I guess the slight advantage of it being so cold while camping is that it certainly encourages me to get my ass out of bed. It was 6 degrees, so not too bad, and I was wearing plenty of clothes which certainly took the edge off it. I was starting to hum a bit since my last shower wasn’t since Tuesday and there wasn’t a shower in the Parkway campground but I was planning on making a hostel in New Orleans tonight. I cooked up some oatmeal and finished up my left-overs from the night before and carried on South West through the Parkway. I was looking for somewhere to grab a cup of coffee on the way but I would be waiting a long time for it. We were in the midst of a high pressure system so the sky was clear and the heater in my car soon got the chill out of my feet. Best to make the most of it since there was rain forecast for the weekend.

» Continue reading “80:Louisiana:Living it up in the Big Easy”

After a night in a carpark in some nameless town I was desperate to check my bank balance after constantly forgetting the previous day and my funds were in dire need of a top up. I was now driving west again in the big S loop down to Louisiana and the Big Easy, New Orleans. The roads were pretty much the standard I was now used to, long, flat and boring. All the junctions had the same set of chains for gas, food and lodgings. The interstates were convenient for getting around the country quickly but hardly a tourists dream journey. For most of the day the most exciting thing I saw was a dead mountain lion on the side of the side of the road. What a treat it would be to see a live one but I would guess roadkill would be the closest I would get this trip.

» Continue reading “79:Mississippi:Looping down to New Orleans”

Despite my thermal bottoms and socks I was woefully under dressed for the night and woke up at 5am absolutely freezing, well almost, the thermometer said 0 degrees. I had to get up and start the heater and since I was up I made a cup of tea and thought I may as well get an early start. If I hadn’t taken a shower Im sure I would have gotten away with the heinous crime of leaving the park without paying but the guy got me while I was having a much needed wash and left a note on my windscreen saying I should pay at 8am when the office opened. It was 6.45am and there was no way I was waiting around for over an hour. They have slots at the entrance where you can pay but the ranger saw me in the car park while I was taking dawn photos and took my $11 there and then.

» Continue reading “78:Alabama:Back in Brum”

Still no complaints about the weather as I made my way through the farms and across the highways south back to the I-10 but there wasn’t really a lot to see. I was eating up the miles but I wasn’t really seeing the ‘south’ that I was expecting. No hill billies sitting on their porches, no crazy people walking around, all rather disappointing. :p Lots of expensive cars, nice houses, lots of money. I had chosen a route that wasn’t taking me past any interesting sights. I would check my map for things on the way and wasn’t really seeing much in that regard. I saw a sign for the USS Alabama battleship site down on the coast and that wasn’t too far off the Interstate so that seemed like a good idea. Of course I got there at 4.15pm and was greeted with the sign telling me the last ticket was sold at 4pm. I still got out and had a look, took a few pictures but it would have been a lot nicer to get inside and have a look.

» Continue reading “77:Gulf of Mexico:Hunting for hillbillies”

My seats went in the skip and I went on my way with the weather definitely back to the Florida standard, but not for long as after 100 miles driving to the west I turned back to the North West and back up into Georgia. It was 28 degrees again for quite a while but the temperature soon started dropping and then the rain started in earnest for most of the afternoon. I listened to the car advice show on NPR and heard about some guy who couldn’t get his wheel off who ended up blasting the thing from a foot away and ended up going to hospital as a result. Dumb yanks :p It wasn’t the only retarded thing I heard that day since there was also a story about a Mexican who rescued a 9 year old child in the forest fires currently devastating California at the moment and earned a deportation as a result. Kind of proves what a freakin crazy country Im traveling through at the moment.

» Continue reading “76:Florida:heading West”

No big surprise that I slept through my alarm at 8am and woke up bleary eyed and confused around 10.30am. So much for my resolution to do another long day on Sunday… At least I was alive, on the way in the night before I passed a huge correctional facility, but it seems there were no break out and murders happening this week. I resolved to have a day sorting out my car and looking for one of my lost memory sticks. I made breakfast and then found I wouldn’t have been going anywhere fast in any case, once again my battery was nearly dead. I discovered I had left my side lights on, which shouldn’t have made any difference since I couldn’t see them in the night but it seemed that was the cause of the problem. After a shower I set about removing pretty much everything from the minivan and taking a few photos for the blog. I wanted to show how you could make a bed in the back with a $20 piece of wood. No sign of the missing memory card though I took out the rear seat (which weighed a ton) and then put the right hand seat behind the left one. It fit ok, but I wouldn’t have much room to sleep in the back…

If I could turn it around it would have no gap on the side and more room for me, but the stupid designers didn’t forsee this option. A handle on the side was in the way, so out came the screwdriver and now the metal bar was digging in the plastic wall of the van. Better but still no fit. I switched to the knife and chopped a square of plastic out. Even better, but still not quite. I removed the plastic runners from the floor of the Minivan, sat on the seat pulling the handle and with the use of a piece of firewood as leverage got it to lock into place. Success! I can always move it back around if I need to give someone a lift. I moved the front seat forward so it would lock back and gained a nice spot between to hold my now unused backpack and other superfluous stuff. I could now fit my twin mattress in the back and sleep on the floor which meant I could also hang out there if it was raining and even change. I had gained 50% more room in the back.

