First Mardi Gras Update

Not a lot of time to update today, but as promised, many more Mardi Gras posts to follow in the next day or so...

Metairie

After the Saints parade we headed off to eat a ton of crawfish and oysters in the swamp in Metairie...

5 People

15 pounds of Crawfish

6 dozen oysters, raw and grilled

10 crawfish hushpuppies

Crab dip

Pitchers of Abita Ale

Laissez Bon Temps Rouler!

New Orleans, Day 1

New Orleans is incredible.  I got directions to a friend’s parent’s house and parked my car in their driveway, then took a cab down St. Charles into the Saints Superbowl Celebration.  It was insane.  I met up with everybody then headed out on the far side of the parade to a bar called Lucy's.  Drew Brees was there shouting into a microphone pouring shots of Grey Goose, we had a smaller bar upstairs (The Attic) cordoned off for my buddy’s medical school party and had full reign of the balconies facing the streets below.  Unbelievable city, but I’ve had no internet access in days and I’ll try to post a lot of pictures when I’m out of this place.

Louisiana

The best part about driving to New Orleans if you’ve just come from the southwest is that once you cross into Louisiana, you see actual trees for the first time since the mountains of California.  Flagstaff AZ had a few, but I ripped through that place at night and there was so much snow I couldn’t take any pictures.

 

Louisiana from the get go is really low lying and wet.  In the drive to New Orleans, there were a lot of big birds, the southern portion of the state was all accessed by long bridges over swamp.  It also seems like every car at every rest stop is in the process of a hunting trip of some sort.  With a lot of traffic at Baton Rouge and in the city itself leading to the Saints Super Bowl victory celebration, it took me 10 hours to get here.  That’s 40 hours from San Francisco to New Orleans, in 3 days.  I need a drink!

Dallas

I stayed in Dallas overnight with good family friends who were incredibly hospitable.  It’s a very cool city, and I got to see a very different part of the city than on all of those trips to Fort Worth as a kid.

 

Within one day in Dallas I,

-       Ate the best biscuit I’ve ever had at a place called Bubbas

-       Wandered around SMU without a jacket (it was 45 – 50 degrees out) while all of the bundled up Texans looked at me like I was insane

-       Spent the tail end of my 30 hour driving daze getting on and off at the wrong places in downtown Dallas

Here's Bubba's:

Texas

Driving through Texas was an experience I’ll never forget.  The snow was coming down sideways as I crossed from New Mexico into the vast flatlands that led to Dallas.  The jagged lines of open mesa steppes and uneven demarcation of Indian Reservations were cut out into a neatly gridded plain fenced off with barbed wire and cattle gates.  New Mexico was an open place where you feel like you should have water on you in case your car breaks down.  Texas seemed to have some sort of civilized logic to it, where the fear of exposure died down even though the amount of people per square mile never really picked up.

 

The highway went from a fast moving interstate to a state highway that cut through mostly abandoned towns.  For the first time since I stopped for gas in Bakersfield, I encountered southerners whenever I fueled up.  After a 17-hour day and in the middle of a 13-hour day, it was nice to finally feel like I was making some progress.  The desert on the other side of the Sierra Nevadas really didn’t look all that different from the desert right outside of Albuquerque, it was the change in the people that really put the difference in perspective.

 

Within 1 hour of being in Northwest Texas I encountered:

-       Signs advertising Western Wear depots, 72 ounce steak eating contests, and large gun outlets

-       More barbecue joints than any other kind of commercial enterprise combined

-       More trains on the track than cars on the road

 

What a surreal place

SF -> Albuquerque

Perfectly cubic rainbow, just over the Colorado River in Arizona:

Its 7am in the middle of the desert.  Yesterday I put in 17 hours behind the wheel and made it from 21st and Mission to Albuquerque NM.  I got to drive through some incredible desert in Arizona, it was raining and snowing with bits of blue sky visible the entire time.  I almost drove off the road from snow near Flagstaff.

Some of the cool things I noticed on the trip that I didn't expect were,

- Massive clean energy setups on the CA / AZ border.  Enormous wind and solar setups churning for miles

- Snow in Arizona

- Giant signs saying "Congress Created Dustbowl" in the greenest fields I've seen outside of Ireland packed with fat cows

California Central Valley:

Arizona Mountains:

After seeing the Moavi Desert (sp?) yesterday, I'm ready for the painted rocks, long flat 90 mph stretches, and hopefully I'll make it to Dallas tonight!

Cheers,

- Jeff