Ah, The Crossroads of America.

Honestly, we didn’t expect much out of a place that prides itself on being the thing standing between you and the things you actually want to see.

But that’s the thing about lowered expectations — it takes very little to exceed them. Like Sarah Palin. Remember her?

Apparently, hidden in the vast cornfields, is a semi-vast metropolis. Indianapolis: the City of Indians.

We really couldn’t find anything about Indianapolis to complain about. It’s clean and modern and — if the amount of hobo sightings is any indicator — it has a low unemployment rate.

This phallus was erected in honor of Indiana’s heroes who died in wars before The Great War. It’s right at the center of the city and an intersection between four roads. Apparently, it’s the place to go. We saw lots of students lounging around on the steps, reading thick books, and lookin’ hip. And, even though the statue may look narrow, there’s an elevator that takes you most of the way to the top for a dollar. You have to go up a couple flights of stairs to get to the observation deck. The inside is cramped and dingy and, as our guidebook put it, it’s quite a “Soviet experience.” We didn’t spend long up there, though. The view must have been better before all the skyscrapers came in. To make matters worse, there’s no ventilation and plenty of sunlight so all the windows were fogged up and the heat was stifling.

A few likenesses of Indiana’s fallen.

The Indiana capitol building.

Months ago, Andy and his roommate, Aaron Arm, went on a road trip and ended up in Indianapolis. As they were filming, a hobo on a bike spotted their camera and assumed they must have been loaded, and that they wouldn’t mind having their shot interrupted. Aaron Arm gave the nice fellow a shiny new nickel.

We spent the rest of our time in Indianapolis exploring the mall, part of which hovers over a busy intersection. There was some chocolate festival going on, but we spent our money in the food court instead. Panda Express makes a mean orange chicken.

The real attraction Indiana held for us was further north in West Lafayette. Our beautiful, classy, and prudent friend, Allie, grew up there. Not that she lives with her parents or anything, but her parents gave us a place to sleep at their place and Allie was there as well.

The best sights West Laffie has to offer.

Old roommates/partners in crime.

That guy was probably important or something. What an exciting town!

Allie’s mom took us out to dinner at an upscale baja-cuisine restaurant. This parsley-piercing is Allie’s way of fighting Maisy the Greyhound for her mom’s love.

Nothing suspicious here. 

We spent most of our time at Allie’s house begging to look at old photo albums. We couldn’t get our camera near them but, suffice it to say, Allie had an awkward phase just like everyone else. It began around age 11 and we think it might end around age 30 or so.

Our visit to the Crossroads of America was nice and relaxing, and it prepared us for our next adventure: The Windy City.

It’s November 16th? Are you sure? But, that only leaves us like a month to get to San Francisco, find an apartment, get jobs, and then ask for time off to fly home for Christmas.

Huh.

And we haven’t even seen Vegas yet!

You know what? Forget it.

Forget the whole thing. Forget Manifest Destiny.

We’ll say it again:

Forget. Manifest. Destiny.

Let’s just get to San Francisco, and then go home. Maybe we’ll finally find the time to write about everything that happened between Kentucky and whatever mystery location we’re at right now (it’s the Grand Canyon). We’ve seen 34 states. Enough is enough.

No, wait. We’re not done here. We want to see all the states!

Two of the states don’t touch the others? Well, never mind. If they’re too good to share borders with the real America, then we don’t need them.

Forty-eight continental states, here we come!

Alaska and Hawaii, you are dead to us.

So, it’s settled then, right? Get to San Francisco, keep on going, see all the states we missed.

Alrighty.

Glad we had this talk. Sleep well.

What? No, I said, “Sleep well” and then I asked, “What?” because I thought you said something, but I guess you didn’t say anything.

So, goodnight.

Good talk, good talk.

Remember when we were in Gainesville, Florida? Of course you do. Well, Uncle Kevin told us that Mammoth Caves National Park was a must-see if we were to pass through Kentucky. So, what the hey? We went to Mammoth Caves National Park.

We snagged a spot in the campground which, apparently, is the college dormitory of campgrounds. The tents were packed together like sardine cans. Nevertheless, it gave us the opportunity to show off our new Bass Pro Shop lanterns to the other campers, and to cook some rice in our Bass Pro Shop teflon cooking pots. One of the lanterns broke immediately and the pots weren’t as non-stick as their packaging claimed. Oh well.

Our campsite in the precious moments before all our neighbors moved in.

But the campground obviously isn’t the big draw of the park. We called the hotline for the National Parks Service and made a reservation for a guided tour. We’d wanted to sign up for something called the Wild Cave Tour, a six-hour long slog for only the most athletic visitors. There must have been quite a few athletic people staying there that weekend, because we had to settle for the half-as-long Introduction to Caving tour.

Here is a picture we stole from the Mammoth Caves’ website. The idea of bringing an expensive camera down into the dirty, damp, darkness didn’t strike us as the best idea.

