Here is the travelogue I promised from my road trip through the Southern US.
Saturday, February 7, 2009 – I’d never been to the southern United States before, and it had long been a goal of mine to take a road trip through the South. Since my company was sending me to New Orleans for their annual awards banquet, this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I flew down a week early with the goal of making a madcap dash through as many interesting places as I could manage to see in a week.
The flight went reasonably smoothly. I stupidly left my boarding pass in one of those trays you put through the X-ray machine, which made for a bit of drama. I couldn’t walk through the people sized X-ray machine without the boarding pass, but I couldn’t get the boarding pass because it was on the other side. A Kafkaesque catch-22 (to mix my literary metaphors) that the screening people seemed ill-equipped to handle. It sorted itself out though, and before too long I was able to collect my stuff and put my shoes back on.
I got myself an overpriced airport sandwich and sat down to watch the ground crew load the luggage out of a newly arrived plane. They only dropped four or five pieces of luggage. I guess it’s not surprising to see that the only thing treated with less dignity than the passengers is their luggage.
I got on the plane, waited to get to cruising altitude and broke out my computer to settle in with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil — a preview of my trip to the South. The movie was a bit less colorful and quirky than I’d remembered it, but boy did Savannah sure look pretty. Savannah is one of the places that I’m really looking forward to seeing, so I hope the rains that will be chasing me from Los Angeles will stay away for the day I’m supposed to be there.
I landed in New Orleans, and then jumped through the hoops of the car rental place. I had to return the first car they gave me because plugging my GPS or iPod into the lighter produced exactly zero power. It’s just as well, the car seemed surprisingly large for an economy compact car. The second car they wanted to give me was a PT Cruiser, but I’ve been in those before, and I pretty much hated the experience, so I asked for a Kia instead. This one was still a bit bigger than the car I’m used to, and a bit bigger than I’d prefer, but it was better.
My first night’s hotel was practically in the airport, which was convenient if perhaps a bit loud. I didn’t spend very much time exploring the first night. I wanted to settle in and get my bearings, so I pretty much just checked in and went out to get some food. With all the glorious Southern cuisine I’d heard so much about, I didn’t do myself many favors by getting some fairly bland Italian food. It was close to the hotel though and there will be plenty of time to gorge on BBQ and fried chicken.
Driving around in suburban New Orleans, I may as well have been in LA. Everywhere I looked, it was big box stores with the exception that they have a Winn-Dixie instead of whatever grocery store we have. The waitress did call me babe a few times, and I got you-alled a bunch of times, so there was that.
I closed out the night watching the bland comedy of Saturday Night Live, which seemed like the perfect accompaniment to the bland food and the bland scenery I’ve seen so far. Sunday, the road trip begins in earnest with a tour of the swamps and maybe a beignet (fingers crossed).
Sunday February 8, 2009 – Sadly, I was unable to get a beignet. I had the hotel breakfast and then spent the morning trying in vain to find a dry-cleaner that would be open on Sunday. Somewhere in all the traveling, I’d lost track of exactly what day it was. Ultimately, I headed over to the hotel where I was going to be staying when I returned to New Orleans and dropped it off there. By the time that was accomplished, I had to hit the road to make it to my swamp tour.
The swamp was interesting, but not really what I was expecting. I had been anticipating lush, dense trees with plenty of reptiles and wild life. It turned out to be a lot more like a river. I did get to see some turtles, and eventually got lucky and saw a few alligators.
There were places back in the sloughs that got to be more like the swamp I was expecting to find. You need much smaller boats to get back into those areas though, so I guess they couldn’t really take large groups of tourists to those parts of the swamp.
After the swamp, I headed to Bay St. Louis, MS. Somebody had recommended this as an interesting arty little town. I got some lunch at a little cafe there. The owner (I’m assuming) was this interesting former teacher who’d left New Orleans after Katrina. He regaled the cafe with stories of where the name Dixie came from (in case you care, he favored the bank explanation detailed here) and stories of fleeing New Jersey for the South. The food was good and I picked up a little ice cream to carry along while exploring the town.
I had asked the employees at the cafe what I should be sure not to miss while I was in the area, and they told me there wasn’t much to see. The bus boy suggested getting straight to Florida, which he found to be a lot more interesting and fun. The waitress said that after Katrina, there wasn’t much left to see.
