although it was a pretty warm day, it was not going to last and we were completely done with the weather by now and decided to head to New Orleans, and bizarrely the quickest way was back up through Memphis and then straight down. So off to Memphis we drove.
We stopped there for a drink on Beale St and talked to a bartender who told us a few things we should see in New Orleans then it was back on the road again. The weather report said it was going to rain, again, pretty much all night, so being limited on funds and tired of getting soaked, we slept in the car and a State fishing reserve. Not the most comfortable nights sleep, but we were dry when we woke up. Funny enough, so was everything outside, it hadn't rained at all. Fucking figures! I got out the car to make us some coffee on the burner in the crisp, cloudy morning air. The water was just about to boil, when everything around me went completely silent and then I heard a hiss getting increasingly louder. "Oh no," I thought.
Yep, you guessed it. The heavens opened and ten tons of rain dumped on me. I ran under a tree, and that didn't help at all. A minute later it was over, I was wet, and it was another great start to the day.
If we weren't done before, we certainly were now. Candice was getting sicker, I was getting better, and we had both had enough of the God damn world.
After finding a State Park in Louisiana, we drove on, preparing ourselves for another happy night in the tent. We made it to Tickfaw State Park, dealt with the retard at the front desk and paid $15 for a campsite in the middle of a swamp.
I know that I am prone to exaggeration, but unfortunately, I'm not this time.
The guy at the front desk was really simple, let me recount the story:
We pull at the office and I wind down the window as he opens his window.
"Yes?" he asks.
"I want a campsite for the night," I reply.
"Tent?" he says inaudibly.
"What?" I need him to repeat.
"Tent?" he says again.
"Yes," I reply, looking out behind the car to make sure I haven't been dragging someone else's RV across two states.
"OK," he gives me a look like I'm seriously insane, asks for I.D. and then stares at his computer screen with a look of confusion and constipation. "Have you been here before?"
"Nope."
He sighs, not the answer he wanted, "Would you like to be near the bathrooms or... not?"
"Near would be fine," I answer.
Lots of sighing, clicking and constipated looks follow. "Here's a map, and the gate combination."
I was slightly confused as to why I needed a combination to a gate I had already entered through, but I didn't want to trouble his already overloaded, simple brain with the question, and so on we drove to find our campsite.
It tuns out that the campsites are in the middle of a swamp and arranged in a circle, so technically everyone of them is close to the bathrooms. When I say swamp, I really mean swamp. I could stand by the tent and spit into the middle of the swamp. The swamp had been fitted with overflow pipes to keep the water level down, very handy, but the overflows poured right into the campsites. There was a small square sand box for us to put the tent on and everything else all around us was stagnant swamp, filled with mosquitoes. They weren't west coast mosquitoes, you know the small annoying ones that buzz around you head and occasionally bite you. These were mother fucking giant African mosquitoes, the size of thumbnails, that given the chance would suck every ounce of blood out of you, and they try to!
The campsite we had been designated was just too damn swampy for us to even put a tent on, so we moved to the next site along. Whilst getting some stuff together, the guy from the front desk dove by us and I flagging him down. He looked confused and in pain even before I had said anything. I told him that the site was way too swampy and that we had moved over one site. He looked at the two sites, got even more confused, and then informed me that I had to go to the front desk and tell them we had moved. I figured that this was only because his little brain would explode if he had to try to retain this small piece of information for more than a few seconds.
Fine. I got in the car and drove back round to the front desk. No sooner had I walked in through the door a chubby blonde girl screamed at me.
"Can I help you?!"
"Yes. I'm staying in site 32, and I've moved next door to site 34. I'm just letting you know."
A look of pure disgust covered her face, "You just can't do that. Let me see if it's free."
Baring in mind that we were the ONLY people staying in the campsite, I didn't foresee this being a problem, but you never know when dealing with such simple people.
She clicked away at her computer and without even turning round to face me said, "36 is taken."
"Excuse me?" now I was confused.
She sighed, they must get training in sighing here. "You're in 34 and want to move to 36. 36 is taken."
Did this really have to be this hard?
My turn to sigh, "No. We're in 32 and want to move to 34."
"Oh," more sighing, "I didn't understand you. That should be O.K., but don't do it again."
On any normal day I would have happily spent the next 20 mins berating her on her stupidity, but luckily for her, I just wasn't in the mood. I just left and headed back to the tent.
