Lafayette to Baton Rouge, Google Maps
I wish I could show you photos of this stretch of road. I saw so much beauty on our trip – which exceeded 5,000 miles. This stretch was my favorite. We were on I-10, but I am also thinking there are some really cool back roads here that can be explored.
One of my favorite authors, James Lee Burke, writes some very brutal mysteries set in this part of the country. As I drove through, I could imagine his mists rising off the Atchafalaya Bayou and I know what it is like when the thunder clouds gather before all hell breaks loose. Here and there you also find some settings which are perfect for the louche True Blood.
Welcome to Louisiana
We have had some beautiful drives on this road trip, but I would have to say that my absolute favorite drive of the trip was from Lafayette to Baton Rouge. About 18 miles of the drive was along a 1930’s era freeway over miles of bayou and swamp land, it was beautiful, just lovely. I was driving, so I couldn’t take any photos, and the lanes were a little narrow so I was truly focused on the driving, but couldn’t help but notice the beauty we were driving past.
Our stay in Baton Rouge was a little noisy, there were LSU alumni gathered in our hotel to watch a football game, which is great except their children were running up and down the halls and screeching, oh aarrgh.
Our drive home was uneventful – about an hour across the rest of Louisiana:
Another hour crossing Mississippi, then another hour crossing Alabama, about a half and hour and we are home in Pensacola! It is barely noon, we unload the car and go to pick up the Qatari Cat, who moans loudly to tell us how annoyed he is with us for abandoning him. Once home, he is quickly settled and happy again.
It’s been a long, fun, trip and we are glad to be home. AdventureMan is airing out our old carpets, cleaning some which our cats threw up on (previous cats, not the Qatari Cat. Big Nick. Morganna. Cinnamon. Merlin. We’ve had a lot of sweet cats.) There is work to do, bills to catch up with, doctors to see (oh aarrgh) and meetings to attend. We have to catch up from our trip AND we have to catch up with our ‘normal’ lives. The best part is catching up with our son and his family and Baby Q. 🙂
Baker’s Ribs and Fried Pies
Texas is a lot of fun! As we are driving through Ft. Worth and Texas, very early on a Saturday morning, the highway closes and all the traffic is diverted off, and then back on. Time for some major work, I guess, and early Saturday morning is probably one of the best times to do it.
Around mid-morning, we start seeing signs for Fried Pies. I have no idea what a fried pie is, so AdventureMan explains it to me, it is a round pie crust with a filling, usually fruit, folded in half, crimping the edges, and then deep fried.
Sounds like a lot of calories, LOL!
Then we start seeing more signs, and we decide it is a good time for a stop at Baker’s Ribs and Fried Pies.
We have to walk through the barbecue section to get to the pie section. Our downfall.
There are a million kinds of fried pies, so we buy an apricot, a peach, and a cherry, and we take a few bites, but we don’t want to eat the whole thing because it will spoil our lunch. Lunch . . . we can’t resist the barbecue. We buy a couple of smoked turkey sandwiches for later, the smell is just irresistible.
These girls were just so nice, and helpful. 🙂
This gal is making the pie crusts:
And this lady has just pulled out a batch of the fried pies (to the right)
Fried pies are delicious, and I learned you have to eat them fast or the liquid in the fruit makes the crust start to crumble. The smoked turkey was even better, maybe the best smoked turkey I have ever had. The sandwiches were a wonder.
Update: AdventureMan says choosing to eat fried pies is part of How Do You Want to Die? and that he is willing to sacrifice the few minutes those bites of fried pie might have cost him. (We don’t eat fried pies; this was an exception. Don’t do this at home!)
