Everyone loves stats! If only we could get some USA Today graphics to make them easy to understand! Ohmigod! There's a sale at Penny's!
Miles: 10044
States: 19 + 1 province
Transitions: California => Oregon => Washington => British Columbia => Washington => Oregon => Idaho => Utah => Colorado => Kansas => Missouri => Kansas => Missouri => Arkansas => Tennessee => Mississippi => Alabama => Georgia => Florida => Alabama => Mississippi => Louisiana => Texas => New Mexico => Arizona => California
Latitudes: 25°48' - 49°16' N
Longitudes: 80°16' - 123°07' W
Capitals: 10
Friend & Family Visited: 20+
Places We Rested Our Weary Heads 26
Major Highways: 14 (US101, I-5, I-82, I-84, I-15, I-70, I-135, I-44, I-55, US-78, I-20, I-75, I-10, I-95)
Miles Driven on I-10: Over 2400 (the whole damn thing)
Gas Stations: At least 35
Gallons of Gas (for Jeffy) : A lot, at least 340
Elvis Sightings: 0
Dead Elvis Sightings: 1
Confederate Flags: Too Many
We hope you've enjoyed these meaningless figures! We've certainly enjoyed making them up! Thank you!
Driving 800 miles gets you a long way, even in Texas, and, after a very, very long day, we ended up 50 miles south of Phoenix. Most importantly, this put us in easy reach of home. Not to slight a Friday night in Eloy, Arizona, mind you.
And so the next day, after zooming across the Arizona and California deserts, we arrived in the city of broken roads and demon-ridden drivers, sprawling suburbs of tract homes peeking through the smog to greet us home, like the green fields of the Po Valley must have hailed seasoned centurions back from war.
It was rush hour, of course, but at least it was on a Saturday, and a little before five we rolled up our street, running inside to coddle our spoiled furry children.
Back to our own tiny apartment with no room for our excessive crap, back to our own bed, our own food, and our own wake-up calls from the Santa Monica Airport (where are all those Cessnas going?).
Home at last, and I ain't driving nowhere, no time.
Miles: 10044
Leaving New Orleans late, after a full day of activity, we didn't make it too far on the road, stopping a few hours west in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Awaking the next morning we faced the border, the great, massive giant: Texas.
Crossing, we passed the Lone Star welcome center at the first exit, numbered 880, which is a bit intimidating when you know you're going all the way to exit 0, past El Paso at the other end of the state. About four hours in, we had reached Houston and San Antonio, and we were still 550 miles from New Mexico!
We drove another 100 miles and stopped at the last state park we feasibly could reach in daylight, camping outside of Junction (yes, that's the name of the town), only half way across the state.
Now I'm not the world's biggest fan of Texas, home of the we're-bigger-than-everything-else attitude that now occupies our White House. The big trucks, big steaks, big belt buckles, and big, big hats.
But I do have fond memories of living (briefly) in south Texas as a child, the warm Gulf beaches and especially the ever-present culture of Mexico. I must say, too, that the big Texans with their big hats are, overall, pretty friendly. When they're not staring.
The park we camped at was actually quite nice, full of scurrying wild turkeys and deer, both of which we got to see up close, as they seemed completely unafraid of people. Wait until hunting season, dear animals, beware.
We had some drizzle to lull us to sleep early, and after a nice morning run on the trails, we were back on the road, only 460 more miles in Texas!
It went on and on and on. West Texas does not always provide the most varied and interesting scenery. But to all things there must come an end--in some cases most fortunately--and so, by mid-afternoon, we bid Texas a fond...
So long, y'all!
Miles: 8348-9243
Florida is way too long. You drive and drive and are still in the same damn state. No satisfaction, as in, "We've driven through X states today."
But undeterred we drove north from Sarasota to pick up our trail again at I-10 and then headed west on the road that will eventually take us a mile from our home. We drove the length of the panhandle, then across a sliver of Alabama, through M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I, and at last into Louisiana and the City of New Orleans. It was a long day.
New Orleans is one of those places that it's hard to say anything new or interesting about, so I won't. It was refreshingly like a foreign city, with a seasoning of outlaw Americana. And fortunately, it rained every day, which was also refreshing, keeping us from the sweltering heat we expected.
We stayed at a bed and breakfast in a large antebellum house in the Fauborg Marigny district, blocks away from the French Quarter. If you're lucky enough to get cool weather like we did, the summer is a great time to visit New Orleans. It's cheap and not crowded with too many drunken idiots.
We did quite a bit of just wandering around in the Quarter, enjoying the architecture (which is Spanish, actually, not French) and general ambience. We visited a lot of the usual sites: Jackson Square, the Uruline Convent, Jean LaFitte's blacksmith (and smuggling) shop, the French Market, Café du Monde, and so on.
