Texas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What can you say about Texas, its big, so are its people and their opinions of Texas are even bigger.

I was surprised at how pretty the country was, rolling hills and scrubby woods, green river gorges and well placed rocky outcroppings with sprinklings of deer and big horn sheep.

Living in the oil fed state, I can see how Texans can doubt pollution, environmental conservation and even social issues; when your surrounded by clean new houses, ample game hunting, big roads that led to truck filled church parking lots of cheerful folks, the worlds issues seem exaggerated and distant.

Austin is the state capital and its capital building is a replica of the D.C. original, only bigger!

Being the right-wing, gun shooting capital of America, it was a surprise to find out the Capital was liberal, democratic, educated and even a little bit hipster.

The University of Texas was impressive, with an annual budget of over 1 billion! The busy campus is placed on a hill above the government buildings, looking downtown, to the river where a large bat colony live under a bridge.

Every evening the bats come streaming out from under the bridge, trailing off like wisps of smoke into the night, strangely pretty. Another highlight was the Alamo theater, that serves locally brewed beer and meals during a movie; its a great addition to the movie experience, hopefully it will catch on elsewhere.

As we moseyed on West, we passed thru some small pioneer towns where the hard working Mexicans dominate, how strange all this over the top Texan stuff must be for them if it felt strange to us.

Louisiana pt2

We decided to visit one more plantation villa before we left, we turned North towards Rosedown plantation's beautiful grounds to take a tour of it's restored home and grounds.

Ami was lured by the romantic buildings and amazing gardens to the point we splurged on another night in southern luxury. We found a half price deal just down the river at Nottoway plantation, a massive home turned hotel/museum straight out of Gone with the wind.

We got the historic tour during the afternoon then as the visitors cleared out we had the museum to ourselves, left inside a trapped piece of history, with our own massive room complete with four post bed, a refreshing mint julep and view of the Mississippi.

Ami got dressed-up and we walked the empty grounds at night; a white stallion could have majestically galloped through the live oak trees and swept her away and I wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest. We felt like two high society characters straight out of the 1800s cotton boom, the charm of the south had finally reached our cores.

New Orleans

The air was comfortably warm and slightly humid as we drove straight into New Orleans, Louisiana.

Driving through the streets of old neighborhoods with paint peeled walls, we saw the shiny high rises in the city center looming in the distance. The notorious images of hurricane Katrina, the flooding and the Super-dome nightmare were always in the backs of our minds, as we mixed with the tourists in the French quarter.

The South seems to always be trying to forget its past, and the French quarter, polished and gentrified for the visiting, ends at an invisible line where the money stops and drugs, crime and poverty still thrive.

Old buildings and easy going locals give the commercialized Bourbon street some charm, but the real treat was the garden district; where the rich white live in beautiful pillared villas, high above the flood waters.

We slept that night in a mosquito breeding ground disguised as a campground and then returned to New Orleans to explore the cemeteries, beautiful old neighborhoods and taste the rich meaty southern food. We stumbled across a film shoot and got to watch from behind the camera, as the crew hustled and Jason Statham looked cool in his woolen coat in the now sweltering heat. details here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472399/

The air was warm and sweet, the lifestyle relaxed; if it wasn't for the fact the the lower ninth ward resembled an African shanty town, New orleans might be a lovely place to live. We briefly drove thru the flood damaged boarded up homes that the poor inhabit below sea level, long enough to see how desperately poor and trapped some black Americans are.