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Crazy 'bout Cajun Country

Cajun country is my new favorite spot. True, I was probably severely influenced by the food--fresh seafood everywhere. But it really has a great feel, and is a lot of fun. It looks quite unassuming. In fact, when we drove through the guidebook-recommended towns, we didn't want to stop in any of them. But we had planned a night in Cajun country and had to pick one.

By chance, we ended up at the Bayou Teche B&B, and met Mary-Lynn, the proprietor. Mary-Lynn could make anyone love the Cajun country. She had plotted out a three-day itinerary for us and probably would have gone further if we'd actually stayed. Her B&B was outside our budget, so she offered us her "hunting lodge" (more of a mobile home by the side of the road) for "whatever your budget is". She sent us to Crazy 'Bout Crayfish for dinner, then met us there and drove us out to her favorite little nightclub, where she chatted with friends and we listened to a great jazz/blues ensemble. And then she told us when to wake up to catch the Zydeco breakfast.

Zydeco (pronounced ZIE-deko) is the black cajun music. People come from all over the country to listen to it, and to come to this breakfast. The band started playing at 8:30am, and people were dancing by 8:35. I ate eggs over-easy, served on top of some kind of cajun biscuit and smothered in "crawfish etoufee", which is this creamy sauce with crawfish tails. Then we danced. Incidentally, we had an appetizer of crawfish etoufee over jalepeno cheese corn bread at Crazy 'Bout Crawfish, before our 5 lb. of boiled crawfish for dinner. So good...

I could go on and on about the food. On the way out of New Orleans we stopped at this shack by the side of the road (recommended by Road Food), which was packed, and I had fresh shrimp cajun with jambalaya. Yum....

And now we're in Texas, where the only "vegetables" on the menu last night were (I kid you not): cole slaw, potato salad, baked beans, pinto beans, or jambalaya (rice with meat). The menu warned "our vegetarians" that even the BBQ sauce had meat in it--as if a vegetarian would be there to begin with.

Anyway, I highly recommend Cajun Country. Stay in Breaux Bridge with Mary-Lynn.

So far Texas has failed to impress me. It's big and flat and hot and humid. I thought the beach in Galveston was ugly, but I've never been one for city beaches. Some of the old streets and mansions were nice. Houston feels like one giant suburban sprawl. But wow, the people are nice. In Germany, if you smile at someone, they look at you like you might be crazy. In Boston, if you smile at someone, they smile back. Here, if you smile at someone, even just on the street corner while you're waiting to cross, they say "hi, how are you?" I don't even know the correct response to that. "I'm fine, how are you?" Right there on the street corner?

With love from Houston,

Sarah

The big lone star state.

The saying that "Everything is Texas is bigger" already seems to be true. We crossed in this afternoon, and the wide open spaces already loom large, foreboding a very long drive with little to see. We headed along the Gulf coast, over a free (state-funded) ferry, to Galveston, on our way to Houston. It was nice to see the ocean again, to dip my feet in. Galveston is basically the Ocean City Maryland of southeast Texas, but with many really cool Victorian homes - finally a new era of architecture. Something about the place just suits me. The few people we've met have been really nice, and in a way that doesn't seem to have the underlying fake-ness I find with southern hospitality.

Houston is huge, but the first thing I noticed was a much higher standard of living. Now granted we could have driven through just the nicest parts, but we drove through the supposedly nice parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and still saw a lot of poverty. Maybe Texas just does a better job at segregating its poor - I wouldn't put it past them - and the oil rigs really are all over the place, so you know they've got to have plenty of blue-collar workers. But so far, the whole state looks much wealthier on the whole. Guess I will have to update you on this. Last note: I'd had enough Cajun and southern cuisine to last me for quite a while, so the ribs and beef brisket were a nice change. Too bad for Sarah, 'cause the list of vegetables included baked beans, potato salad, jambalaya (Texas style), and other non-suited-for-vegetarian "veggies"!

A crazy night in cajun country!

If you couldn't tell, I was done with New Orleans, almost before we got there. On the way out, I had more beignets for breakfast - Cafe du Monde, much as I love it, was too crowded to bother, but Cafe Beignet served similarly yummy fare - and an oyster Po Boy for lunch - Louisiana Seafood Exchange/Crabby Jack's is another point for Road Food. Up river from New Orleans are many old plantation homes, including the one pictured in "Gone With the Wind". I'd already seen enough antebellum/plantation homes, so I will let Sarah describe that for you. I'm ready for a new style of architecture.

