Wednesday, April 23 – Thursday, April 24 -- “Bong Recreation Area”

No, sadly the Bong Recreation Area wasn't what you think it is. We even drove like 10 miles out of our way to get a picture of the sign but sadly all of the signs (except for the one on the interstate) said the full name of “Richard Bong State Recreation Area” which isn't nearly as awesome.

This is us at the Oz Museum in, well, somewhere in Indiana. The story here is that the store was named “Yellowbrick Road” first, and that caused the owner to start collecting Oz stuff, which then eventually led to a parade in the town. They say that there were actors who played the Munchkins present, which is so exciting I can barely contain myself while I write this. By the way, every time I write “museum” above please interpret that as “room full of Oz crap”.

As a side note, I got to make two stops that I was hoping for: One was to White Castle to get some disgusting burgers which I love so much, and the other was to Bass Pro Shops to just look around. We don't have any Bass Pro actual stores near us in California so I try to visit one when I can.

We stopped quickly at the Indiana Lakeshore and took a quick look at Lake Michigan, it was extremely cold (Emily said it felt to her just like the Pacific). Once we arrived in the Chicago area we were able to catch up with John and Wendy at dinner... it was very good to see them, see their new place, and chat for a while.

The next day we made our way northward to a small town in Wisconsin called “New Franken.” This was where my great-great-grandfather supposedly set down roots when he first made his way here from Prussia in the mid 1800s. I was dubious.

We made our first stop at St. Kilian's church (which my g-g-gf supposedly built, and he did indeed, although the original church burned down in the 40s) where a very nice lady let us look at some books she had in her safe about New Franken history. Sure enough, there he was, complete with some family trees and a few stories about his time there. We went to look for his grave in the church cemetery and we think we might have found his wife's, but his or his brother's were nowhere to be found.

We ended the day by having lunch at the New Franken Stein (groan) and having a taste of “curds” which are not curds as in “not whey” but cheddar battered and deep fried, which needless to say is quite delicious and artery clogging. We ended up in Iowa City after a bunch of driving and are now on our way to Colorado to visit Courtney and his family.

Monday, April 21 – Tuesday, April 22 -- The wheels on the car go round and round, and end up staying in Ardmore

Yeah, remember that vibration I was talking about? Turns out the back left tire had the belt sticking through and that was what was making it vibrate. Yikes! Thankfully we decided to bring the car in to get it checked out, and 4 new tires later (bought in Ardmore, PA) we got back on the road, vibration free. I would like to shout out to San Francisco Honda who, after we brought the car in for service (including checking the tires) told us that the tires would not be in need of replacement even though we told them we were about to put 6000 more miles on them, at which point the tires then proceeded to only last about 3000 miles further. Nice thorough job there SF Honda.

Yesterday's drive brought us up to sunny Vermont to visit college roommate Benjie, his wife, Erin, and their recent addition Cole, who is damned cute and knows it. We also got to meet the embodiment of evil in feline form. This cat was all cute and snuggly the night before, but once he figured out that we were going to invade his room, he went nuts. He camped under the bed and attacked us with a vengeance, forcing me to fend him off. If not for my training as a pillow wielding lion tamer all would have been lost! After hiding under the covers (and a brief moment of panic when he jumped onto the bed) he finally left us alone and wandered into the next room, at which point I sprang from my concealment and shut the doors, locking the beast on the other side.

But aside from dealing with Furry Satan and the Tire Replacements, we had a great time catching up with Benjie and Erin, and it was really fun to see Kevin and Jess the night before.

Today we just started the trip home. The big plan is to make our way past Chicago and up into Wisconsin, where we will visit the town supposedly founded by my great grandfather: a little two-street place called “New Franken”. I'm hoping that my great grandfather left some sort of weird provision in his will that the first of his descendants who shows up in New Franken gets to inherit his unequaled collection of incredibly valuable somethings, but I suspect they'll just look at me as if I'm crazy for coming all the way out from California to visit this place. Who knows.

I leave you with a picture taken last night outside of Benjie's house, the full moon was amazing (this was a 15 second exposure, so it didn't look quite so bright in real life):

Wednesday, April 16 – Sunday, April 20

DC was a ton of fun. It was great to see all of our old GG&SS friends, head to the Brickskeller, and see a fantastic performance of The Pirates of Penzance (actually, 3 fantastic performances). I'll post some more pictures from the weekend when I get home. The highlight of the weekend was the Gala, where a bunch of GG&SS alums got together to drink, and sing, and drink some more. After that I ended up in the audience for Penzance, which is the first GG&SS show I have watched from the audience without being involved in about 7 years. The audience knowing the show very well combined with an incredible cast and performance made for a heck of an evening.