Entering Texas
We needed to stop to gas up and stretch shortly after entering Texas, so while AdventureMan was picking out some CrackerJacks, I took a photo. I have a hard time imagining staying at this motel:
The climb up the volcano was a good thing; even though this is a long driving day, we are feeling good as we get close to Wichita Falls, where we will spend the night. The sun is setting behind us, so I capture it in the rear view mirror:
Colorado Springs to Wichita Falls, TX
AdventureMan and I have looked at the map and figured out that the drive to Pensacola is another 1500 miles, more or less, and so we want to drive about 550 miles per day or more. We leave Colorado Springs early, enjoying the scenery along the way:
For my desert buddies, when you see piles like these (often covered by tarps or sheds) this is also for snowy roads, the dark dirt helps the snow to melt and gives the wheels more traction:
Hitting an elk is about like hitting a camel – it isn’t going to do anyone any good. We saw a lot of dead deer along the road; a dead deer is always sad, and hitting a deer is a bad way to start a day:
Very soon, we are entering New Mexico:
Soon after entering New Mexico, we come to the Capulin Volcano. AdventureMan has been by once before, and we always wanted to climb this volcano – so we did!
You can drive up to an observation post, and then hike to the top of the volcano.
I am fit, and I did fine – like for the first twenty meters, after which I was huffing and puffing in the thin air. The path was a steady incline, straight up the rim of the old volcano – this is the path:
Getting to the top – ahhhhh. That was great:
Hiking to the top put a little pressure on us the rest of the day to hit our mileage goals, but it was worth it, every step. 🙂
So Much Hatred . . .
Today I saw a story about US soldiers in Afghanistan, killing for fun. It follows hard on the heels of the story of Reverend Terry Jones who has ‘prayerfully’ decided to burn a copy of the Quran on the anniversary, today, of 9-11. These stories are like wounds in my heart, and I begin to wonder if there is any hope for ‘peace on earth, good will toward men.’
Sometimes I get discouraged.
9-11 wounded us badly, wounded that fountain of optimism that believes we can all be friends, that we can overcome, that ‘Yes, we can.’
We’ve recovered.
Acts of hate are acts of hate, whether they originate from Americans, from Moslems, from Hindus, from Mongolians, from Krakens . . . We each have it within us to make the right choice, to choose NOT to act in hate against our fellow man. It’s not a one-time choice. It’s a choice we each, individually, make over and over again, every day.
Four Years Old :-) Birthday Cake and Adult Beverages!
Come on by for a celebration and a visit. 🙂 Sit and chat a while.
When I started blogging, in Kuwait, in 2006, I had no idea where it was going to take me. I felt scared, and I felt vulnerable. I felt exposed. Slowly, I developed virtual relationships, some of which even turned into real friendships. I had no idea I would grow to care so much about my readers, some of whom I have never even met.
In the background, I have had meetings, and I have had correspondences. We’ve shared joys and laughter and tears and anguish. There are times now, now that my life is so much less interesting than when I was living in exotic locations, when I think about stopping. Sometimes, even in Kuwait and Qatar, it was a struggle. There are always days when my life just doesn’t seem that interesting.
I don’t want to bore you. On the other hand, I have grown to enjoy our time together. So, here is my blogging pledge – I will keep blogging as long as it keeps working for you as well as for me. If I am boring myself to tears, I will stop. Meanwhile, it helps me to hear from you, and to have great discussions on these pages. There have been some good ones!
Red Hot and Blue in Colorado Springs
No, No, I didn’t take any photos of my shopping trip yesterday; we don’t have a Macy’s in Pensacola, so I spent some time having fun in one of my favorite stores. It was a great day. I also found Ruth’s Stitchery and spent a lot of time looking at new quilting fabrics and patterns. The problem with Ruth’s is that they also have fabulous cross-stitching materials and patterns, and I am SO tempted to buy them, even though I don’t really cross stitch any more; unless you have really really good light, stitching on linen, which is what I like to do, is a lot more difficult than it used to be.
I picked up AdventureMan and as a special treat to me he took me to Red Hot and Blue, my favorite restaurant in Colorado Springs. He said ‘have you noticed how many of your reviews are BBQ restaurants?” LLOOOLLL! Yes! It’s true! We love BBQ. We do go to other restaurants, but most of the Pensacola restaurants we hang out in I have already reviewed at least once! Out of town, we often explore new BBQ. 🙂
We started with hushpuppies, and these were small, but good:
We tested all the sauces – the hot ones were really HOT!
