Jessie Goes….

7 people, 2 from Korea (1 who spoke no English – how he ended up in a Louisiana swamp outside of Breaux Bridge is anyones guess), and 1 Cajun, took off in our swamp mobile at 3:30, pushing off the side of the banks of the Cypress Island/Lake Martin Swamp. 

The boat is a dinged up but still sturdy looking crawfish skiff, which, according to the Cajun, can glide along in very shallow water, even mucky mud, without worry.  

MY biggest worry, in the first 1 or 2 minutes, was that here we were, in the swamp, and everyone in the boat wanted to see a ton of ‘grandpapa’ alligators, the really big ones.   For me, it seems much scarier to see them in the boat, where your escape options are a)throw in the elderly lady and hope for the best or b)jump out of the boat that they are attacking, one giant U shaped bite already out of it and slowly sinking, but risk that you are now in the water WITH THEM.    On land, I can zigzag run with the best of them, and to be honest my previous encounters have either been in the back of the house in South Carolina, or on golf courses, both where they just run away to the water.  Also only the ‘safe’ alligators have been left by the “alligator police”, the equivalent of exotic lawn ornaments.   

They also have the element of surprise in the swamp…they can see you, but as they are submerged, you can’t see them. 

Butch, the guide, lets us know that alligators have been around since before dinosaurs, and their basic survival method was 2 part: eat anything smaller than you, and run away from anything bigger than you.    I quickly put my arms and camera back in the boat.   

About 2 minutes into our journey we see a log with not one but two alligators sitting on it.  We get closer.  And closer.   And closer.   They are looking at us, and one slowly lowers himself into the water.   The chatty woman behind me murmurs, “aw, how cute” then “oh, he ran away”, in that baby talk voice.   “He’s not gone!” I think to myself, changing my vote from the elderly lady to her, if one of us has to go, “he’s probably under the boat!”

Butch reminds the portly unsteady gentleman that alligators really do go after things they deem smaller, so standing up in the boat is a bad idea and he shouldn’t do it again.     My guess is it was more to do with his ability to capsize the boat than anything else…. he’d be the second sacrificed, if it had to be that way.  

Anyhow, the alligators did actually run away, and we went to find more, which only took us about 45 seconds.   And then another minute after that, 2 more.  5 more in the next 20 minutes, and so on.   This place is teeming with them.   And of course, as human logic is so backwards this way, the more I saw of them, the less worried I was.  Eh, an alligator, so what, big deal.   Alligator, smalegator.

So, after I too came into my own false sense of security, I really did start to enjoy this swamp.  It is absolutely beautiful.  Turtles (Butch calls em: Gator popcorn), a snake, and thousands of birds.   Great blue herons, ibis, roseated spoonbills, snowy egrets, anhingas, red winged blackbirds, and comorants to name just a few.   They have a rookery at the far end, so its birdy heaven, all amongst the tupelo and cypress trees.  

My second worry, came about an hour and a half into the ride, when Butch decides to motor through a 50 yard clump of water hyacinths.   We rev up, I get lower for streamlining :), and off we go, outboard motor a chugging.  Until we get about a third of the way through…then.  dead.  crank crank crank.  nothing.    Butch starts to pull out his extra parts and go to work, fixing the propeller (he ended up having to put an entirely new propeller on), all while standing in the boat, so as not to get eaten by anything swimming around.     Anyhow, new propeller on, we have two choices. back or forward.   And, here we go, forward.  Crank it up.  Everyone in the front of the boat… chugg chugg chugg, and OUT.  yay.  

But now we don’t have a backup propeller, I think.  And here we are in the densest thickest part of the swamp!  This might be a serious problem, and I could imagine this becoming a 2 hour tour of the Gilligan variety.  Then the Korean guy answered his cellphone which he had brough along, and I figured we probably were pretty saveable, and just let my imagination have a rest.

After learning a lot about swamps, and swamp denizens we were returned to our cars safe and sound about 2.5 hours after setting sail.    Butch, the cajun guide, was incredibly knowledgable, and lent a localness to his tour with stories about his brother in law  (not the sharpest lure in the tacklebox) and what it was like growing up in the swamp.