Candice is really sick, I knew how she felt, I'd been there a few days earlier. She just crawled up in a ball in the tent whilst I made beef stew for dinner, and the mosquitoes feasted on flesh. By this time it had got dark and I looked up to see half the sky periodically lit up with the impending thunderstorms. It looked beautiful, but I knew we were going to be in for another rough night. Tired of being dinner for another life form, I climbed into the tent and started to write this blog entry. I managed to get to Arkansas before i had to stop. There was a lot of clattering going on on the table where I had left our dinner bowls.
I wasn't aware of the wildlife situation in Louisiana, and didn't know what was outside finishing off our stew. I got my boots on, grabbed my axe and flashlight, and looked outside. Thankfully it was only a racoon munching away on the beef Candice hadn't eaten. I shooed him away, stuck the bowls in the car and headed back to the tent, but I had lost my inspiration to continue writing.
I don't know what time the thunderstorm got to us, but it just lit up the sky and dropped bucket loads on us for hours. Within no time at all everything in the tent was wet, yet again. We huddled together on the only dry part and tried to sleep. When morning came everything was again soaked through, but there was a laundry room by the bathrooms which allowed us to dry it all out, once Candice had driven miles out of camp to get change because they didn't have any at the front desk. Fucking retards.
This done we packed up and headed to New Orleans and a few nights in a hotel. Typically the weather was now getting better.
It was snowing, lovely sleet snow. I was sick, really fucking sick. Candice drove the ENTIRE width of Montana in sleet snow that day, but we made it across the border into Wyoming. Unfortunately, that left us in 32 degree snow, but we had factored this and had planned to get a motel room. No point being sick and cold at the same time. We bathed that night, just beautiful.
The next day, Candice drove again, all the way to Nebraska, across the corner of Wyoming.
Wyoming, even though the weather was disgusting, is a pretty dismal place. Temperature wasn't much better when we got there, still snow, still cold. But, we managed to stay in a really seedy motel that had a nice collection of drunks scattered around, and what I think was a crack den in the next room. Oh, and I was still sick, getting worse, and finding it hard to do anything and breath at the same time. So much fun.
Friday, even though I was sick and unable to breath and move, I decided I could drive, so we split the driving through Nebraska. Thank fuck for that. Candice told me her dad had driven through Nebraska and never, ever wanted to do it again.
I share his feelings on this matter.
I NEVER, EVER want to have to visit Nebraska again, let alone drive any part of it. It's flat, depressing and boring. So much so that there was not one bumper sticker in the TWO State Parks, or any gas station we stopped at. Apparently, even Nebraskans think their State isn't worth celebrating on the back of a car.
Once into Kansas, it was getting late and we needed to get to a campground. This achieved, I started to set up the tent. It took me 10 mins to get two tent pegs in as I just couldn't catch my breath. Candice had to help me finish putting the tent up! She made up Chicken Noodle soup, I was hungry but I didn't have any appetite. Four spoonfuls and I was done. I looked at my phone and this was when we realized we would be in for a long night.
Wunderground said the temperature was going to get down to about 25, with winds up to 25 m.p.h; oh, and freezing rain in the morning.
We went to bed at 5 pm knowing it was going to be rough. And it was. I got half hour naps here and there, huddled under all the blankets with Treacle, constantly worried the tent was about to tear off the top of us! When we woke in the morning there was a sheet, yes a sheet, of ice covering the whole tent, and it was seriously fucking cold.
I was a mess and couldn't even help her put down the tent, I just had to sit in the car as it warmed up, trying to catch my breath. We then just started driving again and made it through to Missouri, and warmer temperatures.
We stayed at this massive campsite, filled to the brim with giant RV's. Even thought we were exhausted, and needed the rest, we could only stay one night there because they were booked up for the weekend. We decided to hit up Branson, and then camp just over the state line in The Ozarks, Arkansas.
"Just over the state line" ended up being a three hour drive through The Ozarks, but we eventually found a campsite in a forest on the top of one of the hills in the mountain range. It was great until we couldn't light a fire because all the wood around was wet from the previous week of rain, and then the next installment dumped on us. We spent the next 36 hours in the tent, in varying degrees of rainfall, but we needed to not be driving. By the second night, everything in the tent was wet, sorry, soaked. We sat reading, I read Bill Clinton's autobiography, which worked out handy the next day! By 7 in the morning we were done and just threw everything in the car and headed to Little Rock.
