Ryan's Journal

It’s snowing. The day started at a balmy 38°F and has dropped since – the moment it hit 32°F snow started flying horizontally in the brisk wind. While this hasn’t stopped the exploration along the Natchez Trace Parkway, it has forced the appearance of a very scratchy wool hat that I bought many years ago from an tiny Indian woman in Ecuador; I love this hat, but the wool combined with the lack of recent haircuts have led to much head-scratching.

After waking up at six I got back on the parkway, and alternated driving, hiking, and stopping to read about early American and Indian history along the way. Thus far I’ve stopped at three different Indian mound sites, three different swamp hikes, and too many nature walks and early settlement sites to count. Overall the Natchez Trace has proven to be a great find, and one that I could recommend to anyone who likes history and nature. Other notable sights have included a tree that was filled with at least thirty vultures, a giant pileated woodpecker, turkeys, hawks, deer, and even one owl who visited my campsite last night.

Life is more exciting with thunderstorms in it.

Much like New Orleans, the state of Mississippi has thus far defied my expectations. Before arriving here the preconception was of an impoverished state full of cotton fields, but the reality has instead been forests, small towns, and rural character. A random dirt road along the Mississippi River led to lakes filled with hundreds of egrets, and the Natchez Trace Parkway has been an amazing find, home to deer, Indian mounds, and really pleasant scenery.

The present moment finds me sixty miles along the 444 mile long parkway, camped for the night in the back of the Subaru with rain pouring down, thunder blasting, and lightning flashing. Tomorrow’s forecast calls for cold and windy but sunny, so further exploration will definitely take place.

New Orleans more than redeemed the state’s reputation as a culinary wonder – the peppercorn-barbecue mahi mahi and shrimp at dinner made the little men in my stomach do dances and compose epic poems, and the gumbo that preceded the main course replaced the slightly-dirty flavor of yesterday’s offering with equal amounts of deliciousness, joy and rainbows.

As is clear from the previous paragraph I’m now in New Orleans, but the trek here had its own noteworthy moments. I-10 actually travels over swamps for 18 miles, and that portion of the road is the tenth longest bridge in the world. The engineer geek in me was salivating while the nature lover was digging the scenery, so I got off at one of the two exits and spent three hours exploring the swamps. Sadly, without a canoe the really scenic parts of the swamp were unreachable, but what I was able to see was still a good change of pace from the Southern California deserts. It turns out I’m a HUGE fan of the cyprus trees in these waters, so I might need to figure out a way to work Congaree National Park into this roadtrip in order to spend more quality time with these water-loving giants.

Arrival in New Orleans was in mid-afternoon and with low expectations; however, while the prior expectation of a dirty, sleazy, crowded city may encapsulate some parts of what’s here, to a much larger extent it’s a lively, old town with as much character as any city that I’ve ever visited. A boutique hotel in the French Quarter served as a base for exploration, and I was able to roam along the Mississippi, through Jackson Square and the old St. Louis Cathedral, and down random roads past voodoo shops, art galleries, cafes, bars, street performers, carriages, trees filled with thousands of chirping birds (literally), and past all manner of unique sights. A future trip now seems infinitely more likely, although not during Mardi Gras when I suspect the “dirty, sleazy and crowded” factor rises dramatically.

After five nights spent in the back of the Subaru, tonight I’m clean and in a bed; angels sang out during my first shower in far too long.

The day’s activities included visits to several national wildlife refuges along the Gulf Coast that were home to ridiculous numbers of birds. I saw more hawks than I’ve ever seen before, and the never-ending flocks of geese and other birds that were arriving was awe-inspiring. Sadly there were no photographs – I suspect that, for a bird, when people shoot at you during certain times of year then posing for pictures isn’t a courtesy you feel needs to be extended.

Since I didn’t quite make it to New Orleans the plan is to head in that direction tomorrow. While in Louisiana I’m making an effort to sample as much Cajun food as possible. The verdict so far: Boudin (a sausage whose ingredients I dare not investigate) is tasty, shrimp po’boys are good but not extraordinary, and the seafood gumbo was decent except for the strong taste of dirt; hopefully the food in New Orleans will redeem the state’s culinary reputation.