Some guy walking his dog on the street suggested finding the “Angel Tree”, which is the tree that some family climbed up into to save themselves from the floods. As I understood it, a local wood carver had cut some interesting designs into the tree to memorialize the miracle.
I couldn’t find the tree or really anything else to see or do, so I climbed back into the car and headed to my next nights stop, Pensacola Beach, FL.
Pensacola seemed like a nice little beach community. I’m sure it would be a nice place to spend a summer week, but I got there in their off season, and there didn’t seem to be much to see or do. I got some dinner and climbed into bed.
Monday February 9, 2009 Before getting in the car, I took a bit of a walk along the beach behind my hotel. Some street sign claimed that Pensacola Beach had the whitest beaches in the US (or maybe world, I don’t really remember). The sand was full of garbage and flotsam, so I’m not sure how true that was, but with the morning fog, the sky and the ground more than 6 inches in front of me did seem kind of ghostly white, so maybe that’s what they meant.
Walking on the beach was kind of tough going, and there wasn’t all that much to see, and I really wanted to be on the road, so I didn’t spend long. This was to be one of the longest driving days of the trip clocking in at just under 9 hours in the car, and I figured the sooner I got to it the better.
My first goal was to get to Tallahassee, which was about 3 hours away. I planned to stop for lunch there at a restaurant somebody recommended called the Main Ingredient. When I got to the restaurant, I found it had closed and was replaced by a new restaurant. I was starving by that point, and gulped my way through a pretty tasty barbeque burger, so it all worked out OK.
After lunch, I diverted a little south of Tallahassee to Wakulla Springs, which is a park that was part of or at least adjacent to the Apalachicola National Forrest. I wasn’t all that impressed by the hiking trails, but I had been in the car for so long, I was grateful for any chance to stretch my legs. I walked around watching skittish squirrels leap into trees at my passing for about an hour, and then figured I’d better get back into the car. I’d already lost an hour driving east into a new time zone, and it was starting to get pretty late.
The moon was full and red and surprisingly big that night and rising just over the road. I thought long and hard about pulling over to photograph it, but I didn’t spot any sites that looked all that interesting.
It was dark and late by the time I got to Fernandina Beach, FL which was another little beach community just north of Jacksonville. Not sure how I ended up in all those beach communities. I wasn’t paying close attention to where hotels were located when searching and making reservations more than the broad areas.
Anyway, I was just really happy to have my longest driving day behind me.
Tuesday February 10, 2009 I decided to take advantage of the hotel’s fitness room before checking out. Then after checking out, I spent about 2 hours walking in Ft Clinch park, which was right next to the hotel. It was nice, but pretty much exactly like Wakulla Springs in terms of the kind of scenery and animal life that I was able to see.
I was very excited to get in the car. There was only a 2 hour drive ahead of me, and my next destination was Savannah. I’d been looking forward to seeing Savannah all trip, and had been viewing most of the past two days as staging drives to get me to that part of the country.
I got into town right around lunch time and immediately made a beeline for Lady and Sons, a restaurant that is run by one of those cooks from the food channel. I’d heard it was supposed to have good cholesterol laden southern food. I certainly got that. The fried chicken was great. The mac and cheese was unbelievably cheesy and rich. The lasagna had mushrooms in it (boo), but I was able to pick around them and aside from that it was pretty tasty. The bread they brought that you’re supposed to pour syrup on tasted pretty great, and the peach cobbler was so buttery and rich you could barely even make out the slightest hint of a peach in the entire thing. I left feeling stuffed and thinking that I’d never want to eat another bite again.
I made my way to my hotel to drop off my bags and then began walking and walking and walking all over Savannah. It’s a beautiful city with a lot of park like squares on just about every block and big oak trees that are covered in Spanish moss (just about all the trees I’d seen in the south were covered in Spanish moss, but the trees in Savannah were bigger and more interesting).
The trees (and buildings) made photography difficult though. The light came in at weird angles so that half the frame was blown out and half the frame was in total blackness. And, while the trees are pretty to look at, they just look kind of gray in most of the photos I took. I don’t know that I ever did the place much justice. It also proved to be much more cramped than it seemed from the way they shot it in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I probably needed a lot more time to experiment with different lenses and settings to find the right combination. It was pretty to see though.