In Little Rock is the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. A seriously Fucking Awesome place!
I can't explain here how great this place is but I URGE you to take time out of your life to go there. (Those of you who know me know that I don't say that about very many places at all.) It is an experience that person should have. They have his Mustang and Presidential Limo, correspondents between him and many famous peeps, and a recreation of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room! When you look at how much he achieved in those eight years, it's truly humbling, and gives hope for the next eight years.
We dried all our stuff at a laundromat and stayed at a motel in Hot Springs, childhood home of Bill Clinton.
Hot Springs is run by the National Park Service. It's a strip along the street that contains the bathhouses that used to operate there. They were more like old school spas that catered to rich people wanting to fix their ailments. One of them has been restored to look like it did at the peak in the twenties and is a museum you can wander around. It's interesting to get a snap shot of life at a different time.
Although it was a pretty warm day, it was not going to last and we were completely done with the weather by now and decided to head to New Orleans, and bizarrely the quickest way was back up through Memphis and then straight down. So off to Memphis we drove.
We stopped there for a drink on Beale St and talked to a bartender who told us a few things we should see in New Orleans then it was back on the road again. The weather report said it was going to rain, again, pretty much all night, so being limited on funds and tired of getting soaked, we slept in the car and a State fishing reserve. Not the most comfortable nights sleep, but we were dry when we woke up. Funny enough, so was everything outside, it hadn't rained at all. Fucking figures! I got out the car to make us some coffee on the burner in the crisp, cloudy morning air. The water was just about to boil, when everything around me went completely silent and then I heard a hiss getting increasingly louder. "Oh no," I thought.
Yep, you guessed it. The heavens opened and ten tons of rain dumped on me. I ran under a tree, and that didn't help at all. A minute later it was over, I was wet, and it was another great start to the day.
If we weren't done before, we certainly were now. Candice was getting sicker, I was getting better, and we had both had enough of the God damn world.
After finding a State Park in Louisiana, we drove on, preparing ourselves for another happy night in the tent. We made it to Tickfaw State Park, dealt with the retard at the front desk and paid $15 for a campsite in the middle of a swamp.
I know that I am prone to exaggeration, but unfortunately, I'm not this time.
The guy at the front desk was really simple, let me recount the story:
We pull at the office and I wind down the window as he opens his window.
"Yes?" he asks.
"I want a campsite for the night," I reply.
"Tent?" he says inaudibly.
"What?" I need him to repeat.
"Tent?" he says again.
"Yes," I reply, looking out behind the car to make sure I haven't been dragging someone else's RV across two states.
"OK," he gives me a look like I'm seriously insane, asks for I.D. and then stares at his computer screen with a look of confusion and constipation. "Have you been here before?"
"Nope."
He sighs, not the answer he wanted, "Would you like to be near the bathrooms or... not?"
"Near would be fine," I answer.
Lots of sighing, clicking and constipated looks follow. "Here's a map, and the gate combination."
I was slightly confused as to why I needed a combination to a gate I had already entered through, but I didn't want to trouble his already overloaded, simple brain with the question, and so on we drove to find our campsite.
It tuns out that the campsites are in the middle of a swamp and arranged in a circle, so technically everyone of them is close to the bathrooms. When I say swamp, I really mean swamp. I could stand by the tent and spit into the middle of the swamp. The swamp had been fitted with overflow pipes to keep the water level down, very handy, but the overflows poured right into the campsites. There was a small square sand box for us to put the tent on and everything else all around us was stagnant swamp, filled with mosquitoes. They weren't west coast mosquitoes, you know the small annoying ones that buzz around you head and occasionally bite you. These were mother fucking giant African mosquitoes, the size of thumbnails, that given the chance would suck every ounce of blood out of you, and they try to!
The campsite we had been designated was just too damn swampy for us to even put a tent on, so we moved to the next site along. Whilst getting some stuff together, the guy from the front desk dove by us and I flagging him down. He looked confused and in pain even before I had said anything. I told him that the site was way too swampy and that we had moved over one site. He looked at the two sites, got even more confused, and then informed me that I had to go to the front desk and tell them we had moved. I figured that this was only because his little brain would explode if he had to try to retain this small piece of information for more than a few seconds.
