Adios, Texas

Everything really is bigger in Texas, including the interstates. It took us a good chunk of time to get across the 881 miles of I-10, but we finally managed to do it. The mileage was not the only obstacle, however, as we took a few long but wholly worthwhile detours in Mat's birthstate.

We debated the long trip down South to Big Bend National Park up until the minute that we made the committing left hand turn out of Fort Stockton. Lured by promises of a wild, seldom visited National Park, and fed up with the Texas State Park bureaucracy, we braved the dark desert roads and pulled into the Chisos Basin campground around midnight. Arriving at a spot like this in pitch blackness always brings about a kind of mysterious magic upon awakening, as you never know exactly what you're going to see. The landscape of Big Bend was a gorgeous surprise, and we were surrounded by a vast desert land punctuated by a soaring volcanic mountainscape enclosed on the South by the Rio Grande.

Being a desolate, open, and infrequently visited National Park on the border of the US and Mexico brings with it some unique considerations. Scattered throughout the park were warning signs not to feed or give water to any "disoriented, tired, and thirsty" travelers that you might find roaming across the desert - instead, the diligent US citizen was instructed "not to stop and call 911 immediately". Things had changed a lot for the park since 9/11, when the Park served as an informal border crossing into the Mexican town of Boquillas. A park ranger told us that in the old days, "Mexican Nationals" used to leave cars parked on the US side of the river and were able to roam freely in the states up to 100 miles from the border, often stockpiling gasoline, furniture, and other staples that were not as readily available on their side. In return, US tourists could take small ferries across the Rio Grande and load up on chiclets, walking sticks, and small metalworked scorpions as souvenirs for mere pocket change. The border now effectively being closed, the Mexicans had to think of more creative ways to grab the valuable tourist dollars; our favorite was "Victor the Singing Mexican" who crooned from his shack across the Rio at any tourist within earshot, hoping for a deposit into his tip jar on the US side. Clearly the risk of a midnight border crossing to retrieve his hard-earned American dollars must be worth all the trouble.

We were both somewhat shocked to experience the scale of the Rio Grande up close. While it is definitely a natural border and not some artificial line drawn in the sand, it was a relatively small river, and we witnessed many Mexicans wading across with water up only to their knees. While the border may exist on maps and even in nature, it is most certainly a permeable and fluid entity. The small towns that exist on either side often have more similarities than differences, and as much as we try to deny it, there is no escaping the interconnectedness of our economic, social, cultural, and political lives. Perhaps those politicians constantly talking about erecting a border fence need to go for a nice long hike down in Big Bend.

After a relaxing stay with some splendid hikes in Big Bend we headed to Hueco Tanks State Historical Site, a bouldering mecca just East of El Paso. The unique erosion patterns at the site have produced a huge number of huecos, or hollowed out sinks, scattered throughout the granite over time. Due to the rain-collecting properties of these huecos, Native Americans flocked to the area throughout prehistoric times for a refueling stop on their cross-desert journeys. In modern time, rock climbers from across the world flock to Hueco as these same erosion patterns also happen to serve as amazingly positive and strong holds for climbing. The site has been recently enveloped in controversy over a Public Use Plan designed to both protect the historical artifacts while allowing modern recreational use, and from our brief encounter it seems to be working well. With climbers pilgrimaging from across the world to the site, it is hard to argue that the sanctity of the area has been lost and not merely transformed. In short, the climbing was epic, the community was friendly, and we were sad to leave.

We headed West out of Texas knowing that our time to get to California was ticking down, but with a few more stops in mind. As we finally headed across the New Mexico border, the free coffee and wi-fi at the welcome station was not the only reason to celebrate. We had made it out of the Lone Star State in one piece and were only a few states away from the familiar territory of home.

Free white bread

We escaped the madness of San Antonio and ran for the Texas Hill Country, hoping to explore the local German settled towns and pull on some pink exposed granite outcroppings at Enchanted Rock State Recreation Area. Apparently Bush Buracracy has spilled over into the Texas Recreation system, as it cost us $27 to camp for a night at Enchanted Rock, after handing over $15 for camping and $12(!) for a day use fee. The small area was beautiful and quite magical actually, as it resembled a pink-granite version of Joshua Tree's larger domes. The Native Americans believed these rocks to be enchanted due to their mystical color and strange, ominous sounds coming from deep within. They figured that spirits of the dead were wailing from inside the granite walls, while modern scientists believe the strange noises to come from expansion and contraction of the rock due to fluctuations in temperature. While we didn't actually hear any noises stranger than the all-night partying of the high school students next to us, we figure the real source is probably some mixture of both.