What I did:

Cajun Country Swamp Tours, Personalized Tours, butchguch@yahoo.com, 337-319-0010.  About 10 mins south of Breaux Bridge, LA. Butch arranged this with me the day before, and there only is a minimum of two people to go out on a tour at the time you’ve come up with.   He coordinated with other folks that called in, to accomodate my schedule and my singleness.  Top notch.  $20 dollars (plus tip)

Another great roadtrip day, near perfect weather, 72 degrees, no humidity and blue skies this morning, so uncharacteristic of New Orleans in May.

First order of business on the day, aside from packing my things back into the car, is a small detour on my way out through the Bywater and Lower 9th Ward neighborhoods to see for myself how things are looking.    I am happy to say thing are looking “under construction.”  Locals have repeatedly mentioned to me during the past few days that things in the past 6-7 months are really coming together.   These two districts which received so much of the devestation are now a mix of total wrecks, construction projects, with a few perfectly restored historical houses rising like phoenixs in the rubble.   Everything is jumbled together with some construction workers, debris, dump trucks, and severly potholed streets, and I saw more than one moving van.   MOVING IN!  It is still appalling that this is coming on three years since Katrina, and this area still looks like this, but at least something is happening, akin to real progress…finally.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are whole streets down here that still have those memorable red x’s on them saying they were unsafe for habitation.  Many houses have no windows, and a few have pitiful little signs saying “please don’t bulldoze”, waiting still patiently for their owners to return.   In Bywater, 1 or 2 of every 5 houses stands exactly as it did a week after Katrina, and probably 3-4 in the Lower ninth ward.  But those hard hats and u-Hauls are creeping ever closer.  

BTW, I did check out the levees in this area… you must be KIDDING me Army Corps of Engineers!  These things are a quarter of the size of the levees just upriver… a backed up toilet might overflow them.  This really does need to be fixed, or it will repeat itself.    4 feet tall is just too low!

Now, onward! Au revoir New Orleans!  Trying to take the scenic route through rural Louisiana, I hop off I-10 as soon as possible, taking the route known as River Road… where I’ve heard tell of scores of antebellum plantation houses lining the Mississippi.  “How picturesque” my imagination tells me.   Gone with the Wind overlooking the swollen Mississippi, as barges move slowly through.    Well.   I’m here to tell you that it just doesn’t work like that!  There are plantation houses… but you have to get past River Road, and up the 20 foot tall levee to get even a glimpse of the river!! (duh, I knew this, but hadn’t put two and two together with my imagination).    On top of that rural Louisiana isn’t known for its over the top wealth – River Road is home to plantation, shack, mobile home and electro-plant alike.    It was much better in my head.   Oak Alley Plantation, however, was much better in person, despite its lack of river views.

 Apparently, some time in the early to mid 1700s some French chap planted a lane of live oak trees, no house mind you, but a gorgeous lane of trees that he would never live to see the magnificence of.  I’m always baffled by the hardwood lane planter foresight/goodwill.  The planters ‘minds eye’ has to be good enough – because 10 year old oak trees are pretty scrawny looking, particularly spread 20 yards from each other.

One hundred years later a New Orleans boy fell in love with both a girl and the “oak alley”, which was by then looking pretty stately, and decided to build his new wife a beautiful plantation.   This house and many of its 1700 acres of grounds and fields are still in very good repair today.

As is getting to be pretty darn common around here, the architecture is a mix of Greek Revival and southern veranda style, and to keep the occupants cool it sports 16 inch thick brick walls (under plaster), 12 foot ceilings, a 13 foot wide veranda and 2nd floor galleries, both which run on all four sides of the abode.   There are also floor to ceiling windows with cross ventilation symmetry everywhere you look, opening fully like doors to catch the breezes.

Aside from being just a lovely large old house, the history of the family and times comes alive through my period dressed guide, bustling around in a hoopskirt, no less.    Even as wealthy and privileged as this family was, 3 of 6 children died of TB and other illnesses.  makes you stop and think about just how good, the good ol’ days really were.       

Things I did:

Oak Alley Plantation, Restaurant & Inn, 3645 Highway 18 (Great River Road), Vacherie, Louisiana USA 70090

Of course there are a few other things that have influenced New Orleans in the more modern era.  The government, notably during the early 20th century has been famously corrupt and bribe oriented.  Today, some say, just like the chicory in the coffee, the french in the cuisine and the party atmosphere, things come to this city and take up roost, and not much has changed during these hundred years.     This looseness of political office morals has had the city deep in prostitutes, party times, bootlegging, and the requisit music that accompanies it.   The New Orleans style jazz bands, often young, hungry and wildly talented, can be heard throughout the city, as well as many a man and lady singing the blues.  