Fine. I got in the car and drove back round to the front desk. No sooner had I walked in through the door a chubby blonde girl screamed at me.
"Can I help you?!"
"Yes. I'm staying in site 32, and I've moved next door to site 34. I'm just letting you know."
A look of pure disgust covered her face, "You just can't do that. Let me see if it's free."
Baring in mind that we were the ONLY people staying in the campsite, I didn't foresee this being a problem, but you never know when dealing with such simple people.
She clicked away at her computer and without even turning round to face me said, "36 is taken."
"Excuse me?" now I was confused.
She sighed, they must get training in sighing here. "You're in 34 and want to move to 36. 36 is taken."
Did this really have to be this hard?
My turn to sigh, "No. We're in 32 and want to move to 34."
"Oh," more sighing, "I didn't understand you. That should be O.K., but don't do it again."
On any normal day I would have happily spent the next 20 mins berating her on her stupidity, but luckily for her, I just wasn't in the mood. I just left and headed back to the tent.
Candice is really sick, I knew how she felt, I'd been there a few days earlier. She just crawled up in a ball in the tent whilst I made beef stew for dinner, and the mosquitoes feasted on flesh. By this time it had got dark and I looked up to see half the sky periodically lit up with the impending thunderstorms. It looked beautiful, but I knew we were going to be in for another rough night. Tired of being dinner for another life form, I climbed into the tent and started to write this blog entry. I managed to get to Arkansas before i had to stop. There was a lot of clattering going on on the table where I had left our dinner bowls.
I wasn't aware of the wildlife situation in Louisiana, and didn't know what was outside finishing off our stew. I got my boots on, grabbed my axe and flashlight, and looked outside. Thankfully it was only a racoon munching away on the beef Candice hadn't eaten. I shooed him away, stuck the bowls in the car and headed back to the tent, but I had lost my inspiration to continue writing.
I don't know what time the thunderstorm got to us, but it just lit up the sky and dropped bucket loads on us for hours. Within no time at all everything in the tent was wet, yet again. We huddled together on the only dry part and tried to sleep. When morning came everything was again soaked through, but there was a laundry room by the bathrooms which allowed us to dry it all out, once Candice had driven miles out of camp to get change because they didn't have any at the front desk. Fucking retards.
This done we packed up and headed to New Orleans and a few nights in a hotel. Typically the weather was now getting better.
Oct 13, 2009
Into the South
We check out of the Hot Springs National Park in the morning after drying out some more of our stuff with the heater in our hotel room. Hot Springs National Park is a collection of Bath Houses along a street in a town in western Arkansas. I think there are 10 buildings, and the NPS has restored one of them to what it was like in the early 20th century when bathing was at its peak. People like Al Capone went to this bath house where men's and women's bathing was separate. The bath house had separate bathing stalls for everyone, a gym, changing rooms that included a vanity and a bed for resting, and separate deck spaces for men and women to enjoy the sun. At that time people went to bath houses to cure their physical ailments.
From there we went to Beale St. in Memphis, Tennessee and had a drink at a bar there. The bartender told us about Marie Leveau the Voodoo Queen and how we should go see her grave in New Orleans. He'd lived there when he was going to school. He also told us to check out these French doughnuts at Cafe du Monde in Jackson Square.
When we checked the weather we found that it was going to rain again and having almost no money, we couldn't get another hotel room. So we slept in the car in the parking lot of a State park while, as fate would have it, no rain poured down that night.
It did start pouring at about 8 in the morning though, so it's good we didn't set up the tent because everything would have been soaked in trying to get it to the car. From there in Northern Mississippi we travel south to Jackson and then take the Natchez Trace all the way to Natchez. On the way I finally get my Sausage McMuffin and it doesn't taste nearly as good in reality as it did in my head. The Natchez Trace is a very old trail that goes from Natchez (on the Mississippi in the South) to Kentucky in the North. Originally it was a native american trail used for herding bison, then when white people colonized the area and started growing crops, they would sail to Natchez with their goods, sell them and set off back home on the Trace. Once steamboats started going up the Mississippi people stopped using the Trace, but it was turned into a National Scenic Highway and there are plenty of interesting stops along the way. We stop at a waterfall, an old inn and plantation and a trail that goes through an old part of the trace (you can see how travelers wore it down into a small canyon, almost like an empty creek bed but about 3 times as deep).
