89:Dallas:Picking up the passenger
I didn’t get an early night in any case and couldn’t get to sleep until about 3am. I had started reading His Dark Materials again and that kept me up later than I should have. I managed about 10am which was potentially too late but I wasn’t going to kill myself getting up to Dallas. I packed up my gear, gave Josh a hug and set off first east to continue the loop of the O towards Houston and then onwards to Dallas. It was a pretty unremarkable drive, slightly overcast but the temperature was a sweaty 28 degrees. The traffic was light as usual but as I turned North and past Huntsville the clouds piled up and the temperature started dropping along with some rain. It seemed it was the end of my luck with the weather and I watched it drop and drop, into the teens and then down to 4 degrees, the coldest since Huntersville a couple of weeks before but at least there the sun was shining. I can’t really complain that I had 89 days of great weather and it should finally get cold in December. I was intending to swing further to the east to make the letter O more defined but in the end I thought it more prudent to stick to the I-45 North to get to the airport at a reasonable time. Daniella was due in at 4.30pm and after driving for 6 hours or so, stopping only for coffee and gas I made it to a chilly Dallas-Fort Worth airport with 20 minutes to spare. Finally a passenger for my Gringo Taxi!
88:Austin, Tx:Everyone is Santa!!
Despite the cheap, as in free, beer I didn’t get too drunk and got up determined to do something fun. Josh is a big biker, as in he likes bicycles, he’s not a fat hells angel, so I asked him if he could suggest somewhere to buy a bike and he certainly could. Seems Austin has a place where the locals rescue, restore and redistribute used and broken bikes called the Austin Yellow Bike Project http://www.austinyellowbike.org/ hence the crazy guy I had seen the day before. We gave them a call to see when they closed and I ate some breakfast and made my way up there.
87:Austin, Tx:Killed by cheap lager….
Ah, the bliss of a bed that isn’t wrapped in plastic like the one at the hostel. Josh had gone out early leaving me his phone number and his key. I hope he checked my references :p I took a shower, read for a bit and then found out where he was a drove up to join him. He was in some cool co-op supermarket/café near the University and on the drive up I decided I not only liked Austin, I could possibly live there. Would just have to get past the whole stupid American work ethic and I could be quite happy. Maybe I should see the place in the searing summer first though. It’s a major, MAJOR University town so the place is packed with students and the cool places they love to hang out in. It was a breath of fresh air after driving through the hick towns of the south and I got myself a Tempeh Burrito and coffee and we sat in the sunshine checking the local free paper for bands to see.
86:Austin, Tx:Guilty as charged officer!
Well doesn’t time fly. Only one month left on my US visa and still so long to go. After a night of catching up on my blog and then taking some fun long exposure photos I was back on track and ready to get a move on. Stupidly forgetting to set my alarm meant that I was up very late and as I sat eating my breakfast pancakes was collared by the park ranger who drove up in his big white truck. I saw the night before that the camping was going to be $5 entrance plus $25 to camp. Kinda crazy prices I thought. I considered telling him I had come in early but decided quickly that honesty was the best policy and promised to come check in (and then leave) when my breakfast was done. I was feeling more hard done by when I took a shower in a block filled with dead and dying bugs and felt the ‘no dishwashing’ sign was an affront to my personal diginity as I washed my dishes in the toilet block anyway. Where was I supposed to wash my dishes? Isn’t this a camp site?
I went off to see the place with the tracks again and found myself on the cliff over the river I was walking along the previous night. It showed some tracks in the water on the photographs but after climbing down the rather perilous bank I saw nothing after a good look. Some marks in the river bed were contenders but the tracks can freeze over and they slowly erode, nothing to see here, move along. I hauled myself back up the dirt slope using the abundant roots and thinking how much my nephews would love to come Dinosaur hunting with me down here one day. I swung by the main site but I could see nothing down the bank. Most of the best tracks now lived in the New York Natural History Museum I learned and wondered if they were on display when Renae was corralling me through so she could get packed up in time. Who knows. I had a thought in the back of my mind as I got in the car to leave, I would be able to make a choice when I got to the gate and I didn’t know what it would be. $30 or doing a runner? I’d spent loads in all these state parks and wasn’t really using the water and electricity. I wasn’t even staying a full 24 hours like most RV’rs, usually turning up after dark and leaving in the morning. $30 was horrendously expensive. I drove up to the office by the park entrance…. I saw one parked car, no Ranger 4×4 ….and… kept going…. I got about 100 meters and saw a flash of white in my rear view mirror. The Ranger pulled out into pursuit….