Traditionally, the New Orleans style of jazz, with Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bichet among its ranking founders, is a music to be danced to, with a swinging, syncopated, harmonic rhythm.      The band consists of a trumpet, a clarinet and a trombone, as well as some sort of rhythm section, often just a string base or these days, a base guitar.     It is very distinct from, and frankly a lot more fun and catchy than,  Chicago land style and New York City style jazz forms, which were all coming about during the same part of the early 20th century.   New Orleans claims itself to be the birthplace of jazz, and who knows, with its awesome roster of homegrown talent, maybe it is.    It definitely was one of the first cities to allow black populations to congregate and play music (as well as be educated), so the immigrant Haitian, Creole, and the freed black population had a huge influence very early on in the cities life, playing in what is now Louis Armstrong Park.   

Anyhow, I can’t tell you how cool it is to be just walking around and hear music coming out of radios people, which doesn’t sound like the same old alt-rock, I-am-a-depressed-young-man (with the exact same sound as everyone else) tunes or THUMP THUMP THUMP brain numbing rap numbers.   People LIKE jazz, they like blues, they grew up on zydeco and delta tunes.   And youngsters learn how to play instruments, beyond 8th grade band class.   There is something amazing about watching a skinny kid, maybe 17, producing a haunting perfect melody on a horn.    Believe me, its more impressive than rhyming to a base beat any day.

Personally, my favorite place to hear some local jazz is at the Spotted Cat, located on Frenchman street, running just outside the backside of the quarter in the Fauberg Marigny neighborhood.  That street has another of my favorites too, Snug Harbor.  Both have live jazz nightly.  

I got there early, for the first set at the Spotted Cat this evening, around 6:45pm, and its me and the oldtimers hanging on the bar.    I have a date with a Vampire tour (I couldn’t resist one super touristy thing) starting at 8:30 (nightfall – cue the organ music), so given that I passed out last night before actually making it out, tonight it was now or never.  

An hour and half, and a few Abita Strawberries later, I walk lighthearted and quickly through the now dimly lit streets of the back of the quarter, with my to-go cup in hand racing to meet as many vampires as possible.   

“There are two types of vampires” a theatrical young man says to his vampire audience “fictional, and mythical… those are NOT the same.”    What can I say, it was fun, the tour focused on neighborhood history, ghost stories, vampire myths and legends, and true accounts of some crazy new orleans souls drinking blood from captives held tied in a second story apartment, one of those with the lovely balconies, right there on Royal Street.      Another account is of a gentleman, who by all accounts, seemed to have been on record as living more than 200 years, and with still no record of his death.   Sounds like a familiar Twilight Zone episode right?

One of the more New Orleans things about the tour was the bar stops along the way, include Jean Lafitte’s (the most famous pirate, or technically privateer, in New Orleans history), which made it sort of like a wandering, historical, slightly spooky bring your drink along cocktail hour, or three. 

Things I did (it was a busy night):

The Spotted Cat, 623 Frenchman St, Right past Esplanade.  Live, real, NO style jazz, nightly.  Cheap beer too.  Like 2 dollars each.

Haunted History Vampire Tour, meets in Jackson Square, nightly.  Can be booked online, or I think you can just show up at 8:30, $20 dollars in hand.

Pirates Alley Cafe.  Pirates Alley, right on the sidestreet beside St. Louis Cathedral.  Not a cafe, but a really pleasant small homey bar. 

Jean Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar, 941 Bourbon St, the oldest bar in the city, the oldest structure in the city, and the guy was a pirate of almost Johnny Depp proportions.  And the 2 bartenders managed to serve up our entire group of tourists, who all came in exact same second, in less than about 3 minutes.  

Abita Strawberry Harvest Ale, I’ve been doing this everywhere on the Deep South tour, and, if you are in Louisiana or Mississippi during the time when this seasonal brew is available (now), it is a must try.  I, as a rule, don’t like fruity beer.  To this I make a single exception, it is unusual, light, definitely a strawberry smell, and if I could import them to my apartment it would be my downfall.

So…how is it that New Orleans, and the French Quarter in particularly, got this way, so different then the rest of the country?    Well, first, though settled in 1718, it didn’t become part of the good ol’ USA til after the Louisiana Purchase, and many say that it still, in part hasn’t quite joined up. 