That night we stop at the Tickfaw State Park in Arkansas where I'm feeling really bad and Alex is feeling okay and it rains so hard it soaks through all our bedding in 3 hours. During the first hour I can feel it on the edge of my sleeping bag. During the next hour I have to move off half the bag because it's soaked. The next hour I feel everything wet at my feet, puddles of water were accumulating. Then by the end of the fourth hour everything was wet again except a little high spot on Alex's side. I sit up and say, "why is your side always dry and mine is always soaked? It's not fair! I hate this fucking rain and this swamp!" Alex tells me to sleep where he's sleeping and takes my side of the tent. I say no at first but I'm feeling too bad to sleep in the wetness all night. Even sleeping there, my feet were wet all night and I had only a wet blanket to cover me. The next day I'm a bit delirious from not sleeping and from being sick and cold. I'm not making much sense and all my efforts to help just annoy Alex. We get all our stuff dry in the laundromat at the state park after I have to drive 10 miles to get change from a gas station for the laundry machines.
From there we went to Beale St. in Memphis, Tennessee and had a drink at a bar there. The bartender told us about Marie Leveau the Voodoo Queen and how we should go see her grave in New Orleans. He'd lived there when he was going to school. He also told us to check out these French doughnuts at Cafe du Monde in Jackson Square.
When we checked the weather we found that it was going to rain again and having almost no money, we couldn't get another hotel room. So we slept in the car in the parking lot of a State park while, as fate would have it, no rain poured down that night.
It did start pouring at about 8 in the morning though, so it's good we didn't set up the tent because everything would have been soaked in trying to get it to the car. From there in Northern Mississippi we travel south to Jackson and then take the Natchez Trace all the way to Natchez. On the way I finally get my Sausage McMuffin and it doesn't taste nearly as good in reality as it did in my head. The Natchez Trace is a very old trail that goes from Natchez (on the Mississippi in the South) to Kentucky in the North. Originally it was a native american trail used for herding bison, then when white people colonized the area and started growing crops, they would sail to Natchez with their goods, sell them and set off back home on the Trace. Once steamboats started going up the Mississippi people stopped using the Trace, but it was turned into a National Scenic Highway and there are plenty of interesting stops along the way. We stop at a waterfall, an old inn and plantation and a trail that goes through an old part of the trace (you can see how travelers wore it down into a small canyon, almost like an empty creek bed but about 3 times as deep).
That night we stop at the Tickfaw State Park in Arkansas where I'm feeling really bad and Alex is feeling okay and it rains so hard it soaks through all our bedding in 3 hours. During the first hour I can feel it on the edge of my sleeping bag. During the next hour I have to move off half the bag because it's soaked. The next hour I feel everything wet at my feet, puddles of water were accumulating. Then by the end of the fourth hour everything was wet again except a little high spot on Alex's side. I sit up and say, "why is your side always dry and mine is always soaked? It's not fair! I hate this fucking rain and this swamp!" Alex tells me to sleep where he's sleeping and takes my side of the tent. I say no at first but I'm feeling too bad to sleep in the wetness all night. Even sleeping there, my feet were wet all night and I had only a wet blanket to cover me. The next day I'm a bit delirious from not sleeping and from being sick and cold. I'm not making much sense and all my efforts to help just annoy Alex. We get all our stuff dry in the laundromat at the state park after I have to drive 10 miles to get change from a gas station for the laundry machines.
Oct 12, 2009
The Rusty Humpfrey Show
A few days ago, while we were in the Ozarks, I took out our wind-up radio and searched for something interesting to listen to. I landed on Mountain Dog Radio which was playing the Rusty Humpfrey Show. He started off his show by shaming all the other radio shows for their coverage of Columbus Day which he believe they paint in too negative a light, "I can't believe what you all are doing to Columbus. The man that started this great nation. It is because of him that we have anything at all." He went on to say that civilization is better than running around in deerskin. That there are better kinds of civilization and the West's is the best.