If the Google is to be believed today’s route covered about 560 miles across the state of Texas; thankfully I’m now at the Louisiana border and the “ungodly amounts of driving” portion of the trip should give way to the “exploring the Southeast” stanza. The rough plan for tomorrow is to wake up early and roam around some of the eighty-nine million (give or take) wildlife refuges along the Gulf Coast, with a stop for the evening in New Orleans to follow. Based on signs outside of restaurants I’ll likely also be eating some weird, weird things over the coming days – I don’t know exactly what a Boudin is, but it’s apparently on the menu.

Today started with some driving, followed by more driving, then more driving. Repeat that about ten times and it encapsulates the majority of the day’s activity – it takes a ridiculously long time to cross the Lone Star state in a car. The two interludes were a stop at Inman’s Kitchen for what was advertised as being “Voted #1 Barbecue in Central Texas” (I believe it) and a break in Austin to give the Suby some love in the form of new oil and, since I’m a sucker for mechanic scare tactics, a new battery. Despite going completely stir crazy as the miles went by it was a surprisingly nice drive – while I wasn’t a fan of the pervasive oil stench of East & West Texas, Central Texas is really pretty and the people I encountered exceeded the South’s reputation for friendliness & courtesy. Having deer everywhere, including a jumper – the fence he easily cleared was probably four feet high – was a nice bonus.

The day started at sunrise (6:30) in the deserts of Southern California and, with the possible oversight of a stop at a diner, took on all aspects of the classic American roadtrip from there. After a short drive across the border into Arizona the road led along the Colorado River and Lake Havasu. Following a short hike in the Bill Williams National Wildlife Refuge I actually made an attempt to find the bridge in the town of London Bridge – an authentic bridge from the Thames River that was bought & transported to the Arizona desert in the 1960s – but it may be a good thing that this bit of Americana eluded me.

From there the path led along the quintessential road trip route of America: Route 66. With the advent of the Interstate Highway system the “Mother Road” mostly disappeared, but in places it has been revived, and at least in Western Arizona it is a throwback to 1950s America. The hotels that are left have neon signs, the gas stations sport vintage advertising and pumps, Burma-Shave messages line the road, and the stores aim to capture the roadside-stop mystique from yonder years.

In addition this route has waaaaay more than its share of roadside attractions, and one particularly noteworthy one was the town of Oatman. A gold mining town in the early 1900s, when the mines shut in the 1930s the town started dying, but it has resurrected itself as what Wikivoyage accurately describes as “equal parts touristy kitsch and real, honest-to-goodness Wild West atmosphere”. Burros whose ancestors were owned by miners have now gone wild, but they come into town each day to block the only road, poke their heads in car windows, and search out the carrots that local merchants sell by the bag. The downtown has been re-imagined as a wild west town, in no small part due to a 1960s makeover during the filming of How the West Was Won. Despite the revisionist history, a number of the townsfolk struck me as best described as “grizzled”, and there was a charm to the place that I enjoyed but couldn’t quite figure out. Outside of town there are still active mining claims, and a few of the “no trespassing” signs had an unmistakable “trespassers will be shot” undertone. Overall, I left the town liking America just a little bit more for being home to a place like this one.

Due to two factors – a sudden and massive burst of productivity, and an equally massive burst of complacency – the Subaru and I left the confines of Culver City nearly a day and a half later than might otherwise have been expected. On the long and traffic-filled drive through the never-ending four- and five- lane highways of the Inland Empire there were surprisingly some second thoughts – the question of whether it might make more sense to spend additional time focusing on getting some work done was actually being seriously considered – but there was no way that argument was going to win; with rare exceptions I can’t recount any of the innumerable times that I’ve gotten a lot done in a week, but with the possible exception of some family trips when I was still newly hatched every adventure of my life remains a vivid memory.

This trip is slightly different from any recent trips in that the goal is mainly just to have the sort of rough, guy-on-a-roadtrip adventure that hasn’t happened in a long while. There’s a goal of trying to visit an unexplored corner of the country and a desire to try to take new roads and limit visiting the sites of past adventures, but realistically the trip could lead anywhere. At 35 I’ve got this vague sense that things are different from when I was 25, and that I might somehow be more insulated from what made trips in my younger years so special, but I’m hoping the next few weeks proves that intuition wrong.