After my disappointment with New Orleans, aside from the jazz, Cajun country was a very pleasant surprise. You can see the influence of Cajun culture on New Orleans when you visit, but only faintly. The real thing - see the swamp tour from a previous post and what follows - is much more to my taste. The town we ended up in, Breaux Bridge, is the site of Louisiana's big yearly crawfish festival. Aside from that it looks like nothing special. But fortunately, we happened upon a very large and friendly B&B owner who took us under her wing.

It took patience and much time to get things moving with this wonderful woman, but in addition to letting us stay in her hunting lodge at our named price - the B&B was out of our budget though very beautiful - she toured us around a local lake where hundreds of Egrets were nesting, recommended the Crazy 'Bout Crawfish restaurant where Sarah satisfied her crawfish craving, took us twelve miles out to the local Friday night Cajun/jazz/blues hang-out, and insisted we get up early for the Zydeco breakfast at Cafe des Amis. Though all three of our guide books recommended this breakfast, the tip to arrive at a painstakingly early 7:30 AM was extremely worthwhile, as we would have otherwise waited in a very long line. We enjoyed an odd/amazing Cajun brunch - my dish was a surprisingly good crispy fried dough filled with a savory spiced shredded meat and topped with powdered sugar - then danced to a live Zydeco band on a packed floor, all early on a Saturday morning! (Zydeco is a fun, jazzy type of Cajun music, with Black roots and a strong rhythm, whose central character comes from the sound made by rubbing a spoon up and down an old metal washboard.)

The New New Orleans

So we've spent 2 nights, about 1.5 days, in New Orleans. I had visited twice before, for the annual neuroscience conference, both times pre-Katrina. Suffice it to say that nothing noticeable has changed, at least to my memory and in the downtown areas that we walked through (Garden District, Warehouse District, French Quater, and Faubourg Marigny). It's a pretty city in parts, but often right next door to a pretty part is a crappy looking part. I don't think that was Katrina's hand as much as it is piling poverty upon richness - a common theme in the south.

New Orleans definitely isn't a place I could live. It's missing something for me. But we enjoyed the cajun food (Mother's), the jazz and blues (Snug Harbor), the coffee and beignets (Cafe du Monde). I'm looking forward pushing off, deeper into cajun country. It's hard to get to know locals in a place where everyone's a tourist; I'd rather stick to the smaller cities and towns.

post-Katrina New Orleans

We have spent a day and a half in New Orleans. Overall, I'm not sure what I think of it. Parts of the city are really beautiful. Oddly, the buildings remind me a lot of Antigua, Guatemala (or not so odd, since apparently New Orleans is also Spanish colonial architecture). Bourbon Street is a bit of a drunken mess, but people are so happy that I find it hard to be annoyed. In general, it is quite simply a city in a good mood.

At other moments, though, I found that I failed to be enchanted by it. Sometimes it seems very dirty, and the really popular places are so overrun with tourists that they are no longer pleasant and relaxed, like this area is supposed to be. The food is good (and a very welcome break from the smoked meat we get everywhere else), but it's so heavy that we skipped dinner last night.

So while it's been really fun, I don't really mind that we're leaving today.

A few items of note. It's a little over two years since Hurricane Katrina, and in general you don't see evidence of it at all. Sure, there are some collapsed houses, but not very many, and if you didn't know there was a hurricane, you might think it was something else. There are piles of tourists, especially considering it's off season and the middle of the week. But houses are on sale EVERYWHERE. In the French quarter, near the convention center, in the poorer areas of town and on the outskirts. Nice houses, broken down houses, everything. It's like they finally got their insurance money and have decided it's not worth it to stay.

On a lighter note, we went to a jazz club last night. Unfortunately they had a blues guitar instead of jazz, but it ws still fun.

With love from New Orleans,

Sarah

en route to New Orleans

We arrived yesterday in New Orleans, but I'll save the description till after we leave. This is our first stop for more than one night--yay, we don't have to drive at all today!