Next he went on to Global Warming, where he says, "IT DOESN'T EXIST!" Then he goes on to list a number of temperatures in the US, all amazingly cold for this time of year. Wyoming 29 degrees, Helena 9 degrees, Kansas 35 degrees, etc. "We've been in global cooling for three years. Now, Global Warming is great: more sun means longer growing seasons which leads to more food which lowers the cost of food, which leaves more expendable income. Now, global cooling now thats a real problem because it leads to shorter growing seasons, less food, higher prices and no disposable income because you've spent all your money on food and gas and housing."
Later, he had on Larry Klayman author of the book "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment". During the show this guy self-titled himself a legal revolutionary. He believes that, "the state of the United States during the 2008 election was similar to Germany before they elected Hitler". He said that, "We have a socialist in the whitehouse who's using us for his own pleasure." He also believes that we need to stage a Second American Revolution. That we need to take the government out of control and reinstate a new one. He has a website: freedomwatchusa.org.
Also, you can get the Rusty Humpfrey Show podcast for 10/12/09 if you'd like to listen to the show.
Next he went on to Global Warming, where he says, "IT DOESN'T EXIST!" Then he goes on to list a number of temperatures in the US, all amazingly cold for this time of year. Wyoming 29 degrees, Helena 9 degrees, Kansas 35 degrees, etc. "We've been in global cooling for three years. Now, Global Warming is great: more sun means longer growing seasons which leads to more food which lowers the cost of food, which leaves more expendable income. Now, global cooling now thats a real problem because it leads to shorter growing seasons, less food, higher prices and no disposable income because you've spent all your money on food and gas and housing."
Later, he had on Larry Klayman author of the book "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment". During the show this guy self-titled himself a legal revolutionary. He believes that, "the state of the United States during the 2008 election was similar to Germany before they elected Hitler". He said that, "We have a socialist in the whitehouse who's using us for his own pleasure." He also believes that we need to stage a Second American Revolution. That we need to take the government out of control and reinstate a new one. He has a website: freedomwatchusa.org.
Also, you can get the Rusty Humpfrey Show podcast for 10/12/09 if you'd like to listen to the show.
Oct 11, 2009
The Bill Clinton Land
The next morning we find out that the campsites are actually all booked for the weekend so we can't stay any more days there and have to move on. We decide to go to the Ozarks in Arkansas because they're close and we can see the showtown of Branson on the way.
It takes Alex 2 hours to drive to Branson, about 1 hour longer than we thought it would. When we get there we're not feeling good and we're getting dangerously short with each other about everything. When we're there I keep asking Alex what he wants to do and he doesn't give me an answer and asks me what I want to do but I don't give an answer because I don't know if he wants to do what I want to do and I don't want to hear him sighing at me. Plus I'm tired and sick and really just want to get in the car and find a place to camp for two days and rest. After checking out Old Downtown Branson, home of 200 theaters we head for the Ozarks. Alex drives for 3 hours into Arkansas before we get to a campsite in the Ozarks. This is about 2 hours longer than we though it would take. When we get to the campsite everything around us is wet. We're both exhausted and sick and can't go any further so we set up camp. Then we check the weather and find out that it's going to rain. As the sun is going down Alex tries to light a fire and as the small thing dwindles and dies in its infancy all hope leaves me and I fall into despair: everything we have is going to get wet, I can barely do anything because my body is so tired, the weather just won't let us be, we're running out of food, I'm fucking cold, in short everything is horrible. I totally break down in the tent and Alex consoles me, "It's not so bad, everything's going to be fine. We'll dry everything out. And we'll stay here for a couple days so we can rest." Bad idea us.
After the first night half of everything is wet. All day long it rains off and on but not nice rain. It's big droplets and the humidity is about 96% so everything is wet if it's outside. To cheer us up we read our books and play with the hamster. We let her run over everything in the tent and she makes us both feel a lot better. We make our food in the tent that night and after dinner we assess the wetness and listen to really really conservative radio. Since basically everything below our knees is wet we decide to use our one dry sleeping bag to cover our legs and use the damp comforter to cover our upper halves. This works pretty well until the rain starts dumping down in the middle of the night soaking everything under and around us except a little part of ground under Alex. I stay as long as I can in the tent but soon my knees and ankles start to ache from the wetness and the cold so I go to the car at about 3:00 AM. I can't go back to sleep after 7 so I listen to NPR to see what's happening in the world. Healthcare was the big issue that morning. At about 8:30 Alex starts toward the car with some things from the tent. I jump out and start helping him bring stuff in, everything is totally soaked. It is so wet outside that I take off my jacket and wear as little as possible because it's all getting drenched. We squeeze out as much water as we can from the stuff and throw it all in the car hoping to dry it at a laundry sometime soon.
