The Deep South

After recuperating in Florida, the apex of our journey arc; it was time to start heading back to the Northwest, the direction of the grey clouds, rain, fog, mist and drizzle that is Washington. We had recovered, and were longing for more adventure.

The transition from Florida's wealthy, retired population, to the slow southern drawl and good ol' home cooking of the deep south was abrupt. As Julian keeps pointing out... it's hard to believe that the US is a united nation, the divisions are hard and fast. Driving along the Gulf of Mexico we entered Mobile, Alabama, a small city with an ominous, looming history. The Museum of Mobile skimmed over most of it's past; the lynchings as recently as 1944, and of course the KKK and instead focused on Mobile's contribution to WWII and Mardi Gras. We were impressed with the stately homes and the southern food we had been waiting for... Gumbo, my favorite!

Not so impressed with the not so distant past!

After spending the day in Mobile, we crossed the state line into Mississippi, and pulled into a campground late one evening. We awoke to diapers hanging from trees, and garbage strew about, to realize we were sleeping in the local homeless campground. While I was showering, a homeless man in the next room decided he would demolish the men's bathroom, so I quickly rinsed and we left in fear. Mississippi has the lowest per capita personal income in the US and the impact of the recession was most evident here. If only they could sell some of the unnecessary letters in their state name, they could make a fortune, Misipi, sounds like money!

The South has a certain charm, but it also made me feel more proud of the Pacific Northwest than I ever thought I would.

We also spent a day on the Gulf of Mexico.

The turning point

Crossing over miles of swamps into Florida, we drove directly South to Fort Lauderdale, bu it looked more like we had gone North. Being the winter nesting grounds of New England's elderly and elite, West Palm Beach and most of Florida, is dominated by empty vacation homes and sprawling franchises.

Originally, Key West was the only reason for visiting Florida, but serendipitously two of my favorite cousins had found work here on foreign vessels wedged inland amongst Fort Lauderdales palm trees and mansions.

We were lucky enough to be able to stow away on the $6+ million dollar S.Q.N, a super-yacht David was working on as the ship's engineer; the huge boat has an all foreign crew, including a Kiwi skipper Brett, who graciously gave us the marble floored owners quarters for a couple of nights!

The S.Q.N. was an amazing Star Trek like, luxury palace that happens to double as a fully functional yacht. It's one of many such ships that concentrate in the super-rich boating paradise that is the Caribbean.

As the crew toiled on the S.Q.N., Elliot {my other cousin}was just down the road {canal?}, working as a chef on an equally flamboyant dream boat; with only evenings off ,we hardly got to see either of my busy cousins as they polished their ships and soaked up the local flavor of Americana.

Rested and refreshed, we chugged across the famous concrete bridges towards Key West and it's communist neighbor.

The keys where chopped up into housing developments wherever a house could fit {with its own back yard jetty!}, until Key West where a stubborn population of old hippies and now trapped locals call home. We had arrived on a Friday and Fantasy Fest was kicking off, a week long dress up festival of drunken debauchery; basically it was overweight, over the hill couples ogling each other dressed as sloppy vampires or movie villains.

We saw Hemingway's old house and the Southern-most point, then left the beer gut, stuffed streets and the Keys for the Everglades.

We had made the turn North, and after ten weeks on the road, using public showers, cooking on park benches and sleeping in crampt quarters, we where still having a blast and could hardly remember owning a house or going to college!

Amazing Everglade bird life!

Bald eagles, Turkey vultures, Ospreys and bird sized mosquitoes everywhere.

Florida without the people is a swampy, steamy, stew of life; we lost count of the exotic birds we saw, we even saw the rare American Crocodile, the Alligators bigger, meaner relative.

Before turning West, going North, into the South, we stopped in Tampa to see Ami's step father, Roger for a couple of days.

It was funny to keep seeing family in Florida but this time we got to spend some quality time catching up and just hanging out; Roger is an avid hunter and had recently returned from Texas with a Sika deer and some Rams meat.

Our days where spent sleeping in and watching a huge flat screen TV, and our nights processing the deer, ram and pork into hamburger and sausages, it was a lot of fun!

We had such a nice time; we stayed for Halloween and handed out candy to the local ghouls and monsters, it was a unexpected trip highlight, but eventually we had to answer the beckoning call of the road and say farewell to Roger and Florida.

Georgia's Peach

Cumberland Island was naturally stunning and unexpectedly... magical . An Island off the coast of Southern Georgia, where millionaires had once played and now horseshoe crabs, armadillos and horses ran wild. Andrew Carnegie had built the mansion here in the late 19^th century and this was a home where he loved to entertain the super elite and influential.




Now, the island is mostly owned by the state and visitors are permitted to camp, and roam the island as they please. We did so with much gusto, happy to be let into yet another very foreign world, but this time the price was much lower... a ferry ride to the island and a small camp site fee.