Yesterday we toured another home in Natchez before leaving. It was recommended by the tourguide at the octagonal house (Longwood) as being a more archetypal house. Since all these houses were "town" houses, as opposed to being on plantations, they aren't what I really picture of old Southern homes. This one was more like where we got married--big house on lots of land. Except since it was taken over by the National Parks Service, they didn't convert the land into a golf course.

On the way into New Orleans we stopped for a swamp tour. The swamp (or really bayou) was really beautiful. It's really peaceful to drift along among the cyprus trees. Our tour guide liked to hear himself talk and told us all sorts of Cajun tall tales, which was an experience in itself. I think the highlight was the alligator on a log. (In answer to a comment, no, we haven't seen any other wildlife yet.)

With love from New Orleans,

Sarah

The long road to Nawlins

I can't really say too much about the rest of Alabama, or Mississippi for that matter. There just isn't much there, and most of the nothing isn't even beautiful. Jackson is hardly worth pointing out, aside from the fact that we stayed overnight outside the capital. Road Food pointed us to a good place for breakfast, but we didn't linger, enjoying instead the slow drive down the Natchez Trace Parkway - pronounced to rhyme with matches - which runs from Nashville TN to Natchez MS. The surrounding state forest was quite beautiful, and though we could have and probably should have camped, we didn't, staying instead in one of the sketchiest motels yet.

Natchez has many old town houses (antebellum homes I think Sarah keeps calling them), though most aren't any nicer than the old houses we'd already seen in Nashville and Huntsville, with the exception of a few amazing houses - Longwood (an unfinished octagonal mansion) and Melrose (owned and maintained now by the national park service) - which were set upon much more land than your average town house, more like a plantation home. We also watched a spoof play on the "Pilgrimage", the time in the year when people come to Natchez to learn about and celebrate southern culture, which made me feel almost as uncomfortable, as a Yankee, as I did watching "Bowling for Columbine", as an American, in Paris.

We left Natchez to catch a swamp tour outside of New Orleans, which was really awesome. The swamp, in its unbridled wild nature, has a real beauty and elegance to it. And we finally saw our first live wild animals (after the hawks in WV): a large female gator, a small baby gator, a great white egret, and many smaller bright green tree lizards. Our guide was a real storyteller, bitter and yet content with his lot in life as a Cajun-American.

We drove along backroads (US-90) from the swamp tour in Slidell to New Orleans, past what was presumably a heavily damaged area (now replete with new construction), past the lake over which Katrina built up speed before wrecking downtown New Orleans, and parked ourselves at a nice hotel in the center of the French Quarter, just off Bourbon Street. A little pampering after our long southerly journey!

the Old South

Today we drove through Mississippi. Mississippi appears to be mostly forest. Much of our way followed the Natchez Trace, an old trail that had been used by the Indians and then by traders, who would float their goods down the Mississippi River and then walk back home. There were various ancient sites of interest along the way, but otherwise nothing but trees and small clearings. It was quite beautiful.

One of the things we saw was an old plantation home that had burned down. All that's left are the corinthian columns standing in a giant rectangle. It was very odd walking among these columns, as if you were at an ancient Greek ruin in Mississippi.




We also visited a couple of ancient Indian sites. I hadn't realized that there was anything left of pre-Columbus civilization. They're just grass-covered mounds, nothing too exciting. But there were signs that explained about the culture a bit. It reminded us of visiting ancient Saxon sites in Germany.

We arrived in Natchez (rhymes with MATCHES), Mississippi, in the afternoon. Natchez is in the midst of its annual "pilgrimage", when people dress up in Gone With the Wind outfits and open their homes to the public. We toured the largest octagonal house in the US. Only the ground floor was finished before the war, and the rest is just a facade with bare wood inside. Quite cool.

The finale of the day was a play called "Southern Exposure", which takes place during the pilgrimage. It was a comedy, supposedly making fun of the rich old families. But the audience - mostly old women - laughed most at the jokes against Northerners. Meanwhile, we seemed to find the anti-racism commentary much more entertaining than they did.

With love from Natchez,

Sarah

'Bama for Obama

I kept imagining Obama being pronounced to rhyme with Alabama as we drove through on our whirlwind tour. What a great campaign slogan. As it was we still didn't see many campaign signs or support - haven't since we left the north-east - except for Ron Paul. That's really just an aside, but I don't have much to say about 'Bama.