From the Ozarks we head to Little Rock to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. The library is huge and includes two of Clinton's cars plus recreations of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room. It also chronicles everything that he did during his presidency, which is just so much it's amazing, and it has letters between the president, first lady and many famous and interesting people. One of my favorites was from Mother Theresa to the First Lady. It was still pouring rain when we leave the library and go to a laundromat. At the laundromat I am being argumentative because I'm sick of this whole trip and Alex and I have a big fight over coffee. I know, coffee. We go get the damn coffee and then make up while the stuff is going through its second cycle. I'm being argumentative. You're being pessimistic. . . I'm sorry.
From there, since we know it's going to rain again, we pay for a hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas the boyhood home of Bill Clinton.
That night I'm feeling really sick and we find out that the quickest way to New Orleans is by going through Memphis, Tennessee.
It takes Alex 2 hours to drive to Branson, about 1 hour longer than we thought it would. When we get there we're not feeling good and we're getting dangerously short with each other about everything. When we're there I keep asking Alex what he wants to do and he doesn't give me an answer and asks me what I want to do but I don't give an answer because I don't know if he wants to do what I want to do and I don't want to hear him sighing at me. Plus I'm tired and sick and really just want to get in the car and find a place to camp for two days and rest. After checking out Old Downtown Branson, home of 200 theaters we head for the Ozarks. Alex drives for 3 hours into Arkansas before we get to a campsite in the Ozarks. This is about 2 hours longer than we though it would take. When we get to the campsite everything around us is wet. We're both exhausted and sick and can't go any further so we set up camp. Then we check the weather and find out that it's going to rain. As the sun is going down Alex tries to light a fire and as the small thing dwindles and dies in its infancy all hope leaves me and I fall into despair: everything we have is going to get wet, I can barely do anything because my body is so tired, the weather just won't let us be, we're running out of food, I'm fucking cold, in short everything is horrible. I totally break down in the tent and Alex consoles me, "It's not so bad, everything's going to be fine. We'll dry everything out. And we'll stay here for a couple days so we can rest." Bad idea us.
After the first night half of everything is wet. All day long it rains off and on but not nice rain. It's big droplets and the humidity is about 96% so everything is wet if it's outside. To cheer us up we read our books and play with the hamster. We let her run over everything in the tent and she makes us both feel a lot better. We make our food in the tent that night and after dinner we assess the wetness and listen to really really conservative radio. Since basically everything below our knees is wet we decide to use our one dry sleeping bag to cover our legs and use the damp comforter to cover our upper halves. This works pretty well until the rain starts dumping down in the middle of the night soaking everything under and around us except a little part of ground under Alex. I stay as long as I can in the tent but soon my knees and ankles start to ache from the wetness and the cold so I go to the car at about 3:00 AM. I can't go back to sleep after 7 so I listen to NPR to see what's happening in the world. Healthcare was the big issue that morning. At about 8:30 Alex starts toward the car with some things from the tent. I jump out and start helping him bring stuff in, everything is totally soaked. It is so wet outside that I take off my jacket and wear as little as possible because it's all getting drenched. We squeeze out as much water as we can from the stuff and throw it all in the car hoping to dry it at a laundry sometime soon.
From the Ozarks we head to Little Rock to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. The library is huge and includes two of Clinton's cars plus recreations of his Oval Office and Cabinet Room. It also chronicles everything that he did during his presidency, which is just so much it's amazing, and it has letters between the president, first lady and many famous and interesting people. One of my favorites was from Mother Theresa to the First Lady. It was still pouring rain when we leave the library and go to a laundromat. At the laundromat I am being argumentative because I'm sick of this whole trip and Alex and I have a big fight over coffee. I know, coffee. We go get the damn coffee and then make up while the stuff is going through its second cycle. I'm being argumentative. You're being pessimistic. . . I'm sorry.
From there, since we know it's going to rain again, we pay for a hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas the boyhood home of Bill Clinton.
That night I'm feeling really sick and we find out that the quickest way to New Orleans is by going through Memphis, Tennessee.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