Driven away by rain and misty weather, we left the park but couldn't leave central Texas without going to Bush's favorite BBQ joint in nearby Llano. Texas Barbecue is a phenomenon that one really has to experience themselves to fully enjoy, but needless to say it was about as far away from our vegetarian days as we could possibly come, even further than eating the raw beef and wild boar pate in France. Outside of Cooper's BBQ lay 7 gigantic open pit barbecues, where you choose what meat you want and a cowboy spears it out of the grill for you. The possibilities were dazzling and included pretty much every part of a pig or cow that you would want to eat. We soon learned that our intimidation was a bit unfounded, as the only vocabulary needed to communicate with the cowboy attendant was answers to his questions "What else?" and "Sauce?".

He gave us our meat (beef ribs, brisket, and pork sausage) on a red plastic tray and we headed inside. Here we perused the vegetable buffet while they weighed, priced, and sliced our meat. The vegetable options were not quite as overwhelming as the meat, and we were forced to choose between corn, potato salad, cole slaw, pickles, and apple cobler. Feeling that the cole slaw and pickles were a pretty safe bet, we paid for our wares and headed to the long, picnic style tables full of paper towels, ketchup, mustard, and yes, free white bread. The fact that we were the only ones in the place not wearing full deer-hunting camo regalia or drooling over the huge mounted buck heads on the wall verified that this was indeed a local's establishment.

Yes, Llano is in fact the deer-hunting capital of Texas, and it seems that if you want to barbecue some meat, Cooper's method is a pretty good way to do it. It's hard to travel through this part of the country and forget that it's Bush country, as evidenced by the framed, signed letter on the wall declaring Cooper's as a "mighty fine barbecue establishment". In fact, it seems that if your store or restaurant is worth its weight in salt around here, you better have a letter from one of the Georges or at least Laura hanging on your wall. To be honest, the first lady seems to get around even a bit more than the President, which might be explained by all the time he must spend deer hunting or eating at Cooper's.

On the way out of town we were flagged down by yet another confused German who couldn't figure out why we had a German Wolfsberg license plate on the front of our Eurovan. We didn't ask him how he knew it was our van, whether it was our lack of camouflage clothing or the absence of a permenantly mounted cattle/deer guard on the front like all the other local cars. He was friendly, albeit disappointed, when we explained that it was just a novelty plate there for decoration. A stop at an old cowboy-hippie run bookstore that would have been at home on Telegraph Ave yielded some cheap and interesting books, including a Scrabble dictionary sure to increase nightly competition. Our time was through in Llano, and we hit the road heading West towards El Paso, our bellies full of beef.

Slowed down in the Big Easy

Believe it or not, up until now we had stuck exactly to the schedule we had planned from the living room floor in Lake Wylie. We had one night scheduled in the city of New Orleans, a highly anticipated stop to a location new to both of us. After spending the night in a Louisiana State Park somehow squeezed between the ghetto, the industrial sector, and the Mississippi river, we were planning on sticking to our original schedule until we got a call from our friend Scott. Scott had a cousin in the city that ran a bed and breakfast and was generous enough to put us up in a amazing house for not much more than the aforementioned campsite. The decision was a no brainer, and we suddenly found ourselves spending a few more days in the Crescent City, while also getting a crash course on pre 1940s year book collecting and trivia, courtesy of Scott's cousin.

In short, we really enjoyed New Orleans. It had all of the conveniences and attractions of a large city with a small town feel, and actually reminded us a lot of San Francisco with its easy going attitude and colorful neighborhoods. We explored walkable avenues, lounged in beautiful parks, shopped at a great farmer's market, ate delicious cajan food, and listened to incredible music. One of the highlights of our visit was a Monday night show at the Preservation Hall Jazz center, a dilapated old building just off Bourbon Street that has seen more than its share of shows and debauchery. We saw Gregg Stafford, a local trumpet player, and his band of local musicians blow the small intimate crowd away with their talent, professionalism, and humor. With ten dollars getting you three sets of world-class, high energy jazz, it's difficult to see how anyone ever gets any work done living in NOLA.