We also took a rather desirable streetcar to the Garden District to see the old mansions and gnarled oak giants tearing up the sidewalk (yes, we saw Anne Rice's house, but, alas, no interview). At the nearby Lafayette No. 1 Cemetery, we happened upon a rather odd tour with a rather odd local character, who told us all sorts of odd stories, relishing in particular the details of Big Easy burial practices (he also found time to hit on the young German women in the group).
And since we needed even more hot cemetery action, the next day we took a more official tour of the St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery, with a healthy dose of voodoo (including a visit to a working voodoo temple) added in to the mix.
We need say little about New Orleans' reputation for fine dining. While the heavy continental culinary influences did pose some vegetarian challenges, it wasn't as difficult as I feared, and we even found a good vegetarian (and mostly vegan) restaurant. I was pleased especially that the well known Gumbo Shop not only had a vegetable gumbo, but also offered a daily vegetarian special. I'll thank all the European tourists.
The music scene is equally famous, of course, and though we really went out on the town only one night (being exhausted after driving in the first day), we made the best of it. We caught a fabulous zydeco band at the Old Opera House on Bourbon Street, and then some classic New Orleans jazz at the famous Preservation Hall. And for cool down, we heard an organ trio at a bar back in Marigny, where there were a billion choices of beer and liquor, including some tasty small batch bourbon.
The only disappointment was in fact Bourbon Street. My impression is that it's been pretty commercial for a while now, but it has now gone well beyond that, resembling more of a Spring Break beach town, with a hint of Las Vegas sleaze thrown in for good measure. At the least it has tasteful architecture, you might say, and if you're in to downing daquiris and screaming, "Ohmigod, I'm... soooo... WASTED!", well then Bourbon Street is the place for you. I'll keep to the rest of the Quarter, thank you.
So we did pretty well in under 48 hours, but it wasn't even close to enough time, so we'll be back.
I garontee!
Miles: 8109
We left Miami on Wednesday and drove just a few hours, across the Everglades and up the West Coast of Florida to Sarasota.
My dad and stepmom made the move to Florida a few years ago, when they reached the age when it was required by law. That's fine, I guess; they seem to like it, and at least they waited until I had moved out of the house.
We had a pretty lazy time at their place. It rained a lot. Seven inches fell in one day, and the streets were flooded everywhere. So we mostly stayed indoors, save for a venture out to the Ringling House and Museum, where we saw a good collection of mostly Renaissance paintings and the requisite enormous and opulent mansion, built to house two people and a dog.
We also watched a number of movies, most amusingly, a Dune marathon, with the classic David Lynch and new SciFi Channel versions going head to head. It was 6-and-a-half hours of spice, big worms, and "Tell me of your homeworld, Uzul" (though technically the latter release screwed that up). Our consensus was that the greater detail of the longer, SciFi channel version was nice, but the acting and directing of the older movie was much, much better.
So there you have it. Not much excitement. Lots of rain. A bit of chilling before the long and winding road.
Miles: 7376
At long last, after driving interminably through the length of Florida, we reached Miami, the city of Crockett and Tubbs, Gloria Estefan, and crazy Cuban expats who like to fly Cessnas back into Fidel's airspace.
Miami is also the Tran Homeland, and so for me it has an air of familial chaos.
This time we were to stay at one of the numerous properties of Papa Tran, but one hour north of the city (at 10pm), we learned that most of the house was rented out, leaving only an office that had no bathroom. So when we arrived, despite being reassured that we could bathe in the pool or be hosed off, we opted to do a motel.
I can say happily that it rained quite a bit while we visited, meaning that the weather was bearably hot and humid, rather than completely hellish (I am not a big fan of the Gulf climate; checking the temperature late one night, it was 78, but due to the humidity, it felt like 84!). Staying indoors a lot certainly helped.
Mostly we just hung out with Papa Tran; we managed to see one of Vivian's high school friends only briefly. We spent one afternoon at the beach, and I must admit to liking the warm water, though I could have used a cool breeze while jogging along the shore.
We also had a hard-fought adventure to capture live coconuts. Days later, I still have scrapes from climbing up the palm tree. I managed to get only one before slipping down; we had more luck with Vivian standing on her dad and then me. Now if we could open the damn things.
Concerning food, you might be inclined to ask how the authentic Cuban food was. I don't know. Papa Tran is the King of the Boo-FETT, and every meal turned into a debate about whether or not we should go to yet another Chinese buffet. I'm still a bit scarred from the lukewarm, heat-table overcooked, mediocre food, surrounded by enormous people piling up their plates. Fortunately we managed to eat at some non-buffet establishments, with only a scattering of Papa Tran complaints. "We could get this at the boo-FETT," he asserted. "But this is fresh," I replied. "That's true," he had to concede.
Miami is our furthest point from California. Now we turn west, on to the long road home.
Miles: 7130
The South, to put it lightly, is not exactly a stronghold of vegetarianism. Fried chicken, ham hocks, and barbequed ribs rule the day. Still, it is possible to find sustenance in the Land of Cotton without eating dead chicken and pig. You just have to use a little creativity and have a fair helping of patience.