Though it doesn’t particularly look it, the big swampy area was settled by the french army and fortuneseekers in the early 1700s, with the promise of wonderful fertile territory and land abounding.  This seemed to work every time on those settler people!  Unfortunately it was one holy hell of a bug and alligator infested marsh at the time, and everyone kept getting and dying of malaria, but somehow, as keeping the delta region was of wonderful military advantage, it perserved.   

The French King, Louis the XV, at some point gave the colony to his cousin, the King of Spain, ushering in a militant spanish era of about 40 some odd years, during which their were 2 huge fires, and subsequent rebuildings (killing more than 50% of the population, I believe), so this would explain the preponderance of spanish colonial style architecture, the walled courtyards, shared common housewalls,  and filligreed iron trellesses found here, with a french building or two thrown in here and there that survived both fires.   

Whats funny is the real heyday of the city came when the USA took the reigns, as  the river commerce indeed created enormous wealth (as is apparent by the enormous and grand houses of the garden and uptown districts, the size of these neighborhoods quite large as well – we are talking thousands of insanely wealthy people).   French and Carribean, Irish and Italian immigrants poured in by the boatloads creating the beginnings of the creole and cajun cultures and foods so inherent to the parishes today, as well as adding that voodoo spice to the primarily Roman Catholic cityfolk.  

So, there you go.   As I wander about the quarter today, walking my legs off yet again, I marvel at the older spanish ‘inner city’ architecture with all of its layers and balconies.   Though everyone knows this area for Bourbon Street, it really is only one street of tawdy, trashy, hurricane pouring, strip teasing mania… and only the first 6 or 8 blocks at that.  The back part of Bourbon, and frankly the entire back part of the neighborhood is nearly entirely residential.     I frankly have never been thrilled by the bead and inhibition throwing environ, and I nearly always can go the entire time without ever visiting a single block, and disturbing my image of the beautiful, faded and ancient french quarter, the one of Lestat, and of myself!   However, if drinking a footlong rum cocktail, trying to get girls to flash you for beads, and paying for it if you don’t get lucky is your thing, Bourbon Street will not dissappoint.

Back to food, of course, as another one of my favorites is also great for people visiting solo.  Acme Oyster House.  It is a tourist destination, but you will also be surrounded by locals, and if you sit at the oyster bar, for every oyster you order it seems you get a free one (known as a lagniappe here).    They also have all your cajun standards, po boys, and other seafood.    One tip though, arrive either before noon, or after 2 for lunch, and same goes for dinner, early or late.  There is always a line out the door during standard mealtimes. 

Things I did:

Acme Oyster House, 724 Iberville St, French Quarter.  Oysters by the dozen. 

By myself now, Rob to his classes in Montgomery, and me onward to the Cresent City. 

The sights and sounds from my table at Cafe Du Monde still feel the same.  Visitors crowd every table, brushing powdered sugar off of themselves, the city anthem “Oh When the Saints Go Marching In” playing mournfully on a horn in the distance.    The sun is shining bright today, the air is cool and to me the French Quarter still looks much the same as it always has.   There are actually fewer panhandlers than I remember, but fewer street musicians too, and far fewer street vendors… there’s not one frozen man in Jackson Sq!

Cafe du Monde, by the way, has my favorite coffee on the planet.    It has a mellow, almost rooty taste, which comes from the addition of chicory to the blend.  Originally, this was ‘included’ as a cut as there was an embargo on coffee at some point in the Napoleonic era in France, and apparently in New Orleans too.  When the embargo ended, the rest of the world went back to plain ol’ coffee, where the populace of New Orleans, in must have grown on, and now they don’t want their coffee without it!  Me either.  

Just so that it doesn’t keep coming up as I write here, let me just address my impressions pre and post Katrina.   Whats different:  the French Market (voodoo market), is mostly still gone.  It looks like they are working on it and the surrounding streets, but be warned, its a bit more difficult to find your plethora of hot sauces and voodoo dolls than it used to be.  Hopefully, all the jackhammering means that it will be up and full of vendors pretty soon.  What else: there are little signs everywhere of rebuilding: a peek of scaffolding through the garden gates, a storefront with construction fencing around it.  And the back end of the quarter has become even more charmingly delapidated. But remember, that faded rotting grandeur is part of the mystique, so its not such a bad thing.  There is a reason, after all, that people associate this area with vampires.