I spend the rest of the day putting some black tint in the rear window and clearing out other junk and stuff I wasn’t using. I resolved to sleep in the back that night and since it looked like rain that wasn’t a bad idea. I worked on my blog, watched some episodes of South Park I had downloaded, played my guitar and swatted mosquitos, and when the moon poked through the trees I got my camera out and took a few pictures, the best one of which is this one:

Crazy Miriam and Patrick had left that morning at 4am to get back to Miami for a gig the next night so I met them at the junction of the Interstates for a final eggy-basket breakfast and to get my pillow back! Shall never the twain meet once more? Who knows, Im going south, she’s going to Italy. Well after her paying gig in Miami. I made myself comfortable and gunned my engine down the highway west. I rode the frequencies looking for something good to listen to. 90% is either ‘god-rock’, ‘god-country’ or ’god-chat/rants’ so plainly not for me. I would listen to it occasionally for pure comedy value, some of the stuff they come out with is absolutely hilarious to a true non-believer like myself. The other 5% is just country which is also occasionally side splitting. I will have to find a link to ‘Christmas Carol’ and post it here, I was crying with laughter as I drove down the highway from the horrendous clichés and terrible rhymes. 2 ½ % you get an R&B station which is usually better to listen to than any of the other crap and then occasionally the state will re-transmit National Public Radio, which at least doesn’t tell you its ‘fair and impartial’ like the fox news radio does… if they’re telling you that, it isn’t and it isn’t!

» Continue reading “74:Ocean Park:The plan wasn’t to get shot!!”

I woke, took another hot shower since I didn’t know when my next one would be coming and went back into Main Street for coffee and a strategy meeting. Happily they were open this time so I grabbed a big cup and set to work on my map. I needed a bold route across the continent, something exciting and fresh. Something no one else had done before.

» Continue reading “73:I-26 South:Makin the PLAN!”

For my first thanksgiving in America I didn’t find it particulary exciting I must say. Would help if I had some family nearby I guess. First I went back to the estate agents to surf, then I went shopping at good ol Wal-Mart, lamenting the poor bastards that had to work that day. Then I went to the Red Roof Inn and got myself a room, a shower and a shave. It was about time I think. I kept working on my damn GPS plots but kept changing my mind as to how I wanted to work on them but I was learning more about how to sort them out once and for all. The majority of the afternoon was spent vegetating in front of first, The Princess Diaries and then one of my favourites, the incomparable Incredibles. I love that movie! It wasn’t all just hedonistic pleasure as I had a good bash on my guitar too… Oh that was pretty good too!

My R&R was interrupted by Miriam ringing to see if I wanted to come and sit in the freezing yard in front of the fire. We were supposed to be off having an adventure the next day but she was getting grief from the people she was staying with and I thought best not to push it. I went over and we sat alternately freezing and then coughing up smoke once I got the fire going. I met Patricks brother Mike as well who is a sculptor and makes really cool latex masks, I saw some of his work in their shed/studio. He was working on a dragon mask, just the kind of thing you would see in the Dungeons and Dragons Dragonlance novels. I want one. It was too cold to sit out, too smokey to sit near the fire so we went for a rather pointless drive and then said our goodbyes as it would be time for me to get a move on the next day. I needed to plan my route out. It was time to have another meaningless adventure. I guess that’s what they call life eh?

In the morning I drove back up the mountain and back down to Hendersonville where I was hoping to run into Miriam for Thanksgiving. She was up in North Carolina with her friend Patrick having come up the night before. I checked my messages when I got out of the park and back into normal reception and found she had left me *my* number to contact her on. I parked up in town, wandered around for half an hour and just came out of the Music shop and was wondering about my next move when I heard “Mark!!” and she jumped out and into my arms for a hug. Well the move was the same as I planned and I dragged them both to the Bear Paw Café for a coffee and more importantly, the use of the restroom. Miriam was desperate to use the internet to submit some work so after only drinking half her earl grey she and Patrick ran off to the Library to sort that out, leaving me with sipping coffee and trying to automate my GPS logs a bit better. She returned about an hour later, still not having gotten online and displaying the all too familiar signs of not having any food. Patrick took her home which I didn’t object to, I wasn’t looking forward to another crisis that afternoon and I went looking for a coin laundry.

» Continue reading “71:Hendersonville:T’was the night before Thanksgiving…”