85:Dinosaur Valley:65 Million years ago…
Fool that I was I didn’t put the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door but it was still very annoying when they repeatedly tried to get in to clean. It was nice to have a proper comfy bed for a change but I had more miles to do. By completing the U I was nearly halfway through my task and despite the 300 miles journey of the day before I checked the GPS and found if I had driven straight across the top of the U on the I-20 I could have done it in just over an hour, 70 miles. I filled her up and got some coffee, which is admittedly growing on me since I started using my own milk instead of that cancer fat juice they give you to put in it. Today Dallas? I roared down the I20 and when I finally got a glimpse of the skyscrapers rising like monoliths in the scrubland ahead I changed my mind. I had a loop of the O to do now and would be back in Dallas when that was done so it could wait. Maybe until the weekend.
84:Texas:Warm and wet campin’
I stopped off in Quitman on the way back down south to send a Christmas card to my Grandmother and my old UK sim card to Miriam who needed a European number for the business cards she wanted to make for her trip. I then settled back into the boring rerun of the 165 highway back down to Alexandria and then on to Fort Charles and *Texas*! I was going to go further south and follow the coast for a while but that would add another 150 miles or so and I was going to finish off this damn U today or die in the attempt. The latter very nearly came true. I took the chance at the Texas border to use the free wifi and pick up some maps, it didn’t take long for the receptionists annoying greeting to *everyone* to grate and I got out of there. I learned there was a CS meeting in Dallas that night and with that in mind got off the I-10 and turned back north.
83:Monroe, La:Cold Campin’
No frozen toes when I woke up today but could I get an early start? Nope. After a quick breakfast I hit the showers and was further delayed by the discovery of a frog under the shower outlet that needed to be photographed. I thought it was plastic until it opened its eyes. My camera then steamed up as soon as it got in the washblock but I used my reserved Pentax (which I can just run under the hot tap) to spend a happy half hour chasing another more exciteable green frog around as it jumped from wall to wall and futiley wait for my Canon lens to clear. I did consider liberating them to a more natural setting but then I figured the place was full of bugs and would be warm all year round so left them to it.
82:Louisiana:Doin’ the U
Jeff was undoubtley gone when I woke up so I wish him well in South America, but he could be dead in a New Orleans ditch for all I know. I had stupidly left my laundry to the last minute and now checked out but couldn’t leave until it was done. I saw Meagan and she wasn’t talking to me still, looks like that’s another bridge burnt then. I was also told by reception that a ‘blonde guy’ came looking for me in the morning but I have no idea who that was. Maybe something to do with the advert on the board but I guess I will never find out, it was time to leave. I generously offered to drop a fellow guest off where he had left his credit card the night before and was rewardly by being taken by one of New Orleans famous graveyards. See how it all works out? I wasn’t going to be doing a huge amount of miles today it seemed but wanted to get to the upper left side of the U if possible and set off out of the city and back onto the open road once more.
81:New Orleans:Don’t look down
I got up with a minor hangover and it been so long since I’ve been drunk I thought I might be ill! Just a mild case of not remembering to drink water before I went to sleep. needed to use the laundry but I guess it could wait for a while. Since Jeff was on his way to South America for 5 months I offered and gave him a copy of my Spanish Language class. I hoped he would make a bit more use of it than me since I was being rather lax in that department. It was usually so much hassle to connect up my laptop in the car that I just did it and set it playing whatever was random in the playlist and forgot to study some Spanish as a matter of course. I was coming up to a month left and knew it was going to be interesting when I finally hit the border with a tiny vocabulary and bad accent. Still, this wasn’t the time to worry about it and I should concentrate on enjoying my time in New Orleans since I was planning on leaving the next day.