We met our guide, Sarah, at the visitor center where she checked everyone’s boots to make sure they were ankle-length or higher. Luckily, everyone in the group of a dozen or so passed grade. It’s a good thing Caitlin was wearing her brand-new Bass Pro Shop hiking boots.

Sarah then brought us around back where we met our assistant-guide, April, and were given knee pads, helmets, and head lamps. As soon as we were all suited-up, it was on the school bus and to the mouth of the cave. Sarah gave us a little history of the area (booooring) and laid down the basics of caving: call back helpful instructions to the person behind you, and make sure you always have three points contact with the rock. The butt is only one point of contact, and the head doesn’t count.

We entered the caves, the longest interconnected system in the world, through a metal door in the side of a boulder. With only the light of our headlamps, we headed down a series of winding staircases. We descended about 300 feet before the real caving experience began. The further we went, the narrower the tunnels became. We were clambering over rocks that haven’t seen the light of day since they were sediment millions of years ago and it really felt like we were entering into some holy place. The only animal life we saw down there were a few beetles and pale crickets. The cave cricket population apparently suffers from a flesh-eating fungus that is transfered from cricket to cricket by touch. Within a few hours of being infected, the fungus completely covers the crickets in a white puff ball. We saw quite a few of these rather morbid marshmallows.

Our guides also liked to play tricks on us. They talked a lot about how easy it is to get lost in a cave, but the tunnels seemed to only lead in one direction. To prove their point, Sarah would lead us in circles and see if anyone caught on, and April would disappear and then pop out at us from tiny holes in the wall. So when getting to romp around in caves for a living isn’t exciting enough, make sure to mess with your tour groups.

At quite a few points, we had to do belly crawls through the ancient sand. Calcium had leeched down through the rocks, the low ceilings were usually covered in brittle, yet razor-sharp, gypsum formations. Andy learned about this fact the hard way, but at least his helmet was put to good use.

About two hours into our adventure, we came to a relatively large room and all sat down for a rest. Sarah had us turn out our headlamps so we could really get a feel for just how oppressively dark and silent the caves were. The brain likes to play tricks, so even in complete darkness — without one single photon bouncing around — we still saw shapes moving around. Creepy. Sarah told us a story about a friend of hers who, on a caving expedition with a bunch of other people, took a nap while they were all sitting in the dark. When she woke up, she was annoyed to see everyones’ faces clearly and she told them to turn off their headlamps — except, none of them had turned them back on in the first place. To everyone else, the room was completely dark but this one person could tell everyone exactly how they were moving. The group decided to move on.

We didn’t see anything as cool as auras, but we did prove for once and all that biting into a mint lifesaver does, indeed, make a blue spark. No joke.

The whole experience came to a head at The Keyhole, which is a hole through the rock so small that someone might expect that only something very small — say, a key — might fit. Not only was it narrow, but it the far side was several feet higher and we were forced to pull ourselves up and through. To make matters more interesting, the far side was also a puddle. No one escaped without getting good and muddied.

By hour three, we were all glad that we hadn’t signed up for the Wild Cave Tour and were thrilled to see the light of day. Sarah let us all know that we were officially cavers now (not spelunkers. Spelunking is for the amateurs) and we all went home with a souvenir helmet.

But the story doesn’t end there! We’d had enough of the narrow passages and cramped campgrounds, but not nearly enough physical exertion. The next day, we went down to the ranger station and reserved two nights at one of the back country campsites. It was time to put our fancy hiking gear to work.

Being the experienced hikers we are, we filled those backpacks with nice, heavy canned food and several liters of water. Andy even tied the axe onto his pack for good measure. The site was only 2.3 miles away, which is definitely closer than is sounds, right? Right?

We got off to a bad start by missing the trailhead all-together and walking a half mile down a dirt road. Trail maps should really be made to scale. Andy put down his pack and ran ahead to see if he could find the trailhead, and when he couldn’t, Caitlin put down her pack and ran back to the car to make a call to the ranger station.

Once we finally got on the right trail, the sun was getting low on the horizon so we had to walk quickly. 2.3 miles seems a lot longer when you’re carrying 30 pounds and going up and down a rocky path. Maybe we wanted to give up at a few points, but we didn’t. And we got to our campsite just in time for set up camp and get a fire going. 

Andy isn’t tired, sweaty, or dirty in the least.

Our home-sweet-home for two nights. If idyllic wilderness settings aren’t worth back pain, than what is?

Our campsite was on the banks of a perfect little slow-moving, snaking river and down in the gully below a crescent-shaped ridge where we felt protected and contented. When half your day is lugging and splitting logs or sanitizing water, life’s problems really do seem easier to handle. The only problem was that, even though the owls sang us to sleep at night, life’s problems woke us up in the mornings with not-that-distant gunshots and the revving of ATV engines. Later, we learned that we were in a portion of the park close to private land and were really in no danger, but that’s far less fun. The only people we saw were a few rangers drive by in a boat, and a group of horseback riders that rode to the edge of our ridge and then left. When the engine sounds started up again on our second night, we decided (read: Andy enticed) us to go on a “midnight mission to find their source. We got tired about a half mile up the trail, and the only thing we found was some weird weasel-thing peering at us from the bushes.