Of course New Orleans is not all good times, no matter what they want you to believe. The street trombone player outside of Cafe du Monde said it best when he announced to the throngs of tourists "Go home and tell everyone that the French Quarter is open for business! Two blocks outside the French Quarter is definitely not open for business, but around here we're back!!" Even without going to the infamous lower ninth ward the devastation and destruction was apparent all around. Whole streets were half abandoned, neighborhoods were still composed of piles of rubble, and basic municipal staples like paved roads and street signs were an anomaly. While the timing was not entirely analogous, it vividly reminded us of our visit to Phuket, Thailand shortly after the Tsunami. In both locations, the tourist area had been rebuilt almost entirely while the surrounding areas lay in disrepair and destruction. All signs of Katrina have been erased in the French Quarter, save the occasional FEMA bashing t-shirt (FEMA Emergency Plan: Run, motherf*ckers, run!!)

In places such as NOLA where so much of the local economy revolves around tourism, the tourist dollar is vitally important after a disaster of this scale. However, is it right for tourists to blindly wander through confined areas, spending money and reveling while others are suffering so much? Every dollar spent in a recovering area takes on grave importance - does it benefit a local business, a multinational company, or a disenfranchised family? While the rebuilding must start somewhere, it is certainly our duty as humans to ensure that it does not stop once outside of the tourist eye, and rather continues on to the people that need it the most. What did become evident in our brief stay in New Orleans was how the richness of culture, tradition, art, music, and personalities was somehow able to cling to the soul of the city while so many of their buildings and homes blew away. Although Katrina has long passed in the public eye, the rebuilding of NOLA has a long way to go and is unfortunately faces controversy and obstacles ahead. We can only hope that the spirit of the city will endure and justice will find its way home.

The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful

Both of us like our beach time, and Mo had never been to any part of Florida past South Beach, so we decided to take some time and explore the state of Jeb Bush and questionable ballot counting practices. We drove down the A1A heading for the Keys, trying to absorb some of the island life along the way.

The keys were awesome, and we were lucky enough to snag a beachfront campsite in Bahia Honda State Park and post up in paradise for a few days. Campsites in a place like this are definitely worth paying for. We were out of bed by 6 AM each morning mainly due to incessant mosquitos and no-see-ums, and followed a beach run up with coffee, lazy fruit-filled breakfasts, snorkling, and swimming. An afternoon trip into Key West allowed us the perfect dose of tourist madness as we watched the sunset from Mallory Square with the crazy street performers and throngs of foreigners. For those of you who haven't been there, The Sunset Celebration is the nirvana that all Pacific Ave, Telegraph, and Fisherman's Wharf type colorful characters hope they might achieve one day. When Eddie the Preacher dies he just might come back as the escape artist on Mallory Square that performs for 30 minutes a day to a bunch of yuppies and rakes in more than $100,000 a year cold hard cash while living in a climatic and scenic utopia.

We exited the south of Florida by heading West through the Everglades after stopping for some amazing cuban food and coffee on Calle Ocho in Miami. Our path through these wetlands really accented one of our favorite parts of Florida, the incredible display of wildlife everywhere you look. In the Keys we saw as many sea creatures as we did diving in Thailand without ever leaving the comfort of three feet of water. Tropical fish, stingrays, horsehoe crabs, jellyfish, and sea turtles were everywhere, along with above-water diversity such as herons, armadillos, alligators (!!!), spiders, lizards, and more mosquitos than we cared to share our airspace with. It really drove home the fact that admidst the swampy wetlands there is a delicate ecosystem supporting all of this life. Thankfully, the marshes are a bit harder than average land to develop on, but when all the space runs out the practical human will surely think of something to encroach on the homes of all these species. Until then it reminded us that we really must do all that we can to protect, preserve, and educate about the fragile ecosystems around us.

Mythbusters: Camping in a Walmart Parking Lot

As much as we bag on corporate America and box stores, we had a little Mythbusters inspired investigation to complete at the beginning of this trip. For a while know we had been hearing urban legends about someone's friend's brother's uncle's cousin who set up shop and successfully lived out of a Walmart parking lot. For various reason unknown to the public, supposedly there is an unspoken rule coming straight from Sam Walton himself that allows weary travelers of the road to take rest in his sprawling, vast parking areas. Perhaps this was to encourage business and build customer loyalty for the RV set, or perhaps a throwback from Sam's hippie traveling days of the past. While we didn't know the exact reason, as we pulled into Savannah, Georgia just past midnight with no where to sleep we decided the timing was perfect to bust this myth.