Tonight we are visiting Kevin and Jess in Philly, which included the obligatory cheesesteak (we ended up going to a place called Jims, which was ok but I wasn't entirely overwhelmed). Their cheesesteaks come with Cheese Whiz so not all was lost.

The car has developed a very irritating vibration upon hitting 70 mph, so the first stop tomorrow will be to a dealership to figure out what the hell it is. Then, on to Vermont (I hope).

Tuesday, April 15 – Travel Haiku

Started in Georgia.
Construction everywhere, man,
too many damn cones.

South Carolina
In a hurry, we missed you.
Interstates, they suck.

North Carolina
Peach cider and boiled peanuts.
No boiled death for me!

Virginia, our home
for three years; so familiar.
We don't miss it much. =)

Now we're in DC,
Gilbert and Sullivan stuff.
Old friends and much fun!

Monday, April 14 – Knee-mail

This is me in Florida. Why is that significant? As those near to me can attest, I am proud of my USA travels. Me standing under this sign means that I have now visited all 48 contiguous states, plus Hawaii. Just Alaska to go!

Today's drive took us from the Big Easy (where we started the day with beignets as promised) along the Gulf coast through Mississippi and Alabama and into the panhandle of Florida. The Gulf coast is absolutely beautiful... it is nothing like the other parts of Alabama and Mississippi that I had seen before. All along the Gulf coast there are houses which are built upon these tall stilts, and we're not sure whether all of the new building is rebuilding after Katrina or if they are just new developments.

The title today refers to one of my favorite parts of the South... Church signs! This particular one read “God loves receiving knee-mail.” We also stumbled upon J.R. Arnold High School which was amusing, and we dipped our feet into the Gulf which allowed me to take my artsy picture of the day.

Tomorrow we are going to attempt to get all the way up to Washington DC. Long day ahead, wish us luck! I leave you with a sample of what the Florida Gulf coast looks like:

Sunday, April 13 – I Love LA

Today was sort of a bust, because we just drove down from northern Louisiana to get here to New Orleans and although we were looking for further adventure, further adventure did its best to hide from us.

Food today was the one bright spot. We stopped at a place in Marksville, LA, just because we happened to see it sitting on the side of the road and “Cajun Kitchen” was just the thing. We were in luck, the place was great, we had some fried catfish and these crawfish/crawdad/crayfish egg-rolls that were just unbelievably good. The folks inside were super friendly and we got a long lecture about the differences between rednecks and coonass (yes, that's a real word, it means the French folks who live in the south of Louisiana). The woman talking to us was a self-described “redass” (half redneck half coonass) so she knew what she was talking about.

New Orleans for dinner and drinks, nothing super exciting to report except that we had fried gator of which I am a fan. Add to that some gumbo and crawfish etouffee and you get yummy. Then we checked out a couple of live bands and called it a night.

Random thing we noticed today: Every billboard here seems to have some random schmo's face all over it. Need to buy a car, see Herman “BC” Johnson over at the dealership. Need insurance? Larry Farnsworth will hook you up! Seriously every single billboard around here is either a Christian missive or a smiling, “class picture” style headshot (complete with that cheesy textured gray background they always made you sit in front of) of some person I could care less about.

Tomorrow the plan is to have some beignets at the Cafe du Monde and then make our way up through the deep south. This ought to be fun (says the long-haired guy driving a hybrid with California plates and a Berkeley Honda license frame). Maybe I'll just slap a peace symbol on the window and a darwin fish on the bumper as we enter Alabama and see what happens.

Saturday, April 12 – “One Step Up From Jail”

If you had told me that I would end the day watching Grand Funk Railroad in Shreveport, I'd have... well, I'd have said that was pretty cool, actually, but I would have been surprised.

Last night we ended up staying in a hotel which our next door neighbor, poorly accounting for the thin walls, described as “One step up from jail, sheeyoot.” He really did say “sheeyoot”, and even though it was 5am and I sort of wanted him to shut up, that made it ok.

Once on the road, we ended up in a town in Clay County (Henrietta) which had an old jail (see? Thematic randomness) which we thought would be nifty to check out. Turns out that this place was run by a couple of nice old ladies who were just thrilled that two young folks from California wanted to see their Clay County museum. Let me tell you folks, I now know more about Clay County than probably most of the residents do. The jail was pretty cool, I'll give you that, but most of the museum's contents were random this and that which clearly came from ancient attic cleanings. Saddles, razors, horse bits (that is, bits for horses, not bits of horses), cotton, WWI telegrams, some high-school jackets from the 40s, pictures of Native Americans from the late 1800s, barbed wire displays (did you know each ranch had barbed wire as unique as their cattle brands? I didn't!), boots, and sample license plates. Really, there were sample license plates. I can't make this stuff up.