Huntsville was/is the site for a big NASA research center, where a lot of the Saturn and Apollo tests were conducted. But the museum was a total disappointment, at $20 a person, and the only good exhibit was an entire Saturn V test rockets (one of three in the world, used for tests before the actual launch, and nearly flight ready itself). The old houses were much cooler. We happened upon a tour of one house given by a very energetic southern woman, who told some fabulous stories about the house and its prior owners.

The road food, at this point, has passed beyond the realm of normalcy. It's still really good food, but at places that you'd never given a second thought to in the north-east. Dinner in Tennessee - which we took early in Nashville before driving down to Huntsville - was cafeteria-style, foods kept heated in metal tubs behind the counter where you slide your tray. Breakfast, actually, is what we'd call greasy diner food in the north-east. I like it that way, but I don't know how many times I can eat breakfast like this. And dinner last night was basically a fast-food barbeque joint. Fast food barbeque?!

A small taste of Alabama

Our time in Alabama was basically limited to Huntsville, a town quite far north. Huntsville is the home of a NASA research facility, and has an extensive museum full of NASA artifacts. The coolest item was an actual test rocket from a mission called Saturn V. They had hung it horizontally from the ceiling. It was fully capable of launching, but not the one that was actually launched.

The rest of the museum was highly disappointing, more geared for small children who don't care what they're seeing than people actually interested in space exploration. Not that I am especially interested, but still.

The surprise of Huntsville was in town, where we walked around to see the historic homes. One of them happened to be open for a tour right as we were walking by. The caretaker was this hilarious old Southern woman who couldn't stop telling silly anecdotes about her 9 years on the job. She also told us about the Yankees using the house as army quarters during the Civil War and messing everything up, and the poor family coming back penniless at the end of the war. Poor babies, no more slaves!

Two days out of Kentucky and we can confirm that it was not just the sunlight that made Lexington beautiful. It has been bright and sunny, and the landscape has been quite dull.

Today, Mississippi....

With love from Mississippi,

Sarah

a slow day in Tennessee

We drove to Nashville this morning. The highlight of Nashville was the breakfast place, which apparently has been around for decades and was packed. They basically served the same stuff we'd have in the Northeast, except everything came with biscuits. Biscuits are very yummy down here.

Besides that, Nashville was rather boring. Mike says I'm supposed to say it wasn't "our scene", but the truth is that we just didn't like it. There's nowhere cool to hang out. The only walkable street was the Times Square of Nashville, which is a row of touristy country music joints and not a Tennessean in sight. But we stayed till dinner and ate fried chicken.

The big surprise was south of Nashville, on our way to Alabama. The landscape gets suddenly hilly and really beautiful. There were lots of cows and horses, including lots of babies. We had written off Tennessee as inferior to Kentucky, but it redeemed itself at the last minute.

We crossed into Alabama and immediately found a motel. It's late and I didn't sleep long last night.

With love from Huntsville,

Sarah

Tennessee, Tennessee.

We spent yesterday afternoon and evening with my cousin Katie and her friends in Clarksville KY, nearby the Fort Campbell army base. Katie's shipping off to Afghanistan soon, but the day wasn't bogged down with anxiety or sadness, as you might expect. Instead we talked and laughed about sex and relationships, with Sarah and I sharing our additional 10 years of experience, for whatever that's worth. Katie seems pretty prepared and well aware of what she's signed up for, though I'm sure she will have plenty of stories to tell when she gets back, hopefully none too tragic.

The rest of Tennessee was geographically a less beautiful version of Kentucky, with more cows than horses, aside from a short stretch in the south before the border with Alabama. Nashville was the biggest city we've hit since Pittsburgh, and would probably compare with Boston in size if you took away all of Boston's suburbs. But it's really rather dull, not our scene at least. Many of the houses there are just absurdly pompous, and the discrepancy between rich and poor is just sick. Suffice it to say, I didn't like Tennessee, though I'm sure the Smokey's would have given me a different impression.

from Kentucky to Tennessee

Unfortunately my blogging enthusiasm seems to have run out rather quickly, as it has now been three days since I've written.