We saw massive horseshoe crabs, the wild horses and the real star of the island, the armadillos. Their full body amour allows them the freedom to roam wherever they which, as loudly as they please. They were never hard to find as they make such a noise foraging through the undergrowth, we watched them for hours. Cumberland Island was the best natural gem since Nova Scotia.

The Charming South

After spending a few days in the strip-mall beach towns of North Carolina, the now healthy Julian, and myself were heading into The South. We entered South Carolina with the distant hope of staying at an old plantation, taking in the turbulent history of the south and eating some of their famous BBQ, and gumbo. What we found far exceeded either of our expectations.




We stayed at Mansfield Plantation Inn, a rice plantation dating back to 1718. Paying $200.00 for our luxurious lodging had given us the keys to this once prosperous plantation, it's thousands of acres were ours to explore for the day. The next morning we had our first 'grits' breakfast (a southern breakfast too heavy for me to eat at dinner) in the formal dining room, once again the hefty price of the room had afforded us access into this elite world. This turned out to be the plantation where many scenes of 'The Patriot' had been filmed.

We spent the next day visiting Middleton Place, a rice plantation that was for the most part burnt to the ground during the civil war. The grounds here, had been meticulously maintained; they had originally been a 30-year slave labored project of the Plantation's matriarch. We caught our first glimpse of an alligator here, sunning itself on the edge of the perfectly trimmed grass, two worlds somehow managing to coexist.

We spent some time in Charleston and Savannah simply... charmed. We took ourselves on historical walking tours and managed to see an open home, taking in the opulence their histories had afforded them. The streets were full of wealth; breathtaking homes, luxury cars, tea and coffee shops, and boutiques galore. Leaving town, I was surprised to see the the wealth ended abruptly, and The South's history of segregation still existed with clear physical boundaries.

D.C.

Kim left early for her flight back to Portland, Ami and I left sluggishly but were relived to see the car in one piece back in Brooklyn.

I had been feeling a bit sick and now had a full on fly; being sick on a road trip is ten times worse because the car window is your bathroom sink, and the world is is your toilet.

Ami speed us out of New Jersey into Pennsylvania, famous for its Hershey's chocolate and vampires. Factories and smoke stacks gave way to fields of pumpkins and corn tended to by the local Amish community, dressed in the latest farming fashion from 1886.

I was truly sick by this point, and the East coast was experiencing record low temperatures; at night it froze and my flu was thriving in the cold air.

We gave in and spent two night recovering in a “sleep inn” after drinking many a motherly concoction of garlic,ginger,lemon and eye of newt, we reluctantly went to a doctor for some antibiotics, $300 bucks later.

Feeling slightly better, we dipped south in to the capital on a crisp sunny Sunday, against Ami's better judgment.

Sunday was a good day for the Smithsonian Museums and the solar powered house competition that was happening in the middle of the mall, also we had arrived during a gay marriage/rights march.

Posing in front of the Lincoln Statue and the White house wasn't as interesting as the protesters marching down the main street, much to the horror of many a local resident.

Loudspeakers chanting as thousands of 'GLBT' people and their supporters marched by Obama's empty house, guarded by black suit snipers on the roof and in the bushes, watching in silence.

It was fun to witness a rally that felt straight out of the 60's; America still drags its heals when it comes to changing laws concerning religious and social morals.

The Smithsonian seemed small and childish compared to the other museums we had seen, although it does have most of Americas most famous national treasures; I posed next to some typically blank faced tourists, mindlessly cataloging every item with their flashing digital cameras.

Driving South East to the cost an amazing transformation happened, in a matter of hours we left the cold urban sprawl that began in Maine, and popped out into the humid South.

Signs for boiled peanuts and BBQ where everywhere, Spanish moss hung from the trees and the small rolling hills flattened off into sandy swampy forests.

The weather had found us again as we raced ahead of a cold front and my flu oozed back into action; we had found a hostel in Kitty hawk, North Carolina and spent another couple of days in warm air and indoor plumbing.

Strangely enough we had sheltered just a mile from the location of the Wright brothers first manned flight, a tiny bump in the flat landscape being the highest point on the coast, all the way to Florida.

The hill should have had a sign welcoming us to the precarious, just above sea level, landscape called the South; I made a quick mental note, if tsunamis are coming, this is the last hill till we hit Texas.

Welcome to the South!

We Love NYC!

NYC is immense. Millions of people, thousands of restaurants, hundreds of sky scrappers, dozens of museums, make for a mind blowing, and overwhelming environment. We returned to our two favorite places, The Natural History Museum and the MET, where our expectations were superseded once again. Kim, Julian and I stayed at a hostel in the heart of Manhattan for another 3 days.

