The best laid plans…

Whoa, hey, what?

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.

And so the Kudzu might take over the world…

September 13, 2008

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.

Memphis, Tennessee: Home of the Blues

September 10, 2008

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!

Lake Providence, Louisiana

Finally the post everyone and their mother have been waiting for, if only because we’ve said we were posting it next at least two times over 20 days ago.

 

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!

In Memoriam: Molly

Once upon a time, in a city of lots of tiny, tiny apples, there was an even tinier thud against what was thought to be a lovely looking 12th floor open-aired office but what was actually a very clean – and very hard – window.  Not too long after, a hobo and princess were exploring this delightfully smelling opolis when they encountered a colorful flower bed with one very floppy sparrow flying circles inside of it.  Sensing that something was not right and that leaving her there would enrich no one’s life, the two with 10 fingers and 10 toes each took the one with two wings and a seemingly broken something to be cherished and cared for until the day she died.  Which came much sooner than expected.  

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

WE FOUND ARCHIBALD!!!

Once upon a time, there lived a gaggle of girls and their gnomes.  A certain hobo we all know and love had one particular job.  And that was to hide one said gnome.  Now said hobo is out exploring the country and said gnome was so well hidden that said gaggle of girls cannot pinpoint his exact location.  In the meantime, hobo and his princess found a whole town dedicated to this gnome.  This post is dedicated to our friends and roommates from way back in the day in Ithaca, NY, and to that happy little gnome, Archibald.  May they find you soon.

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…

New Orleans!

It seems like we’re getting worse and worse at writing timely posts. Just to set the record straight, the following events took place between Saturday, September 6 and Monday, September 8. A lot of exciting things have happened between then and now. Here’s a little bit of foreshadowing for disbelievers who don’t think we’re actually doing any wanderlust romping: there are Paneras even in Minneapolis, MN.

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!

IOU Many Posts

We realize we have failed to post in close to twenty years, and, for that, we are truly sorry.  But we promise an eventual grand array of posts and pictures from your favorite little adventure squad of two.  Until then, if anyone knows anything about lyme disease, shoot us an email or call the area hospitals.  Thanks!

Florida Forever: Daphne, AL

The long drive through the Florida panhandle gave us time to mentally prepare for the backwater horrors that would be Alabama. We readied our cameras to catch barefoot old men playing the banjo on the porches of log cabins, territorial teenagers drinking beer in the backs of moving pick-up trucks, and Conway Twitty.

 

Our contact in the area was Caitlin’s cousin, Debbie (pictured above). We met her at a field where she was watching fenced-in young boys play what must have been some sort of primitive sport that involved hitting a small white ball with a wooden stick. We were unable to deduce the role of this game in the larger social context, but the players spend a great deal of energy to avoid getting “out.”

 

After the game, Debbie collected her child, Mark, and we headed to her residence. It was quite large and the main living quarters were some distance off the ground.  (This detail made much more sense after we learned that there are large aquatic reptiles living nearby). We offered our assistance in procuring the evening meal and Debbie accepted. Andy prepared patties of cow meat which Debbie’s husband, Mark, cooked over burning rocks. The meat was well-enjoyed by all and we were given a room for the night.

Just one of the many carnivorous animals we encountered.

The following night we were invited to take part in a ritual known as “dining out.” We drove to a building curiously labeled “Ed’s Family Seafood Restaurant” and the group of us were given a table to ourselves where servants brought us many strange concoctions involving sea creatures.

 

Andy tentatively samples a local dish.

 

On this evening, the brave adventurers tried such foods as fried okra, fried crawfish, crawfish creole, seafood gumbo, and key-lime and mango pies.

 

Caitlin and Debbie.

 

Debbie’s and Mark’s offspring, Mark and Matthew.

 

Debbie and Mark, well-sated after the feast.

 

The view was agreeable.

 

As the night continued, a young man took the small stage near our table and began playing music on a stringed instrument that is most comparable to what most people know as a guitar. Strangely enough, this musician knew many songs by artists popular in the North, such as Dave Matthews and the Goo Goo Dolls. Surely scholars will puzzle over this phenomenon for years.

What a charming yokel.

 

The lights of some distant city – perhaps Boston or New York.*

 

Although Mark kindly offered Andy a job working on a barge where he would learn to chew tobacco and cuss, we continued on our journey the following morning. Our foray into the wilds of suburban Alabama had left us no worse for the wear, but much wiser indeed.

 

*Upon further investigation by our cartographer, this city was most likely Mobile, Alabama.

Florida Forever: Gainesville

After Delray Beach and the Everglades, we ventured up into the northern Floridian center for a little quality time with our favorite Floridian family.  We had a great time eating local cuisine (teriyaki), swimming in the pool (Marco Polo, anyone?), taming the wild beast (Riley – see picture below), and getting up at the crack of dawn for some heartwarming goodbyes.  Such a good time that we somehow managed to take only one picture.  We did, however, take video.  But you may never see that.  Or believe that we do, in fact, have video.

 

This is the only time this dog sat still in someone’s arms.  Uncle Kevin has the magic touch.