Two days ago we were in Lexington, KY, which has been both of our favorite stop so far. In fairness to West Virginia, Lexington also gave us our first really gorgeous spring weather. But even without the sun, Lexington is really appealing. It has these soft rolling hills laced with (usually white) picket fences that enclose huge horse corrals. Five or six horses would be together in a massive enclosure.

I'm not into horse racing, but driving around the farms and the racetracks is really pleasant. No racing when we were there, but we did watch the horses out for their morning training at Keeneland Race Track the next morning.

The other thing Kentucky is apparently known for (both Mike and I agreed that we didn't associate Kentucky with a single thing before this trip) is Bourbon. We did one tour the first day (Woodland Reserve) and one the second (Maker's Mark). I had never toured a hard-alcohol maker, and I definitely learned something. The strangest thing to me is that they do the fermenting in these giant vats (at Maker's Mark it was 12 feet in diameter and 12 feet deep) and they just leave them there, out in the open where the tours walk by. In fact, the Maker's Mark tour guide encouraged us to dip our fingers in and taste it. And then it ends up in bottles!

That first night we had a good southern dinner and then chose a bar out of the cheesy tourism magazine. It was this old-school bar that happened to be in an old school. As our wonderful bartender told us, it isn't for people like us, it's for "horse-y people". Horsey people are sort of like country club people.

Anyway, the short story is that our bartender wanted us to get to know Bourbon, so he served us 9 glasses, only 2 of which we ordered/paid for. The results can be envisioned. Then he drove us back to our motel and we had to get a cab back to our car the next morning. We had some fun conversations with him and some horsey people.

For a total shift of pace, we spent yesterday afternoon and evening with Michael's cousin Katie. Katie is 23 and about to be deployed to a military base in Afghanistan. She works as some kind of medical logistics person for the army. This is her first deployment. Her two best friends from college were also visiting, having a bit of a last weekend together. Her boyfriend, whose house we stayed in, is already in Afghanistan.

We listened to them laugh about boys and college and gave them advice from our older and wiser experience. Every once in a while Katie would mention something about Afghanistan, but everyone pretty much treated it as relatively normal. She is unlikely to be in any danger since she will be well within the base at all times (she has an injury and therefore can't wear the heavy armour required to leave), but she said many people have trouble sleeping at first because of the helicopters and the mortar shells. Honestly, after days of driving, it was more surreal to be sitting in a suburban living room listening to girls giggle about their sex lives than to picture her leaving on Tuesday. Maybe the war is so surreal that I can't even really imagine it at all.

With love from outside the Clarksville military base,

Sarah

The secret Kentucky.

I don't know about you, but I had no idea what to expect in Kentucky. I don't really consider it the south, and it seems silly to associate it with KFC, although I guess that's where that came from. Well boy was I impressed. Practically the entire state is really beautiful rolling farm country, similar to PA, but somehow more striking. By the time we made it to horse country - in and around Lexington, think the Kentucky Derby - the miles of white plank fences and perfect farm houses and barns had already won me over. Lexington itself also has some amazing houses, though I have to snicker every time someone refers to it as a city.

But you're probably wondering why we went there... mostly for the bourbon! We toured two distilleries - Woodford Reserve and Maker's Mark - to learn about making bourbon, and then spent the night at a fancy restaurant chatting up their gay bartender and drinking way too much bourbon - he introduced us to 9 different bourbons all for the price of two! (No need to worry, he also drove us back to our motel.)

Much more I could say about Kentucky, but in short, I loved it. Sarah too, so hopefully she will tell you more. It's definitely a place I could see going back to for a longer vacation.

A Kentucky Morning

Firstly, I just want to say that Pittsburgh was slightly redeemed in my mind in the morning. Penn Ave. or The Strip, as they call it, was actually quite nice, with several trendy-looking bars and restaurants and many cute shops. And The Enrico Biscotti Company was just amazing - 3/3 for Road Food - the chocolate covered coconut macaroons were seriously a little drop of heaven.

West Virginia was, even in the tail end of Winter, really beautiful. I guess it's the mountains that really do it for me. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory was also neat to see - thanks for the tip Mom and Dad - especially when the 140-foot telescope started moving. But those mountain roads really do slow you down. We ended up staying overnight in Cass WV, where the hick factor was just top notch - the best of Jeff Foxworthy.