All-in-all, life in the back country was good and we wished we’d spent another night out there — until we thought about what it would have been like to carry in even more canned food.

Our packs were much lighter by the time we left, but the hike out was when danger struck. While we were taking a breather at the halfway-point, Caitlin noticed a tiny tick on her arm. She then noticed another a few inches away. And another. And then a hundred or so more. Somehow, we’d walked through a batch of freshly-hatched ticks (seed ticks, for those in the know) and were covered in more of the little jerks than we’d seen in our lives. At the time, we were worried that they were deer ticks — the kind that carry lime disease — because they were so small, so we had a nice and panicked tick-removal session that involved a lot of frantic swiping. When we got back to the car, we immediately changed clothes and as soon as we got back to the park center, we scrubbed ourselves like we were getting ready for the prom and changed into a second set of fresh clothes. Even after all that, Andy spotted one crawling on him.

Pretty much, bugs love trying to eat us alive.

So, Kentucky, thanks for the journey to the center of the earth (with no secret dinosaur world, unfortunately), but you can keep your hordes of infant ticks. We still don’t know what these bumps around our ankles and wrists are.

Our next adventure: Old friend, boring town.

Contrary to any misconceptions, Tennessee is a fascinating state with great cities, parks, music, and people.  After thoroughly enjoying our time at Natchez Trace, we hitched it on up to Nashville. We took an exit that stated “Visitor Center” with the false hope this meant there would be a visitor center. After an unsuccessfully search, we decided to high-tail it to a hotel to get ready for an impending visitor. With merely two hours notice of our descent upon the country music capitol of the world, D-Bird agreed to meet us at our hotel and then take us out and show us the Nashville scene. D-Bird, aka Daniel, is a great friend from our not-so-long-ago Ithaca days. He now has a high-paying, super-awesome, ultra-flashy post-production job at one of the most famous and influential music recording studios in town and the world.  Extremely impressive. And after a long day at work perfecting those platinum golds, he was gracious enough to take us out and about. But not before making a fuss over the beautiful red moon that was out that night.

This place had two perks: live music and the best cheese sauce we ever tasted.

D-Bird was full of really good things to say about the first place he was taking us.  It only slightly discredited him when there was no live music playing there that night and we went down the block to another bar.  After the boys enjoyed a nice brewskie and Caitlin convinced the waitress to let her box up her remaining cheese fries, we moved on to our second musical destination of the night.

The second place quickly become our favorite. The main drag in Nashville is Broadway Ave, and The Stage on Broadway is a cover band’s haven. It was a Wednesday night, but they had a, literally, rockin’ band. We were expecting to see a bunch of guys in cowboy boots playing Garth Brooks covers, but instead got…well, they were a bunch of guys in cowboy boots playing Garth Brooks covers, but they were also a bunch of guys in tight jeans and studded belts playing Greenday covers. Huh. Out of the five member band, the most animated was the lead singer, center, above. He danced and bounced and swung and sung and poured more passion into the songs than the originators. The bass player, on the other hand, just stood there looking uninterested.  

Old friends, new cities. How poetic.

New city, same old freakazoid Andy smile. The Stage, as Andy pointed out, was a sausage fest. There was a group celebrating a very drunk man’s birthday and just watching the interactions between all those people was entertainment enough. They were over the ledge, to the left.  Their dancing-mating rituals were not for the faint of heart.  Alas, if only the video would load.

Broadway. That electric green sign across the street signifies a super exclusive bar for only the fancy pants of Nashville. Patrons pay a flat fee every year and then you get all your drinks for free. D-Bird’s boss frequents there. His boss also frequents the recording studio in which he works. But not at night!  Which means some of us got a super exclusive tour of a super exclusive recording studio. AND we got to listen to some music on the most perfectly set up speakers. Too bad it was too exclusive to photograph.

And, now, for our inter-post pictorial political message of the day!

Nashville really knows how to DRIVE home a point.

Now back to our regular programming…

OMG!  Buildings! Nashville has them, too! But in all seriousness, Nashville has some very interesting architecture. It has the the rustic Broadway buildings which are two to three floors high and all connected to each other, framed by tall, glass buildings in the background. We really got to see the glistening of the city the next day when we explored it in the light without our very own tourguide.

We found a water fountain all by ourselves!!

This is a famous place: The Something Symphony Center. And you have to pay money to film it for commercial use. Luckily, we can’t do anything with our footage, so that won’t be a problem for us. Also, take notice of what security of fancy something symphony centers look like. CIA?…maybe he’s confused and thinks it’s actually the Lincoln Memorial.

No, no, this is not an alien spaceship.  It’s the Country Music Hall of Fame!