We couldn’t possibly eat all this food, but we tried it all, and enjoyed it so much there was no room left for dessert:
Red Hot and Blue Chili
Their tangy cole slaw
My pulled chicken and potato salad
AdventureMan’s pulled pork and beans
Wyoming to Colorado Springs
We are eager to get going, but oh, we are shivering, and happy we brought a little fleece with us:
It is a glorious morning, bright sunshine, clear air, a day when we are glad to be alive and on the road.
Across South Dakota and Montana, we saw the huge round rolls of hay that we saw in France and Germany, but across Wyoming, most of the bales are the old fashioned square ones. We are thinking square is easier to store, but there must be some advantage, also, to the round ones, as they seem to be the latest invention. Anyone know why?
We find a rest stop so we can change drivers, and there is a set of sculptures there called The Greeting and the Gift, just as you are exiting Wyoming and entering Colorado:
I love this one. It looks noble. The First Nation (Native American) is offering a pipe of water. When I was a kid, I would have thought it was a peace pipe, but the explanation says otherwise. The Greeting statue I don’t like as much for two reasons – his hands seem out-of-scale large to me, and the hair does not look like a mountain man or explorer (to me) but looks sort of Hellenic. What do you think?
At the end of a very short drive is a city I love, Colorado Springs. I love it because (most of the time) the air seems clear and clean to me. I love it in the winter, when it is cold, and in the summer, when it is hot, it is dry heat, like Kuwait, but not so hot, so it doesn’t bother me. There are a million quilt shops here, all of which I intend to hit today while AdventureMan does some consulting and I drive the gypsy-mobile. There are also Macy’s department stores, which Pensacola doesn’t have, and Sephora, which Pensacola may be getting soon but did not have when I left.
We went to see George Clooney’s new film, The American, which gave us hours of conversation, and on our way to our Marriott home picked up a feast from Whole Foods – all vegetable! Balsamic grilled brussel sprouts, marinated grilled beets, a vegetarian meatloaf that really tasted like meat (!), guacomole, a pico de gallo with some bite, pita bread, sauteed garlic spinach, and some wonderfully tasty olives. AdventureMan picked up a really good bottle of Colorado merlot (yes, it exists, and is called Two Rivers: Chateau Deux Fleuves Vineyards.
Crowning our day was a sunset over Pike’s Peak. I don’t like a lot of drama in my life, but I love a lot of drama in a sunset. I loved this one so much that I am going to show you three different shots, because I can’t choose the one I like the best.
Sights Along the Road from Boise to Utah to Wyoming
We drive. We trade off driving. During these long days, we do see some dramatic scenery, but we are driving for hours, and the best part of our day tends to be finding our hotel and settling in. We were lucky to find another Marriott Residence Inn in Boise, with a wonderful pool, a warm welcome, popcorn in the room to be popped in the microwave in our little kitchen. After lunch at Mazatlan, even though it was very salad-y, we were really sort of restauranted out, so we popped by a grocery store, bought sandwiches and salads, and took them back to eat at our own breakfast bar. After having a swim, of course.
The beds at the Marriott Residence are SO good. We sleep hard, and get up ready to start another day, the hot breakfast even includes oatmeal. I choke it down, thinking of how my sister Sparkle calls it ‘spackle’. Can you believe there are people living on this earth who LIKE eating oatmeal??
By seven ten we are on the road, by seven twenty we are back at the hotel. I was going to take a photo of the sunrise and discovered I had forgotten my camera at the hotel. I am thinking (glass half full) how very lucky I was to find out right away, and we were back on the road by seven thirty.
Here are some of the sights we saw – and only in Oregon and Idaho have I seen so many dogs in the back of trucks:
And never have I seen so many trucks. I though trucks were a very Southern thing, but they are also a very Western thing. Here are some sights from our long day:
We saw so many wonderful crops growing in Southern Washington, cherries, peaches, apricots, apples, beans – and in Idaho, we saw a lot of cattle, and sheep, and . . . we think these are potatos:
This was an unspeakable toilet I encountered in Southern Idaho, exceptionally bad.
Traffic was light through Wyoming, but heavy coming in the other direction:
We had a good thing and a bad thing happen at the end of the day, but that’s the next blog entry. 🙂
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