Archive for the “2008 Southern USA Road Trip” Category

We were without any internet since my last update. Sorry! But we are back in D.C. now and will have new posts sometime in the next few days. Stay tuned!

We were in New Orleans for less than 24 hours, and the entire time it was freezing cold (which was very, very surreal), but we still totally enjoyed ourselves. As I mentioned before, we stayed right on Bourbon Street — not for everyone, obviously, but we had fun. When we arrived (around 10:30pm), we bundled up in our warmest winter coats and hats and everything and strolled around the French Quarter. It was either totally dead (for the Quarter) or really hopping (compared to everywhere else in the universe), depending on your point of view. We turned in just before our noses froze off and were lulled to sleep by the party noises from the street below.

In the morning, we did the same thing, basically, but we also got food (from Acme Oyster Bar) and visited the New Orleans School of Cooking so I could buy some filé powder. Guess who we saw there?

Yep: John Schneider, best known for his portrayal of Bo on the Dukes of Hazzard (which I didn’t know, actually, but Brian filled me in). He looks more like this now:

He and his family (we assume) had just finished taking a cooking class and were in the shop buying things while we were there. Yee-ha!

And also:

We actually managed to work in two beignet visits in our 15 (or so) hours in NOLA… once when we first arrived (thanks for being open 24 hours a day, Café du Monde) and then again right before we left.

We had to cut our visit a bit short, but we still enjoyed our little taste of New Orleans. And then…

We arrived in Mississippi last night and are now fully entrenched in “family time.” Laissez les bons temps rouler, non?

Happy holidays, everybody!

Hey! I guess I didn’t update the entire time we were in Austin. Sorry! But it was awesome!

First of all, we got more cupcakes:

These are from Hey Cupcake, which is an adorable converted snowball stand. Very nice, Hey Cupcake.

And then we went to the Trail of Lights!

It’s a big event with a very large crowd, especially on the night we went (which was a lovely evening with temps in the 70s — the day before it had been really cold). It’s a walk-through Christmas light display in a large public park.

A couple of my favorites were these local pride pieces — cartoon versions of Austin skyline buildings:

…and future–space bubble Austin (this one was in a display with Space Santa):

I also enjoyed this rainbow/pride reindeer:

We also ventured up to Round Rock to go to Round Rock Donuts:

The donuts get their yellow/orange color because the bakery uses only farm-fresh eggs (apparently most commercial donuts are made with powdered eggs). I have to say, they are very delicious, and the woman who helped us was so nice (like everyone in Austin. Although I guess this was in Round Rock. Anyway.). When she heard we were from out of town and had never been there before, she went back and got us some complimentary freshly made, warm, delicious donuts, even though we had already paid for our order. Thanks, Round Rock Donuts!

Most of our time in Austin was spent walking around and exploring neighborhoods. Very fun and interesting for us, but not so good as fodder for blog entries! So you just have to trust me, I guess. Now we’re in New Orleans in the surprisingly lovely Ramada Inn on Bourbon Street, enjoying some debaucherous street noise.

Speaking of hotels, by the way, we stayed at the Extended Stay America on Guadalupe in Austin and it was great — clean, cheap, plenty of parking, and excellent location. Plus everyone there was really, really nice. (Did I mention everyone in Austin is nice? And well dressed?) We totally recommend it if you need an affordable place to stay downtown!

One more thing… we have been having some serious technical issues… so I will try to keep you guys updated, but unfortunately I can’t have complete confidence in my ability to do that!!

… as it were. I mean, we were only in Dallas for maybe an hour today, but really, we felt like that was plenty. We were just en route to Austin still, but we wanted to make a couple of Dallas stops. First:

These are cupcakes from Sprinkles, which is actually originally from Beverly Hills and which we meant to visit when we were on the west coast, but it didn’t happen. My personal favorite cupcakery is Crumbs, and although Sprinkles didn’t convert me, they do make an excellent cupcake. What you see above, clockwise from the top right, are Sprinkles’ strawberry, vanilla/chocolate, chocolate/peanut butter, and chocolate peppermint varieties. The strawberry one was kind of like a muffin with frosting (not necessarily a bad thing), but that chocolate peppermint cupcake was a revelation. Good job, Sprinkles.

So, then we went to Dealey Plaza.

In case you don’t know (and I didn’t, so don’t feel bad), Dealey Plaza is the infamous site of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In this picture, you can see the street JFK’s car drove down and the Texas School Book Depository from which Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot the President. I’m not much of a Kennedy assassination history buff, but Brian is, so he was able to tell me where the grassy knoll was and what people think happened that day, etc. I have to say that even with the unusually cold weather and the rather obnoxious dudes trying to sell us laminated conspiracy theory manifestos in the area, it’s a pretty intense place to visit. And then, when you leave the area, you have to take the same road out of town that Kennedy took:

That picture was taken as we drove along Kennedy’s route; if you look closely, you can see a white “x” in the road marking the site of the assassination.

So, after that, we headed toward Austin. And now here we are! We’re fully ensconced at a downtown hotel and are hoping for some much warmer weather so we can go exploring over the next couple of days. Hooray!

Yet another state has been p0wn3d by us! For those keeping track at home, you can check off Arkansas. Here’s the route log:

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Um, whoops. We kind of bit off a little more than we could chew today and drove nearly 700 miles. We were just trying to get where we were going, but we are both exhausted now! It didn’t help that a large portion of the day was very rainy (with really low visibility) and all of the day was bitterly cold thanks to a crazy ice storm that those of you who are back home in D.C. and the northeast are now experiencing. But!! Even so, we did have a few exciting moments. For example:

Yay! We’ve now been to 43 of the 50 states, plus D.C. of course.

Now, I don’t have a state sign for Texas, but I have something even better, if you can imagine that:

Hooray! Yet again, we got to stand in multiple states at once. This is becoming my #1 hobby.

This half-and-half sign is in Texarkana, which (obviously) straddles the Texas/Arkansas state line. There’s actually a big avenue running down to this marker from I-30 called State Line Street, and it’s lined with Texas signs on the west side and Arkansas sides on the east:

Now we are holed up in our luxurious Super 8 room in Mt. Vernon, Texas. It’s really quite a nice Super 8, and they scored some big points with me for this:

Nice touch, Mt. Vernon Super 8.

Hi everyone! We got kind of a late start today, but we still made it to tonight’s Super 8 in Crossville, Tenn. Alas, I have NO state signs for you guys. For some reason, the Virginia sign keeps eluding me. We go to Virginia all the time, but we don’t usually have the camera; today we took I-66 out of D.C. and didn’t see the sign! Then, when we crossed into Tennessee this evening, it was already too dark to get a good photo. Hopefully we can get both of those state signs on our way back home.

Oh. Did I not mention we are on another road trip? The main event this time is Christmas in Jackson, Mississippi, with my extended family (hi, y’all!). Brian and I are adding a few extras, depending on how things go. Right now we’re en route to Austin, Texas, and we’re very excited even though apparently it takes 3 days to drive there!

Here’s today’s route log, courtesy of Brian.

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