There are rumors going around that that camera is actually just a prop. That angel would be inclined to disagree.

The Sommet Center. We were sitting in a restaurant/bar across the street and were asking about happy hour specials. The waitress informed us that there weren’t any that day because the Eagles were playing that night. We didn’t really understand what that meant. Turns out it meant that the Eagles were playing that night. At the Sommet Center. Across the street. The Eagles – the band.

There’s The Stage on the right, and above that is Tom Cruise’s new legacy. They don’t lack for charismatic electric signs.

The grandeur of Broadway with the towering grace of modern architecture. The streets of Nashville are constantly filled with music. Any vagrant with a mandolin or banjo can claim a corner and play until they have enough money to get their VW minibus to the next town.

Some call it The Coliseum. Some call it the LP Field. Others call it the Home of the Tennessee Titans. We just call it a nice photo opportunity. But to get to it we had to stroll through hobo-town. Unfortunately we only took video of the 1800s style compound, but surrounding it was every hobo in Nashville. Like every other human being, they like the waterfront.

Because we couldn’t film the hobos, we photographed this little gem on the horizon.

The Shelby Street Bridge and lots of flags.

Suddenly, the daylight disappeared and it was night!  Formerly the Grand Ole Opry, The Ryman Auditorium, was abandoned and then restored years later to become one of the premier performance halls in Nashville.  There were lots of fancy people coming to see a show that night.

If you want to picture Nashville, imagine that someone took Memphis, sent it through a car wash, laminated it, and planted the Country Music Television tower in the middle. It’s got all of the music of Memphis, but none of the soul or style. Unless you count cowboy boots, cowboy boots, and cowboy boots as style.

Nashville at Night. We went back to The Stage on our second night there, but we were too early for the really good performers, so we decided to walk around some more. That’s when we ended up at the Sommet Center and learned about those darn Eagles. The fact became increasingly clear when three mid-aged women came stumbling out complaining to their limo driver about the people who were sitting in front of them. Apparently, the women were loudly enjoying themselves and the people in front of them thought it should be a quiet performance, so the women left early. Quiet (or subtle) was not their specialty.

The Eagles inspired Andy to channel The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, because that makes sense. If only the video would upload.

The next day, we were ready to move on to Kentucky, but first we had to stock up on some shiny camping plates. So we found the ever elusive Bass Pro Shop. It’s one of the most impressive stores we have ever seen. It was probably the one place in Nashville that we spent the most time. There were aisles of camping supplies, rows and rows of shoes, and giant, mind-numbing closets of clothing, not to mention a shooting game and tons of dead, stuffed animals. After making friends with all of the employees, we started back on our journey north, but were quickly sidetracked by the Grand Ole Opry which just so happened to be right around the corner. But we didn’t know that so we drove all around the area to find it.

All around the country are nice people who are willing to take pictures of complete strangers just out of the goodness of their hearts.

This is the cover of our pending country cd. Hardcore, we know.

Up next:  We learn the difference between spelunking and caving!

When vacationers need a break from vacationing, they go to Natchez Trace State Park in Tennessee. Or, at least, that’s where we went. The campground was practically empty and was just the thing we needed after all the grit and noise of the city.

The first day was so hot that all we did was sleep. It was too hot in the tent, so we laid out some blankets. Sorry about the naked, sweaty hobo. We don’t how he got in there.

That night, it cooled down significantly and rained pretty hard. Too bad we had gone to sleep without the cover on our tent. Andy bravely went outside and put it on. In the morning, it felt good to sit by the fire and there was plenty of firewood around as the storm had knocked huge branches out of the trees. We spent the first two days doing almost nothing, save for making a trip out of the park into the real world to buy a few supplies at a local Wal-Mart. We bought some camp chairs — a major upgrade from the blankets — a camp axe, and plenty of s’more ingredients.

On our way into the park, we had noticed that they offered guided horseback rides. So, on our third day, we made a reservation. Caitlin rode the darker horse. She was named Sally, had a free spirit, and pooped a lot. The other horse in the picture belonged to our guide, who was named Brenda.

Caitlin had to constantly make sure that Sally wasn’t eating the wild plants along the path. Andy rode behind Caitlin and got to see Sally do all that pooping.

Our guide, Brenda. We asked her how she got into managing a horseback riding company and she told us her life story. When she found out her husband had cheated on her (“And he’d cheated on me four years before that and hadn’t thought to tell me about that, either.”) she took a trip with her children to Natchez Trace and went for a horseback ride. Her horse got spooked by something and she fell off when it ran off into the woods. She struck up a friendship with the manager, who was more afraid of being sued than anything, and she was eventually offered the job of managing the company. She’s happy now and attributes it all to the grace of God. If we were telling the story, we might not have told two complete strangers about our spouses’ infidelity, but that’s just us.

Andy on his horse, Babe. Babe was old and liked to get right up in Sally be-hind.

Brenda’s dog, Patches, liked to run in between the horses’ legs and go ahead to explore the woods. This dog is probably the happiest dog in the world.