After a tour that lasted probably an hour or more, we finally got back on the road and headed for Arkansas. Why Arkansas? 'Cause I've never been there before, that's why.

First we passed through Texarkana, which is pretty neat 'cause they have a street which is the border between Texas and Arkansas, so on one side you are in Texas and across the street is Arkansas!

Ok, you're right, that's not that great, but I'm in Arkansas, people! Cut me some slack.

In the town of Fouke, AR (pronounced, well, I'm not sure how but just give it a go, I'm sure you're close) we discovered that they have their own sort of BigFoot legend, except their version is way, way lamer. I didn't believe a word of it, until I was brutally attacked while trying to take a self portrait.

Finally, heading south to Shreveport, we passed the riverfront where there was some kind of motorcycle/music festival where a band was playing, so we decided to stop. Turns out that band was Grand Funk Railroad, and we were treated to the last half of their set! This distant picture captures little of what we saw but I took it so now you have to look at it.

Tomorrow, New Orleans.

Friday, April 11 - Close Encounters

Today's jaunt brought us through the heart of New Mexico down to Roswell, home to the UFO Museum. The first thing that struck us (ok, second thing, after the big tumbleweed) was the fact that everybody seems to own a white car in this state. Perhaps it is the fact that the endless New Mexico desert strips all vitality and color from everything it touches, so that the residents feel the need to own cars whose color reflects the barren souls of their drivers. Or maybe dark cars get too hot.

The New Mexico desert is probably the second most boring drive I have ever experienced, behind the salt flats of Utah. I know that there are parts up north where the New Mexico desert is red and beautiful, but from Albuquerque to Roswell there is nothing. It was so boring we were looking forward to getting into Texas for a change of pace.

Roswell was... interesting. Mostly the stuff to see there is near the UFO Museum and is so cheesy it borders on the absurd. The museum itself was actually interesting though, mostly clips from old newspapers detailing the Roswell crash and its aftermath.

We are now sitting in northern Texas, having failed to secure BBQ for dinner since this town (Brownfield) rolls up the sidewalks at 8pm. I am having a tasty Texas style KFC famous bowl, which is basically the normal bowl but they have cajun spice on the table.

It is amazing to me how many towns in the southeast of NM and TX are boarded up, dead towns. We passed through no fewer than 3 towns that clearly used to be towns but now are totally abandoned. It is bizarre to be driving along and see an entire small town, complete with gas station, hotel, general store, etc., and each building looks like the people just up and left.

Getting here to our final stop for the evening, a place called Aspermont, in the great state of Texas (our room numbers have little Texases [Texi?] imprinted on them) was a late night episode of Wild Kingdom. We saw deer, a fox, a rabbit, and even a boar or five.

On our way down to Roswell we stopped at the Petroglyphs National Monument, where an indeterminate number of years ago an indeterminate group of folks made some indeterminate drawings on some rocks. I can't tell you how exciting this was! I can't tell you that because it wasn't. But it was pretty neat. I leave you with this quiz: What is going on in this petroglyph?

Thursday, April 10 - Miles and Miles

Yesterday I figured out what that Windows error was referring to: This is Microsoft VISTA, and you can't have a vista without some elevation. Now that we're no longer at sea level everything is working perfectly!

Today was just to get us ahead of the game somewhat, so after 16 or so hours of driving we made it all the way into New Mexico. Today we'll visit Roswell (so that should get us some exciting pictures). At right you will see why we picked the worst possible time to be doing this trip.

Wednesday, April 9 - Update

An inauspicious start. While packing up the car to leave, we got a ticket. Oh SFPD, I love thee. Then, while trying to upload this update, Windows *^@($$#&% Vista gave me the following useful error while trying to open an html doc in Notepad:

Wednesday, April 9

Emily and I are travelling across the country and I am going to post updates here for all interested parties, blog style. No guarantees, though, since internet connections that we aren't going to pay for don't come easy.

We leave tomorrow on a marathon drive from SF to somewhere in New Mexico. We both wanted to visit Roswell, just 'cause, so that'll be our first major stop. Hopefully I will be posting blurry pictures of UFO's, preferably from the outside.

As an overview: We are going to attempt to make a big loop, going on a Southern route to get to DC and coming back the northern/central way. We have a basic plan but everything and anything is subject to change, as we are fickle creatures.