Before the day was over between the walking at Ft. Clinch and the walking around Savannah, I logged over 9 miles. That plus 30 minutes on the exercise bike that morning, and I still didn’t feel like I’d managed to off-set the lunch I’d had at Lady and Sons. For dinner I went with a light salad.
Wednesday February 11, 2009 I wanted to explore Savannah a bit more before getting on the road. I walked over to Mercer house hoping to take a tour, but they were closed that day.
Disappointed, I found another house that was open to tours. The Andrew Low House was the home of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of American.
They didn’t allow photography inside, which I found to be kind of annoying, but it proved to be a nice enough tour. At one point, the richest person in town owned the home, and I was really surprised at how small it seemed. I guess the city planners in Savannah were just ridiculously strict and there was no practical way to get larger lots. All of the houses in the historic district are right on top of each other and don’t have very large grounds.
After the tour, I got myself some kind of mediocre barbeque for lunch and then made my way over to the Bonaventure cemetery. I don’t know why I ended up at so many cemeteries on my trip, but they seemed to have some of the most interesting photos that I could manage to make, so I guess I kept gravitating to them.
I had a full day of driving ahead of me, so sadly, I got back in my car and back on the road heading towards Atlanta. I deliberately left the interstate on this drive because up to this point, I felt like I’d been missing out on the color and flavor of the rural south.
I managed to see a few rural communities, which were pretty much exactly like the rural communities throughout Nebraska where I grew up — right down to the inevitable Dairy Queen. I don’t know what kind of business plan Dairy Queen had when they were expanding, but no matter how small the town is, it seems like I always find a DQ waiting there. I stopped for a Blizzard and so I could make some pictures of the town.
They did have a Piggly Wiggly, which they didn’t have in Nebraska. They also had about 10 churches for every store I saw. How could there be enough people to keep all those churches in business?
It was getting a bit late at that point, and the rain clouds were rolling in, so I made my way back to the interstate and on to Atlanta. The car got a little wet on the way, but the rains weren’t nearly as bad as I’d feared they’d be.
Once again, my not really understanding the map of the places I was going to, put me in a hotel that was kind of far away from the action.
The GPS did take me through a pretty swank part of town full of some very rich looking mansions on the way to dinner at another recommended restaurant, Holeman and Finch. This proved to be a sort of southern tapas joint. It was a little strange, but mostly pretty good. They had a fried ham and cheese sandwich that was yummy and the pork belly on fried collard greens was interesting and flavorful if maybe a bit fattier than I would have liked.
Thursday February 12, 2009 – I decided to go to Atlanta’s Aquarium. They had some surprisingly large fish including a few whale sharks, and even some beluga whales.
After that, I got lunch at another recommended restaurant, Dogwood. This was another upscale approach to Southern food. I didn’t like it quite as much. The collard greens were kind of bitter. The chicken was OK though, and mostly it was a nice enough meal.
With my ever expanding belly full of food, I climbed back in the car and got back on the road heading towards Birmingham. Once again, I left the interstate system in favor of a few highways.
The drive was a little longer than I was expecting (probably because of all the highways), but it was pleasant enough. I had a few recommendations for barbeque in Birmingham, so I made my way to one of those places for dinner. It was pretty tasty, but my expectations were pretty high, and it would have been hard to meet them. I wish I’d had time to try a few more places. The place I went to, Jim n’ Nicks was pretty chainy, and I’m sure Birmingham has better BBQ to offer. As it stands, I’m sorry to say that Baby Blues in Venice, CA is still the best Que I’ve ever had.
Friday February 13, 2009 – I visited Vulcan Park, which offered panoramic views of Birmingham, and an interesting recreation of a mining company’s company store as well as other history about the growth of Birmingham.
Before too long though, it was time to get back on the road for the return drive to New Orleans. I drove right into one of the worst rain storms I’ve ever driven through. At some points, it was coming down so hard I couldn’t even see the road any more. Fortunately, those highly stressful bits of driving were few and far between, and mostly I just had to deal with the normal heavy rains.