This being Caitlin’s first time horseback riding, she was only just discovering her love for the giant animals.  And just like that, Andy suddenly found himself owning a horse. Or at least the prospect seemed very real with all those questions Caitlin was asking. The princess wanted to know about the going rate for horses these days, the price of keeping them, the best kind to have, how to go about getting one. As it turns out, they’re pretty affordable.  Such a shame the economy is in the crapper or we could be saving some serious gas money.

Saying goodbye to the gang.

We discovered a family of stray dogs living in the parking lot of the park’s chapel. Caitlin attempted to tame them and it seemed to be working until a group of kids on bikes came by and made the dogs nervous.

We came back the next day tried to win them over with hotdogs. The puppies were an interesting mix of the mama basset hound on the left and the papa quasi-Jack Russell on her right. There were four puppies, and they appeared to be the only ones left from three different litters.

Try as we might, they wouldn’t get very close to us. But they sure loved our hotdogs. We felt a little better when we realized that somebody must bring them kibbles from time to time, as there were empty trays on the ground in a picnic area where they slept. Poor puppies.

All the fallen wood in the world isn’t any good if people from other parts of the park come into your campground and take it all away. On our third night, we put the camp axe to use and collected some wood from the side of the road. There’s nothing manlier than the chopping wood and roping it to a car. If only Andy’s hands were manly enough to not get so blistered.

We’d seen a skunk on our second night, and while we were sleeping a couple of mystery animals came galloping right through our campsite. They sounded huge so we yelled and scared them away but, on our third night, we realized it must have been this little scamp and a friend. While we cooked s’mores, we could hear him creeping around just outside of the firelight. Andy cooked up a hotdog and put it on a stick. We left it out all night as bait, right outside of our tent and waited for the raccoon to come back. Eventually, we went to sleep and figured we would hear him when he jumped for the hotdog. In the morning, both the hotdog and stick were gone without a trace. We should have left a snare. He would have made a fine hat.

Here is the infamous kudzu. It’s a Japanese vine that helps stop erosion, and they introduced it to the park years ago. Not only did it cover up the bare soil, but it engulfed everything else. In some parts of the park, the kudzu goes back into the forest as far as the eye can see making everything look like some sort of Edward Scissorhands garden.

Apparently, there’s a beetle that controls the spread of the kudzu in Japan, but it has no natural predator here. They could introduce the beetle here, as well, but then they’d have to introduce whatever eats the beetle and that’s not a particularly good cycle to start.

The best part of our stay at Natchez Trace was our campground host. He was an old man who drove around all day on a golf cart making sure everyone had paid up. We’d have a long conversation with him every time we paid for another day and he’d tell his stories in a southern drawl with a big wad of chew in his cheek. In his younger days, he’d traveled the country like us, only he used a camper. We asked him how he’d wound up being a campground host and, like Brenda, he somehow felt comfortable opening up to two complete strangers. He’d worked at the Ford glass factory in Nashville until they forced him to retire, and shortly after that he stayed at Natchez Trace with his current wife (he met her after his first wife walked out on him — “Didn’t bother me none. I didn’t like her, neither.”) while they were in the area helping his brother-in-law get to a circulatory system specialist. You see, the brother-in-law’s had bad circulation in his legs and his doctor wanted to amputate. While our host and his wife were camping in Natchez Trace, they were offered the job of campground host and they took it because the lifestyle was easy on his wife, who was slowly losing her mind. You see, her first husband, a Vietnam veteran, had shot himself in the face and one of her children had died during childhood. Wow.

Before we left, we made sure to ask his name.

“Well, here’s this,” he said. “You’ve heard the name ‘Pornor’ before, right?” We had not, but nodded. “Now, that’s my last name. I don’t know where my mother got it, but she gave me ‘Gayron’ as my first name.”

His name was Gayron Pornor. What do you think the kids called him in middle school?

After four nights of the simple life, the open road called and we headed out. We left Gayron, Brenda, Sally, Babe, Patches, the church dogs, and those tricksy raccoons behind. Oh, memories.

Next time on The All-American Swashbuckling Wanderlust Romp in F Sharp: Country music can really grow on ya.

We learned why Memphis is the home of the blues as soon as we arrived. Apparently, all their budget hotels use a special anti-Caitlin perfume and we spent several hours driving around checking in and out of rooms. Eventually, we decided to spring for the extra ten bucks and settled in at the Graceland Motel, an Elvis-themed Days Inn. Somehow, the guitar-shaped pool, five minutes watching an all-Elvis movie channel, and a brief glance at the hound dog’s mansion (literally across the street from our room) were the only run-ins with the King we had. But, the trip isn’t over and we haven’t seen Roswell yet, so who knows?

Beale Street in downtown Memphis, the nexus of everything blues. In the background you can see the famous BB King’s Restaurant, and in the foreground are several people who clearly identify with being down-and-out.

This picture is the closest Andy came to smiling.