We scoped the scene of the parking lot looking for obvious long termers around the perimeter and even went inside to use their restroom and grab some drinks. Believe it or not, Walmart was packed at midnight on a Saturday, and we had to wait in line to buy our Gatorade. We backed the Eurovan into the corner of the lot, put our curtains up, and retired to the back.

The night went smoothly and we got a good night's rest. Whatever nervousness we had about the tolerance and/or safety of the situation was soon quelled as we saw the flashing orange lights of the 24-hour parking lot security patrol pass us by every 15 minutes like clockwork. By the morning when we woke up we were just another car in the lot as Sunday AM patrons flocked to the store, and we were waving to our friend the security man as we made our coffee and at our granola before taking off. To Sam Walton's credit, we even spent some 6 dollars at his establishment before leaving, getting some cheese, lunchmeat, and ice. Is Walmart camping an act of marketing brilliance, or simply a humanitarian gesture to those in need of a safe place to sleep? We still don't know, however we do know that if you need a place to sleep in South Savannah, there's a big box store just off of I-95 that will leave its light on just for you.

UPDATE: We continued to test our theory with much success through the rest of our trip, with the most crowded Walmart parking lot being in Florida City, the last supercenter north of the Florida Keys. It was practially an RV campground at this locale, with a huge section of the parking lot taken over by the camping crew. We were able to get a good night's sleep, hassle free, and woke up in a great position to head down south to the beaches.

'Tis the reason for the season

After wandering around the gorgeous metamorphic rock cliffs of the Linville Gorge in North Carolina we were reminded why trad climbing is often more part adventure and less part climbing. We spent the greater part of three days looking for two of the most classic lines in the gorge, which involved shlepping around heavy packs, bushwacking down ravines, and fighting our way through prickly berry bushes. While We never really found the start of the Mummy or the Daddy, we had a great time climbing a beautiful line called The Prow, a route so classic that we did it twice. The gorge was an absolutely incredible wilderness area and we would love to go back, with more beta, a better guidebook, or someone who really knew their way around.

Inspired by getting lost and then found again, we decided to stay off the interstate and head south on state route 211 from the Gorge, working our way toward Savannah, Georgia. Some of you may remember our luck with finding ourselves in the middle of small-town, rural parades (see Kerala, India), and route 211 happened to take us straight down Main Street in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, at 5 PM on December 1st - which coincided exactly with their huge, once a year holiday parade. Actually, come to think of it, there wasn't much other holiday representation - it was all about Christmas.

If you are ever in North Carolina, be sure to check out Rutherfordton, as it really is a charming town. Walking down the main street amongst the crowd of one-deep parade watchers we were reminded how small town parades usually have more people in them than are actually watching. We grabbed a cup of hot chocolate from the local cafe and strolled up and down the strip while enjoying the soulful tunes of the local African-American gospel choir. This group was rocking, and a drummer that might very well have been ?uestlove after a haricut drove the energy with some funky hip-hop beats. Finally, we had arrived in anti-corporate nirvana, off the highway, away from the box stores, and in the heart of America.

And then the parade started. The enthusiasm was contagious as floats rolled by and observers and floaters alike bellowed "Merry Christmas" at everyone they knew, which was usually every single person. The first half of the procession was marked with a few definite, flavorful highlights - the local Martial Arts dojo strutted their best disciples out for everyone to see, with mock fighting occuring every 20 yards. The tumble bus ushered forth a gaggle of adolescent girls doing flips, handstands, and twirls across the pavement. Thank goodness the tumblers came before the horses.

As the parade finished up, we watched the colorful floats and presentations slowly morph into a real-time, three dimensional commercial segment. Of course the local businesses got in on the action with decorated floats and wavers dressed to the nines. As Frosty the Snowman floated by on the Pizza Hut float, the lady observing next to us screamed "I want one with pepperoni!", and we realized that while the box stores had not yet invaded the holdout of Rutherfordton, NC, they were trying their hardest. Perhaps we could organize the Martial arts group and the local ATV club to set up a resistance and keep the peace for a bit longer. But then, where would everyone get their pepperoni pizzas?