Maybe the biggest difference is the change to the populous.  It is not unusual to see an Asian or Latino face walking down the street or showing you that pretty dress in the window.    I have always gotten the impression that this city clutched its ancestral heritage fiercely, and your stock was counted without remorse by how many generations of your line could call New Orleans, and the delta region home.  Outsiders are treated very well, but always have remained outsiders – whether from China or Texas.   Clearly this brand of self pride and community has had to rethink itself, as even now, only 330k of the cities 500k residents have returned.  Somebody needs to be doing the day to day jobs in the city to keep the place alive and well, and immigrants are coming in all shapes and sizes. New faces seem actively welcome for the first time maybe since the french commander sent for the first female residents to join the men in the region during the colonial era.    I personally view this with both a smile and a wistfulness, as diversity is great, and was probably one of the cities big problems before, but with diversity comes a watering down of what was so uniquely found in this area.    Just like everything… you can always say “ah, when back 20 years ago the place was REALLY cool”.

So, back to my whereabouts on Day 0.5 and 1 of my stay in New Orleans.    I’ll start with driving into the city, which is super simple from Pensacola, but you get dumped off of I-10 in an area with a shade of sketchiness, and then, even as familiar as I am with the city in my half dozen visits, I still got turned around and discombobulated by one way streets.    During the daylight it would have been a cinch.      As it was only about 9:30pm thanks to the time change, which Rob and I had forgotten about in Pensacola (it is so odd, driving and 5 minutes later being in a different ‘time’…somehow flights make this acceptable, but driving it is always weirder), I dropped off my bags at my hotel, the Prytania Park and went up a few blocks on the streetcar to the Columns Hotel for an outside nightcap, and an introduction to the city.    I just love this place, its this greek revival mansion on St. Charles St, where they filmed a child Brooke Shields in Little Baby, which has a great veranda, and a bar that looks like it comes out of “the Shining” repleat with tuxedo wearing bartenders.   You can actually stay here too, if you want to book far enough in advance, but I hear its haunted.  Anyhow, it was a nice cocktail, but then true exhaustion  set in and I headed the short distance back to the hotel.   Which I will recommend, by the way.   Location is so so (convenient, but not in the nice part of the garden district), but cute cute hotel in a collection of old houses, with super comfie bed. 

Aside from my brief trip to Cafe du Monde, today is my garden district/uptown day.    All I can say is that if you are a fan of beautiful neighborhoods and architecture, walking around the upper garden district is amazing.  Even after my feet hurt and back is so done, I still walk on.  It is, in my humble opinion, one of the prettiest neighborhoods in the world.. a mix of Greek revivial mansions and victorian creole shotgun cottages all surrounded by old brick sidewalks, hidden statuary, live oaks and spanish moss, and an almost unstoppable greenery which grows from every crevice.   Grand and elegant, but still accessible and real, it is home to both eccentric millionaires, and post collegiate roommates.

Wandering down Colesium St, near the cemetary full of raised crypts, everything feels ancient and slow moving.  The brick sidewalks are jostled, their herringbone pattern mangled by the tree roots fighting for the space over many decades.  The smell of the flowers, jasmine among them, is overwhelming here too – almost sickly sweet and adds to the aura of opulent rottenness that surrounds the city. 

 After 4 hours of walking around the garden districts and the shopping district at Magazine street, I hop back on the St. Charles Street Car ($1.25) and head to where St. Charles ends and the street car is about to abruptly, severely turn right, 2 minutes later I find myself in Cooter Browns, home of my favorite muffalata (yes, New Orleans is all about architecture, ghosts, vampires and food for me).  Its a sports bar, but don’t be fooled, absolutely fabulous muffalata in all its Italian cold cutty, olive tapenady goodness.  Yum Yum Yum.   I know Central Grocery in the French Quarter is supposed to be the authority, but I beg to differ.  Yum Yum Yum.  I feel almost sick.  Way too much.

 Things I did:

Columns Hotel, 3811 St. Charles Ave.  Great cocktail bar, nice porch too.

Cooter Browns Tavern & Oyster Bar. 509 S. Carollton Ave.  Muffallata goodness.

Prytania Park Hotel.  1525 Prytania St. 504-524-0427.  Inexpensive, and a bargain for what you get, like a streamlined bed and breakfast without the lace doilies, and without the breakfast.