Inside BB King’s. We paid the cover charge so we could hear the live music and were promptly sat behind the stage in clear view of a bunch of wires, so we promptly changed our seats (twice) as people got up and left. The music was great, but it was even better watching an androgynous, elderly man from the Netherlands robotically swing dance with, not only his wife, but a twenty-something barfly wearing cutoff jean shorts.  The band later called the androgynous man (along with a dozen or so other oddballs) up to the stage for a dance contest, but kicked the barfly off the stage when she tried to clamber up without being invited. There wasn’t really a prize or a winner for this contest, but the singer (a large black woman known as the Princess of Beale Street) made sure that a skinny, white, dread-locked hipster from England knew he had a place to sleep that night — *WINK*

Pictured above: The Princess of Everything.

Memphis had the most homeless people of anywhere we’ve seen yet. Fortunately, in that town, it just makes them better musicians.

As we walked home to our car, a fifty-something man happened to be walking the same way. We had a good talk about how he works as a cook but is somehow also in the army and going back to Afghanistan soon. When he asked for a ride, we had the excuse that our car’s back seat is completely full.

As it turns out, Memphis has a lot more to offer than blues. There are also ducks. We planned our second day around making it to the lobby of the Peabody Hotel where a group of ducks spend all day splashing around in the fountain. Their handler leads them out of an elevator and down a red carpet at 11 a.m. every day but, try as we might, we missed the blessed event by just a minute.

Gettin’ itchy under house arrest. Either these are lucky ducks, or ducks who live in quiet destitution, save a quack or two.

Our guide book led us to Pig on Beale, which is famous for its BBQ.

And there is the pig on Beale himself! Having worked in a BBQ restaurant himself, he found the meal a little lacking. But, hey, the sweet tea had free refills.

We didn’t seem to get much further in our adventures in Memphis than Beale Street.

A. Schwab’s General Store: “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.”

This theatre sure looks important.

BB King? Louis Armstrong? We really need to learn to read inscriptions.

Beale Street!!!!!

This is a bat. At first glance, it may appear to be a wood chip or a piece of dog poo but, trust us, it’s a bat. A baby bat. A baby bat that Andy saved. We passed by it on our way to see the ducks but didn’t know what we could do, so we left it.

Hours later, after many adventures, it was still in the same spot. A godless emo, too busy looking at his iPod to watch where he was going, stepped on the bat and showed the adventurers that it was still alive. Andy took off his sock and used it like a glove to pick up the bat, but it flipped out and tried to bite him. After a few tries, he succeeded in harassing it enough to make it dive-bomb a security guard and land on another patch of cement in a business plaza, which was better than a sidewalk so we left it again.

Yet again, fate brought us to the bat even more hours later. It was mere feet away from a tree and fenced-in square of grass, so Andy grabbed a traffic cone, put it over the bat, and tried to nudge it toward safety.

The bat was not pleased with this course of action, and was actually smaller than the gap between the cone and the ground, so it went nowhere.

The adventurers gave up once more and carried on.

However, Andy is quite a resourceful hobo and, upon passing a trash can, spotted an empty styrofoam cup and paper bag. We hightailed it back to the bat, who was now being watched by a couple of apathetic businesswomen on a smoking break (“The rats will get probably get him.”). Andy managed to get the bat inside the cup using the “Ew, a Spider! No, don’t kill it!” technique.

All he had to do then was drop the bat at the foot of the tree. Instinct compelled the bat to crawl up the trunk, out of reach of the rats, and hang upside down for a nice nap. Hooray, us!

Feeling pretty well-satisfied with ourselves, we walked a few blocks to a park and sat down for a rest. We passed by an old homeless man sleeping under a bench and didn’t think much of it because nearly everyone in Memphis is homeless. Then we noticed that a legless homeless man and a member of the Blue Suede Brigade (uniformed question-answerer) trying to wake the man under the bench. He didn’t move and, after a few minutes, an ambulance arrived. They unceremoniously swung the body onto a stretcher and drove away in no apparent hurry.

So, we went back to the Peabody to be cheered-up by some ducks.

This time, we weren’t too late to see some duck pageantry. The lobby was packed with people craning their necks to see what would happen, which resulted in nobody being able to see or hear anything.

Their handler gave an inaudible speech about the history of the ducks at the hotel (they’ve had ducks for about a hundred years or something) and set up the red carpet and special duck staircase.

Pushy people ruin pictures. Little kids couldn’t even see! These ducks are sure something.

If you could see through the crowd of people, you’d see ducks walking single file on a red carpet.

And up the elevator they go to roost for the night in their Penthouse.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Memphis, we aren’t sure what it is. Apparently, it’s a land full of homeless people who (surprise) have to die in the streets, bat-eating rats, and spoiled ducks. Maybe we’d have some newfound appreciation for the Blues if we weren’t so confused. Maybe the lesson is that life is just plain confusing, so you might as well sing about it.

Or something like that. Does that sound profound? 