Lewisburg WV was a really liberal bastion town, apparently started by hippies. We left WV by detouring over the New River Bridge, which was definitely worth seeing. Now we're headed deep into Kentucky to go bourbon tasting on Good Friday. Let's hope the bible belt isn't pulled on too tight.

From Nowhere Kentucky

Today we headed for what seems to be known as the prettiest town in West Virginia: Lewisburg. However, this title must indicate a lack of beauty in the state's towns. We got to Lewisburg and found it a little dull, and headed West instead of sticking around.

In the end, the day was filled with many small stops: a beautiful waterfall by the side of the road, a lookout point with five our six hawks circling right before us, and a huge gorge with the second largest arch bridge in the world (so they say). Today was the first day when we really changed our plans in mid-ride, and when we encountered things we hadn't expected to find. I think the hawks were my favorite. They were so majestic, just drifting around...

I had really wanted to go to West Virginia, probably because of some idealized vision of rural United States. I can't say anything really surprised me. Except maybe the Cypriot and Mexican who served us lunch in Lewisburg--who knew there were such people in West Virginia!

We drove across the border after dinner and checked into the first hotel we could find. I don't even know what town we're in.

Love from Kentucky,

Sarah

the mountains of West Virginia

We are sitting in the living room of our own mill-workers’ cabin in Cass, West Virginia. Unfortunately Cass is entirely closed down for the off-season. But I like seeing this kind of town—I suppose it did quite well at the time of the mill and the timber industry, and grew up around a little railroad station. I am oddly drawn to towns/cities of former glory.

If the first day was about farmland, today was about mountains. We left the highway as soon as we crossed the border into West Virginia and drove up and down through the Appalachians. It doesn’t feel like the middle of nowhere, since you encounter houses and occasionally a small town. But it does feel like a whole lot of nothing. I can’t stop wondering what these people do all day.

We stopped along the way at some kind of space observatory, but I’m sure Michael would be better at describing that.

With love from Cass,

Sarah

Road Food Rocks

Our first day - Boston MA to Pittsburgh PA - was a blast. It's not like we saw anything super-special, but the trip itself was enjoyable. Even the 10 hours we spent driving was mostly fun. By taking some back roads, we happened across Lewisburg PA, a quaint little town whose streets were lined with old houses and street lamps, and looked like the cutest parts of Gettysburg, only smaller. The Amish horse-drawn carriages further along route 45 were also cool to see. Pittsburgh is a bit dull, but we met some nice people who gave us the tip to see the city at night from atop Mt. Washington: a cute little city with almost nothing to do but drink beer and watch sports.

Road Food was a total success - thanks Sarah and Eric! - both for the Whitehaven Family Diner, a Pennsylvania Dutch lunch, and the Primanti Bros. corned beef sandwich with cole slaw and french fries, all stuffed between two thick and very white slices of bread (sounds gross but it really worked). This morning were headed for breakfast to The Enrico Biscotti Company, then off to West Virginia!

Here we go!

Today is Day 2, and we already have free wireless in our hotel! What luck!

So, Mike and I have begun our great cross-country adventure. Yesterday we drove 582 miles/930k (our planned route is somewhere around 9600 miles/15,500k), from Cambridge, MA to Pittsburgh, PA. Hopefully that will be the longest stretch for a while.

We got off the highway for a bit in Pennsylvania and drove through a lot of farmland and some very quaint little historic towns. We got to see a buggy-load of Amish people in their little hats, and lots of red barns with white-trimmed doors like the ones you play with as a kid.

We reached Pittsburgh at about 8pm. After taking an unplanned scenic drive through some residential districts, we pulled out the GPS (thanks, Mom!) and made it to the Quality Inn. Then we headed back into town and ate at this classic sandwich place where they put french fries in your sandwich. Surprisingly good!

We managed to have some chats with the locals, and our bartender last night is so famous they made a doll out of him (Johnny Irish)!

Mike will likely have different thoughts on the same events. Please read and enjoy. And post comments! We have to review them, so don't worry if they don't post immediately. But it would be great to hear from you.

Love from Pittsburgh,

Sarah

Where the hell are we going?

We've only got an approximate route, marked here by major cities and attractions. But we're planning on letting just playing it by ear along the way, so many destination marked on the route may be missed in favor of others that are not shown.