Well, I must say the drive from Apalachicola continuing west is nowhere near as relaxed or pretty as the panhandle has been to this point. 

After a semi solid nights sleep, the dozen or so giants who must have checked into room 214 of the Nacho stompily pried me from sleep with what could have only been a continuous three legged relay race across the hotel room.   Rob was already up, so our departure from the motel was a sparkling 8am, a leftover moonpie in hand for a roadtrip style breakfast.  The giants were still busy running back and forth when we left.

It is a cool and stormy day, the opposite of yesterday.     Today, of course, the idea was to spend some time at the beach in Pensacola, and though I visited, and yes it was white sand, blue water, and completely pristinely empty, of course it was also chilly, windy and raining, so the visit was more of a 1 minute variety.

We went to see the airplanes instead.   It turns out that the Pensacola Naval Air Station has a huge museum on it containing what seemed like a hundred remade and refurbished planes, many from wrecks, reworked slowly by the servicemen that worked on them in their prime, if possible.   This base, unlike most others, is accessible by the public.  They have every type of plane imaginable, WWI, WWII, modern fighters, as well as things resembling the kitty hawk.   If you have any interest at all in aviation history or old aircraft, this is a really amazing place.  You can TOUCH these aircraft!  And as they are the real thing, you get a huge sense of how it was like to fly these things, and the relative size.  The blue angels stunt pilots, for instance, are in very tiny aircraft..where as some of those biplane kitty hawk looking things are enormous!

 They also have full sized flight simulators which allow you to try your hand a landing a plane on an aircraft carrier platform.     Finally, they have a bar there, that’s hard to describe, like a flight club, lounge with all the memorabilia to boot.  

We also visited two relatively pristine forts on base, predating the civil war.  They are very close in design to Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, only they didn’t get the crap beat out of them, so these you can walk through, and I could only imagine how fun this would be if I was 9 years old with a nerf bb gun.   These forts must have been scary things to come upon, and were cleverly designed to make it near impossible to take one of them in short order during its time.     Half fort, half bunker.   Like I said, with some nerf guns and a few people, it would make one hell of a fun time playing ‘army’.  Even now!

Places Visited:

National Naval Aviation Museum
1750 Radford Blvd., Suite C
Naval Air Station Pensacola, FL 32508
Phone: (850) 452-3604 or (850) 452-3606

http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org

I’d heard many a time that the panhandle of Florida isn’t Florida in the sense of our national identity of it, as a bastion for snowbirds, northern accents, and non-southern traditions which involve hot nights, latin influences and Mickey Mouse.    The panhandle, just as I’ve been told, is southern in attitude, and Apalachicola is the little southern coastal town.       BTW, it is assigned a much larger dot on the map than its size would suggest!

Apalachicola is, at its core, a fishing village. Trawlers occupy the riverfront.   I was told there were some 40+ fishing warehouses on the river in Apalachicolas heyday, a booming seaport in Victorian times.   The architecture reflects this, with a mix of Victorian, greek revival, and the traditional southern veranda style houses.      The population was many times what it is today, as along side its busy waterfront commerce, the locals prospered in the lumber industry. 

Today, my sense is that the town has clawed itself back from tough times to create a charming small village.  There are still fishermen and their trawlers to be seen, with no doubt the backbreaking lifestyle that comes included, but there is a tourist industry here.   There still are quite a few blank storefronts in the downtown historic buildings, but there are also numerous unique shops too.   Among them, a 50s style soda fountain and knickknack store.   Rob and I missed this, but we were kicking ourselves for delaying until afterhours.    We also visited a cobbled together couple of rivershacks occupied by tons of new and old seafaring knickknacks.   Rob was in nautical heaven, with all the buoys, life rafts, charts and sea lanterns one could hope for.  It was a pretty cool store. 

Back to tourism, there was not a room to be found in the traditional Victorian inns that populate the town.  There are so many of them, and they are all booked.    The street fronting the river was hosting a classic boat show, and the town right down the coast Carabelle was having a festival of its own, so we were out of luck for the bed and breakfast or charming inn!    We ended up in the Rancho Inn, a fake adobe looking Mexican affair motel, which cost us about 30 more dollars than one of the charming inns with complementary breakfast.   Ah, well.    Rob and I, in room 114 of the “Nacho” as we affectionately called the motel, still had a great time, took a nap, watched movies into the wee hours with some snackfood from the convenience store across the street, well after Apalachicola had called it a night (11pm), and laughed at our grandious lifestyle.       Places we went worth mentioning:

We’re Off!  