80:Louisiana:Living it up in the Big Easy
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.
79:Mississippi:Looping down to New Orleans
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.
78:Alabama:Back in Brum
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.
77:Gulf of Mexico:Hunting for hillbillies
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.
76:Florida:heading West
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.
75:Ocean Park:Getting eaten…
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:
74:Ocean Park:The plan wasn’t to get shot!!
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!
73:I-26 South:Makin the PLAN!
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.
72:Hendersonville:No turkey for me!
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?
71:Hendersonville:T’was the night before Thanksgiving…
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.
70:Great Smokey Mountains:I’m Freezing!
Today was a big driving day and I left Charleston in the morning and drove most of the day Northwest to the Great Smokey Mountains. It took far longer than I anticipated though and the route up to the campsite was completed in darkness, not helped by a couple of wrong turns. I really wanted a shower but this was a National Park and they didn’t do cold showers nevermind warm ones. I would have to suffer with a sponge bath. I slept in the back not bothering with the tent and nearly froze to death anyway, the nighttime temperature hovering just above freezing and me with no firewood.
69:Charleston:New Old Money
I had an amusing conversation with the lady who checked me out of the campground who asked where I was from said she couldn’t understand my accent and would I talk slower. She then asked if I could understand her and I replied ‘Of course, you should watch more English Television’ but you could see the confusion on her face from such a simple sentence. America and England, two nations divided by one language. I did get a useful snippet of information from her though as she advised me that I could use my camping permit to get into the lighthouse for free. This wasn’t strictly true as I would find out so drove on the couple of miles down to the next park to have a look…
68:Hunters Island:Camping on the beach.
Across the carpark from Wal-mart I found the taps actually worked so I brushed my teeth and headed back into town to do some more exploring. I had a good few hours in the Sentient Bean again, slurping coffee and researching the whole topic of running macro’s in Excel. I wanted a better way of editing my GPS tracks which have suffered of late through my inability to reduce them in size to a reasonable level. I was looking for a way to work out whether a group of points were in a straight line and hence could be reduced to just 2 points. I used to be good at trigonometry at school but that was a long time ago now and I couldn’t find any useful examples on the internet. Still, I had a mostly productive day and in the afternoon headed north and back into South Carolina for the evening. As soon as I crossed the bridge that separated the states I could see the gas prices drop below $3, which I hadn’t seen for quite a while. Just think, this time last year gas was only $2 a gallon. A 50% increase in a year must be very shocking to the yanks, but it’s still cheap compared to the UK. I camped on Hunters Island on the coast, on the beach which was thankfully windless this time although I had made a windbreak for my stove from an aluminum tray in any case. Groovy!
67:Savannah:Spooky Savannah
Next morning I set off on a proper touristy day to check out Savannah. This is an old town for the States, a bit of a tourist trap really but full of old and interesting architecture and compact enough, for an American town, to walk around and see most of what it has to offer in a day. I drove in, pulled out my camera and set off to explore. There were plenty of trolley tours going around so I grabbed one of their maps to give me an idea of what to go and look at and then just wandered at random. The northern end of the town had garden squares all over which was really nice and rather unusual too I thought, horse drawn carriages ferried tourists about (mostly American) and the town had a aura of understated wealth about it. Old money they call it.
65:Florida/Georgia:Heading up the coast.
I knew there had to be something fishy about the scuba diving and I was right, pardon the pun. I went over to the office for my change from the night before and to ask about diving and she said no problem, and it was actually only $1.07 now. Great I thought, walked out and then walked back in to ask and find, no, it didn’t include equipment! Bleh. I should have known. Hey ho. After that I had no desire to even go snorkeling since I knew it was going to be freezing so just saddled up and headed north. I stuck on the back roads as usual and I started to wonder about the wisdom of this. Sure you see more than you go on the Interstate, but you’re starting and stopping all the time and what is there really to see? Maybe I was just getting a bit bored. I found a fun radio station coming out of Miami which was mostly a Liberal Talk show and they liked to take the piss out of the stupid callers but that soon turned to static. I was back on the road alone again.