The rain cleared as I was getting into New Orleans though, which was very, very welcome.
I headed to my hotel only to find out that I had the wrong hotel. My reservation was with the Marriott across the street. I asked the valet to bring my car back and then remembered I’d left dry-cleaning that I would need to get back from this hotel.
I had to ask two different people 4 different times for the dry-cleaning, and I had to wait for something like an hour. They didn’t charge me at least, which given the inflated hotel rate for dry-cleaning proved to be kind of a nice savings and maybe almost worth having to wait.
However, the whole time, I was acutely aware of needing to hurry up to get my car across the street before the parade started. One of the many Mardi Gras parades was just about to start and it was going to be going right up the street in front of my hotel, so the traffic was already insane and about to get impossible. When I finally did get my suit back, it took me another 30 minutes just to drive across the street and get the car parked again.
After getting my bags safely stowed, I headed out in search of Mother’s (yet another recommended restaurant). I had the world famous Ferdi Special, a po boy sandwich with beef and ham and a sort of au jus with other beef bits soaking in it (what they call debris). It was good, but not earth shattering good like I’d heard. Yet another experience ruined by too high expectations I guess. The pecan pie was pretty good though.
After dinner, I walked back towards the hotel to photograph the parade. I have to say, I wasn’t very impressed by the parade. A lot of people marching and dancing interspersed with a few kind of boring parade floats. It was the first night of parades, and I understand they build towards a crescendo, so maybe you’d need to be there later to really get the full experience.
After the parade, I ran into a few people from work, and they invited me to head over to Bourbon Street with them. Bourbon Street is a lot like Vegas. It’s loud and tacky, and everybody is trying too hard to have a good time, it depressed the hell out of me. I guess I’m weird, but I don’t get it. I spent a half hour or so taking snapshots, and then headed back to my hotel room to settle in for the night.
Saturday February 14, 2009 I had to wake up early to grab some breakfast and then get on the bus for a scheduled historic city tour. I was hoping this tour would take me to all of the most interesting parts of the city were we’d have a bit of time to get out and photograph them. In fact, we stayed on the bus most of the time.
We did get out at one of the cemeteries, so I was able to make a few photos there. I suppose the tour guide was interesting enough talking about the different parts of the city and the different architectural styles. He clearly still had a bug up his butt about Katrina and how the Army Core of Engineers failed to build Levees that could withstand the storm surge. He kept returning to it time after time after time.
The tour ended at the Mississippi river where everybody got on an old steamboat to head up river and have a bit of lunch. After the river boat tour, I decided to walk back to the hotel through the French Quarter. The houses are interesting, and there are plenty of colorful people roaming the streets.
After a few hours of walking around, I headed back to the hotel to freshen up and go to the company dinner party that night.
Sunday February 15, 2009 I tried to walk over to Cafe du Monde to finally get one of the elusive beignets I’d been trying to get all trip. The lines were wrapped around the building though, and I was far too hungry to wait, so I walked around a bit more taking pictures and looking for another restaurant that was open.
I finally did manage to get a beignet at a place called appropriately enough, Cafe Beignet. They are all kinds of yummy and definitely worth the wait.
I wasn’t going to be needing the car anymore, and it was costing me over $30 a night to park it at the hotel, so I took it back, and then found a cab to take me back to my hotel where I had to hurry to get into a suit for the company’s award ceremony/dinner.
Monday February 16, 2009 Monday was my departure day, but my plane didn’t leave until 5:30, so I had lots of time to continue walking around the city taking pictures.
I headed over to Cafe du Monde again to see if the lines would be smaller and to compare their beignets to the ones at Cafe Beignet. I think I like the ones at Cafe Beignet a bit better, but they were still quite yummy.
After breakfast, I walked over to the voodoo cemetery in the French Quarter where Marie Laveau, the queen of voodoo was supposed to be buried. Then, back to the hotel for some lunch.
After lunch, I headed back out for even more walking and walking and walking until my feet felt like they’d been worn down to nubs. Finally, after I’d been on every street in the French Quarter about 2 or 3 times, I headed back to the hotel to wait an hour or so for the bus that would take me to the airport.
I already made a post for the photos but in case you missed that, here are my Southern Road Trip Photos and my New Orleans Photos.