In true roadtrip fashion, we leave tampa today 2 hours late, and get our early morning start at the crack of 9:30.   The general plan is to head up the SunCoast Highway, then get onto rt 19 to rt 98 until we hit Apalachicola.  We are in absolutely no rush.

The day is cloudless and gorgeous, hot and dry, and the drive is easy.  The windows are down, and NPR is on the radio; Click and Clack discussing replacing a clutch.   19 is a small highway, dotted on each side by little towns, aged reminants of a bygone era before the coming of the interstate.   The Florida coastal jungle is big here, pines and undergrowth so thick, both Rob and I were individually wondering what it must have been like for the explorers in the day who landed here looking for gold.   Daunting enough, that I imagine had they not just spent a month or so on a ship, they’d have just said, ‘to heck with it, the beach looks just fine’.    Between malaria, alligators and lack of fresh water, I imagine there are lots of explorer bones out there.

There are wildflowers everywhere, and little rotting shacks off the side of the road, most unlived in for years, but a few, in similar condition, with some parts on the porch and the signs of life emanating from within.     It is oddly, not florida.  Or anything you’d associate with the state whose real estate boom has left most of Florida with homes worth only 60% of their value a year ago.   The boom never hit here, it is rural, and poor, in an almost romantic nostalgic way.     The shacks are  quaint, the few still operating 50s style roadside motels remind me of the kid my dad must have been.    It does look like the last time this entire stretch of coast had an industry was then, when the newly minted travelers with their family cars headed down to the coast with their beachballs and buckets,  leaving behind their suburban lives for a week or two.     All romance aside, which mostly likely is only romantic because I’m passing by, I debate with myself if the locals are happy people who enjoy the simple life and pleasures, or they wile away days in quiet desperation, trapped by lack of opportunity and a decaying homeland.   It is nice to see a place not occupied by strip malls and general highway uglies though.   And this is only a few miles from the coast.  Its sort of unreal. 

Nearing Apalachicola, as we veer west onto 98, the ruralness takes on a slightly less destitute quality, and as the coast goes from 2 miles away to 1 miles away, to just beyond that clump of trees, the signs of modern America start peaking through, in the forms of recently built housing of the road overlooking the green blue ocean.    The real estate bubble is apparent too though, as many lots are cleared, and unbuilt, have foundatations, which will never be built, or houses which stand 80% constructed by empty.  Every house is for sale.     But still, on the whole, there is very little in the way of development in comparison to any other “non-state land” coast I’ve ever been on in the USA.   Its nickname “the Forgotten Coast” is appropriate. 

Travelling again, finally, this time with more time and less money, and of course after such a long hiatus, I am excited.    This is my first grand adventure of what I hope will be many since I quit my Wall St. job, moved from NYC, and pretty much changed my whole life around.

The plan:  travel roadtrip style through the deep south: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisana, Georgia, with the panhandle of Florida thrown in for good measure.      The area is known for its southern hospitality, charming mansions, the civil war, Mississippi river, cajuns, delta blues music and, of course, Hurricane Katrina:  all of which I plan to ferret out at every turn.       I also plan to avoid all interstates and as many 4 lane highways as I can.   One girl, one car, and the all the backroads of the south (no grits, though, hate those)!

At the get go, one thing I notice is that there are next to no inexpensive establishments to stay the night unless you drive to a city motel 6! (and even those are generally 60+ bucks).    So, taking the warnings of many on the web, I have made some reservations in advance, particularly in New Orleans, which will be mid-jazzfest when I get there.    As a girl alone, I am going to try my best to avoid sleeping in my car on some country road, with rows of cotton and live oaks sheathed in spanish moss shining eerily in the moonlight.      I know it takes some of the fun of discovery out of it, but honestly, I can discover all day long: there are no hostels in them there parts to wander up to and crash, so all I want to be discovering come evening is a known place to put my stuff so I can enjoy some of the local nightlife.

Another thing I notice is that even though you can find guidebooks to Burma and Zimbabwe, the California coast, southern Montana the Amazon River etc, there is no good source of information on this type of trip!  So, save for a few bloggers who have gone before me, and a random southern foodie article or two, I’m on my own!  Small town south is NOT a big blip on the traveller map!

 Stay tuned!   Day 1 of the roadtrip starts April 25, 2008