Next time on the All-American Swashbuckling Wanderlust Romp in F Sharp: S’mores!

Andy has some long lost relatives that he had never met before, nor had his eastern shore family talked to since a long time ago.  They live in Lake Providence, Rhode Island.  Or maybe it’s Louisiana. We rolled into town on September 9th and did some detective work at the Lake Providence welcome center. Somehow, we were the only tourists that day, which meant we got the full attention of the woman working there. Andy threw out some names and she knew exactly where to send us.  It worked out quite nicely.

Andy’s last relative in the area, Flo Genard, lived in an old plantation house named Arlington, which just so happens to be the last antebellum house in the town. Flo was no where to be found when we arrived, so we took a bunch of pictures, left a note in the door, and headed up the road to Arkansas.

As fate would have it, we were delayed in Eudora, Arkansas by fried food and free refills of sweet tea at the aptly-named Eudora Dairy Bar. When we drove out of a dead zone, Andy received a voicemail on his phone. It was Flo! She graciously invited the second-cousin twice-removed she’d only just met over the phone and some girl into her home.

We sat down with Flo as she filled Andy in on her side of family history. We’ve got some footage of that, but suffice to say that Andy got shafted on the good genes. Apparently they’re all pilots/doctors/sports stars. Oh well.

Before dinner, Flo gave us a tour of the house. Those plantation owners sure had it made. Too bad the Union burned most of their houses down. Arlington survived only because some of Grant’s officers had taken up residence there.

We’d read a little about some of the sordid history of Arlington at the welcome center. Back in the days of old, a girl named Narcissa Jane fell in love with the son of the work-overseer (read: slave driver). Her parents were the aristocrats who owned Arlington (no relation to Flo or Andy) and so, of course, it was a forbidden love. Narcissa Jane’s parents decided to lock their sixteen-year old daughter in the attic, without food or drink, until she renounced her love. Three times a day they climbed the attic stairs to offer her a meal in exchange for her renunciation, and three times a day she sent them away. Apparently, she’d never read the ending of Romeo and Juliet, because she ended up starving to death. Or, rather, they starved their daughter to death.

Naturally, when we saw the attic stairs, we asked Flo if Arlington was haunted. She laughed (everyone asks her that) but was adamant that there are no ghosts, and said if there are, they’re not bad ones. The porch light sometimes turns on by itself, and she and her husband used to think that some spirit might be doing it, but it is an old house with old wiring.

The only other potential ghostly encounter that has happened in the house occurred in the room pictured above when Flo’s niece was sleeping there. When everyone woke up in the morning, the little girl asked who the lady in the purple dress was. They didn’t know what she was talking about, but she was sure that the lady had stood at the bottom of the bed and watched them, silently.

Upon hearing this tidbit, what choice did we have but to stay in this room for the night? 

Whilst Caitlin sat upon the toilet in this very bathroom, she decided to extend her sympathy to Narcissa Jane for the manner in which she died, er, was murdered. She told Narcissa Jane that if she wanted to make her presence known in any way, that it was okay to do so. Immediately, the bathroom light started flickering and then promptly turned off. Had the bulb burned out? She checked the light-switch, which was still in the on position, and when she flicked it off and on again, the light came back on. Old wiring has eery timing.

Later that night, after dinner, Caitlin went out to the car to get a few things. She had a hard time because it was completely dark outside, and as she was telling Andy this as they stood inside looking out, a light directly over the car turned on and then instantly turned off.

Andy was pretty skeptical of all this until it was his turn to use the bathroom. The walk from the purple dress room to the bathroom was already creepy at night, but it took you past a window overlooking those attic stairs. He thought he might give talking to Narcissa Jane a try and asked her if she felt a bit foolish for dying over a teenage crush. That’s when Andy heard breathing — consistent inhales and exhales — and murmuring all around him.

Thus ensued a stressful night of sleeping with flashlights and taking bathroom trips together. We weren’t visited by a lady in a purple dress or anything exciting like that. There’s always next time.

The next morning, Flo cooked us a hearty breakfast of egg, cantaloupe, and pork roll. We didn’t mention anything to do with ghosts as we were pretty sure that it’s bad guest etiquette to insist that your host’s house is a portal between this world and the afterlife.

Andy took a few minutes to spend some quality time with a descendant of the lizards his ancestors had lived alongside.

On a side-note, Flo is a prolific whistler. She could out-whistle a flock of canaries. Canaries whistle a lot, right?

Andy and Flo on the balcony. Guess which one is imagining he’s a plantation owner wearing a straw hat and drinking mint juleps.

But, here’s the kicker to the ghost saga. When we went to bed, Caitlin — who is notorious for losing the backs to her earrings – made extra sure to place both earrings and both backs into her jewelry bag. In the morning, one of the backs had gone missing and in its place was a tiny, silver, equal-armed cross that neither of us had seen before. Either Narcissa Jane was giving us an object of protection, or we’d been visited by the Knights Templar. Later, we decided to review the video we’d taken at night in our bedroom. We’d taken quite a bit of footage, documenting our giddy, sleep-deprived fear, but the tape had only recorded a few seconds.