We traveled everywhere on the subway and walked for miles on the busy city pavement. We simply saw and did so many things... here are a few photos.

Strolling through Central Park

The fanciest Home Depot I had ever seen.

There was a Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim.

NYC

Amanda, our well traveled friend and ex-roommate had a couch in Brooklyn for us to sleep on, where we met Ami's oldest friend, Kim for a mad week in NYC.
Kim is a nuclear-powered, graveyard shift ICU nurse, who's half cheetah, half chipmunk stamina should be researched as an inexhaustible source of energy.
Together the four of us frenetically explored Brooklyn for three days and nights.


We ventured out to the once vibrant Coney Island, we found an aging carnival on a well trodden beach. We got drenched as we walked around the rusting rides and stopped for a famous Coney Island hot dog. Traveling on a lifted part of the subway we saw the old and crowded cemetery that has serviced the area for such a long time, this was one of the few places in the city not covered in sky scrapers.


After a night out on the town, we went underground to to explore the transit museum and some of the now nonoperational subway lines. It was amazing to see the vintage of the still operational subway system; hand dug and built pre-machinery. Above ground, we came across bustling markets and hoards of amazing food. We ended up at the Brooklyn Bridge, where we were lured across by the Manhattan skyline.

Bausten and Providence

And so we began the civilized stage of our tip, trading empty roads and dark night skies for traffic and streetlights.

Leaving the lobster soaked North East, we entered Providence, Road Island, Olympia's supposed sister city in the East. Providence has a liberal college vibe on the streets, but coming from Olympia it was a giant city to us.

We enjoyed two relaxing days at our friend Freya's apartment, visiting the Harvard campus in Boston and recuperating before NYC.

As we strolled around Harvard Square in our West coast jeans and t-shits, the old East Coast culture surprised us with its fitted suits and formal dress shoes, making us feel a world away from home.

Driving out of Road Island we set the GPS for Brooklyn and left Providence; but we never left the city.

Highway after highway there was no transition from one city to the next, the buildings just got bigger and bigger and the fees at the toll bridges became outrageous.

Entering NYC by car was an adrenalin sport, {merging was an showdown where the most battle scared vehicle was victorious} but it showed us the massive scale of the super industrialized Eastern seaboard.

The amazing glass flowers at the Harvard museum. It's hard to see but all of the cases are filled with glass reproductions of plants, seeds and flowers, hand made in Germany!

The Great Gatsby

Reluctantly leaving Canada, we had forgotten the huge silhouettes Americans cast as we pushed south into Maine. The quiet fields of corn and groves of Maple trees gave way to small towns and the familiar business chains we know from home. Maine is famous for the changing of the leaves and has a reputation for great hiking, camping and scenic parks; after Canada, Maine seemed tamed and crowded.

An immediate change was the signs striping the highway for lobster, even as we entered Arcadia National park we didn't go a minute without seeing a 'local lobsters' sign.

Arcadia National Park is an amazing giant, smooth rock, jutting into the Atlantic, in stark contrast to the geologically flat surrounding area.

It was beautiful, and an industry of hotels, tour buses and cruise ships knew it; at the park summit we shared the view with hordes of retirees hobbling about and taking photos, gassing at the view with their enormous cruse ship below. The cruise liner in the bay below was so huge that even from our distance it resembled a destroyer from star wars, landed, deploying hunched troops.

We enjoyed a lovely sunset, at a post card perfect beach and drove slowly through the small towns within the park admiring the colonial era houses and manors.

Realizing this isn't the sort of park you can camp in, we gave into staying at a fancy looking historic hotel; we felt out of place as we parked out Toyota between a pair of Mercedes coups.

Unwashed and scraggly we paused as we entered the lobby, silent but for the ticking of a grandfather clock, a semicircle of well dressed readers were silently enjoying the fireplace with upright postures.

We had gone back in time!

Our room came with free breakfast and was on the third floor of an enormous hotel built in a prime local, long before the area was a protected park; above our golden mirror was posted “ if joining us in the dining room, please make sure to wear your dinner jacket and appropriate shoes”.

In the morning we creaked down the stairs for breakfast to find the power was off, the stormy weather had followed us.

Two couples in their seventies sat ridged in the foyer waiting for breakfast, both the men sat upright with sweaters draped around their well fed necks.

What shall we do this morning George?

Well in this weather I suppose one plays bridge Charles.

Genius, George!

At this point the silent wives hummed and smiled in submissive approval.

We enjoyed our breakfast looking out onto the croquet lawns and row boats while listening to more antique conversation. Families had been 'summering' here for generations and there were pictures to prove it.

With our time table pushing us, we dove south towards the big cities of the East Coast with no illusions of familiar west cost culture awaiting us.