First off, you need to know your best friend beyond Mason and Dixon; its name is "Sides." While every red-blooded Southerner wouldn't call it a meal if half a pig weren't consumed, Mama also done beat it in that you better eat your vegetables. And so, you have your green beans and slaw, turnip greens, mashed potatoes and yams, corn on the cob, and of course fried okra.
Aw, but don't be too lulled into safety. There is danger at every turn. Turnip greens? Steeped in ham hocks (I still don't know what they are, and amusingly enough we just saw an episode of Dexter's Laboratory that makes the same joke; frankly, I don't want to know). Mashed potatoes? No gravy, please. And my beloved fried okra? Sometimes ok, sometimes...tastes like fried chicken. They opted not to use the vegetable oil that time, it seems.
In all of this, the most important thing to remember is that vegetarianism is a completely foreign concept in the South. Even if you ask for no meat, you may still get it. At one breakfast, after specifically asking to opt out of the meat portion of the meal, I got extra special has browns with ham bits.
And, most hilariously, when Vivian asked for no bacon bits on one dinner salad, it came out covered with big chunks of ham. Vivian then asked for no ham, and the waitress said, "Oh, you didn't want ham, either?" Mind you, ham wasn't even an option on the menu, so Vivian didn't even think about saying no ham. It was just a substitute they put in to be nice, figuring that if she just didn't like bacon on her salad, she just wanted the real thing, fresh ham.
So the moral? In the South, cook for yourself.
Or stay home.
Miles: 6666
I'm not sure we blew through the Deep South on a Yankee Wind, but we did make quick business of it, from Tennessee through Mississippi and Alabama into Georgia. We crossed the archetypal Southern landscapes, from the fertile flood lands of the Mississippi through forests swathed in kudzu, up to the foothills of the Appalachians.
We left Atlanta intact, giving only a quick wave to the downtown before heading south. It has become quickly in the past decade the big city of the South (the New South, of course), and jaded Angelenos though we are, Atlanta seemed fairly convincing as a metropolis. Still, we felt no particular draw for the moment, and went on with our plans to camp outside the city.
But, as fate would have it, the state park was full (too bad, there were impressive falls, and I would have liked a good morning jog; on the other hand, the swarming insect choruses sounded ravenous), and a private camp nearby was overpriced. So we found a seedy motel in Forsyth, Georgia, and cooked up some Southern rice and beans in the room on our camp stove.
And we didn't burn the place down.
Miles: 6260
You may ask, as one waiter did, "Why Memphis?", but in fact it's a great little city. No, not for Graceland (though we did go there to satisfy Vivian's Inner Elvis); the late 80's exhibit of pharoah Ramesses II, denizen of the original Memphis, had, I think, a much more interesting king.
Memphis is a slice of old Mississippi River culture, a gateway to the Deep South, breathing the Blues and birthing Rock 'n' Roll, with a port city's mix of everybody. There's history good and bad here: the Lorraine Motel infamously saw Martin Luther King, Jr. slain; the site is now the excellent National Civil Rights Museum (you can, rather eerily, visit the room where King was staying).
The Downtown is even more hopping than when I last visited 10 years ago. Beale Street is perhaps a bit more commercial, with the Hard Rock Café and the park now sponsored by Budweiser, but there's still great Blues to be heard both on and off the street (the highlight: Robert "Wolfman" Balfour playing Delta licks, accompanied by a guy playing a one-man-band drum set and home-made cigar box bass guitar). The area around South Main is even picking up, thanks to its proximity to the Civil Rights Museum, though it reminded me of some of the higher end froo-froo in Pasadena.
Which brings up the gentrification issue. A woman named Jacqueline Smith has been protesting the Civil Rights Museum for the last 14 years, from the time she was evicted from her motel room at the Lorraine. I can't buy her claim that the museum represents "ethnic cleansing," but there is good reason urban renewal is sometimes derided as "Negro removal." Public works projects have a strange habit of plowing over non-white neighborhoods.
There's a similar conflict going on now in downtown Santa Ana, between the growing "arts colony" and the existing Latino community. "Bring in the artists" has become an exceedingly popular formula for reviving urban areas in the past 20 years. It goes like this: starving artists move in to blighted neighborhoods seeking cheap rent; bohemian scene develops; galleries move in to sell artists' works; expensive restaurants and boutiques come to cash in on urban chic; rents go through the roof; artists and other poor residents flee.
Now, wrecked slums and empty storefronts are good for no one. And it's understandable why cities risking money on redevelopment projects would go for the cash cows. But it would be nice to see a more mixed type of renewal, with maybe a few big projects to serve as a higher-end core, surrounded by areas with more modest projects to stimulate and attract local and affordable small businesses.
But, as Vivian and I were discussing the other day, you never hear about new "low-end" magazines, targeting the poor. And I suspect you won't any time soon.
Miles: 5812