Hmm.

Next time on The All-American Swashbuckling Wanderlust Romp in F Sharp:

BBQ, the Blues, and lots of homeless people. It’s Memphis, Tennessee!

We had a wonderful 4 days with Molly.  After a couple days, she started chirping again and she hopped about in an adorable fashion.  We loved her so much that we even snuck her into a hotel and shared our tent with her during the two-day downpour.  We buried her in the state capitol of North Dakota.  We hope she had a pleasant last couple of days.  We definitely enjoyed it…except for the death part, of course.

This is where sparrows come from.

Puff puff goes the chilly puppy.

One night, she hopped onto Andy’s foot while he sat crosslegged, cuddled, and fell asleep.  She was lovely.

She accompanied us to the giant buffalo!  (More on that at a later date…)

Little puff cute ball.

That’s her hopping over my shoulder!  She went from Andy’s left hand to his right one which just so happened to be waiting behind my back for one very puff ball cutie pie pants.

Outside playtime.

The love of our lives for a whole 4 days.

RIP

Molly The Sparrow

? – October 7, 2008

Archibald, Louisiana.  There is such a place.  And it’s quite small.

But it has a church!

And this place.

It has many churches!

That sign in the background is for another church.

The hider has found the town where it all began… one hundred and nineteen years ago.

Now back to our regular programming…

When we arrived in New Orleans, residents had been allowed to return just days before on Thursday, so the place was still a little…unkempt. (Read: trees across roads.)

 Below is a nice picture of Cinderella’s castle…

The princess and her hobo in the heart of the French Quarter.

Well, we didn’t actually find the heart of the French Quarter on the first night…but we did find this super awesome bridge! It goes  somewhere for sure.

With New Orleans came our first hostel experience (or, as Caitlin has told everyone we’ve talked to since, “hostile” experience). We stayed at a place called the India House. Above is a picture of our room, named The Jezebel Room. It was a colorful place, to say the least.

The best part of the India House was a pond in the courtyard with this super friendly turtle, Mr. Toots.  (Name changed to protect actual identity.)

The courtyard.  Notice all the people that want to be our friends.

The dining area.  There’s our hero, Andy, and Caitlin’s trusty computer.  It’s blogging time, dudes and dudettes.

Careful observers can see Mr. Toots lounging on the log.  It is unclear whether the doors in the background lead to rooms or a secret lounge where all the hostel employees and the guests they thought were cool enough hung out. We had originally thought that it might be fun to get jobs at a hostel (work and clean a few hours for a free room) so we could stay longer and get to know the Big Easy, but everyone there was too interested in pretending to be Buddhists than to make new friends.

On our second day, we took a ferry to Algiers.  Africa is much closer than you think.  Here Andy tries to lift a rope.  He is successful.

On our first night, we were walking back to the hostile hostel (hahahahahah!) and came across a cat not unlike the one pictured above.  It was skittish.  But Andy attempted to win it over by feeding it Caitlin’s left over shrimp.  It only half worked.  Then, the next day, we learned that a whole family of kitties lived under the pier by the ferry. Andy’s fears were allayed when he discovered that some good Samaritan gives them heaps of kibbles on a regular basis. Andy has been talking about these cats ever since.

In the French Quarter, a disgruntled street performer gave up for the day and cast a balloon in the shape of a sword aside. Andy rescued it and turned it into a likeness of the beast that lives at Uncle Kevin’s.

Some hobos made a ruckus and caught Andy’s attention.

The sun sets on the French Quarter.

The skyline of the old and the new. Ooooo.

Andrew Jackson?

Back to the Magic Kingdom.

A nice picture.

Sweaty and exhausted, we used our Lonely Planet guidebook to find K Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen. We didn’t know it at the time, but it’s owned by Chef Paul Prudhomme, the creator of the Cajun blackening technique. They sat us in the very back of the restaurant, but when we started ordering the strangest items on the menu and asked to film, we went from pain in the ass to high class in their eyes. Who else would want to film their dinner and sample the most unique dishes but very important food critics from a prestigious news source? By the end of the night, we’d received a complimentary order of fried oysters, a guided tour of the kitchen, and a gift package including Chef Prudhomme’s Magic Seasoning Salt (which we’ve found goes very well with baked beans). It was by far the best dining experience we’ve had on our trip thus far.

You can’t even tell that’s a man!

Another nice photograph by Caitlin Marie Downey Haffert, Esq.

So what did we think of New Orleans? It wasn’t nearly as sinful as we’d hoped. Maybe we’ll go back during spring break.

Next year on The All-American Swashbuckling Wanderlust Romp in F Sharp, we explore the bowels of Louisiana and discover Andy’s long-lost relative, and the murdered ghost of a sixteen year-old girl. Stay tuned!