Houston

I think I'm beginning to block out the more harrowing parts of this trip. Michelle claims it took us most of the day to drive across Louisiana and apparently we did so without A/C in the van. I have no recollection. I do remember getting into Houston late at night and driving all the way across the city to the beeeeaaauuuutiful Red Roof Inn: another night too hot and humid to suffer in the van. We had an inexplicable craving for pizza, so as all the pizza joints began to close for the evening, we found one about a half hour away willing to wait for us.


Utilizing Houston's INSANE highway system, we managed to make it in time. I don't think I ever tried to imagine what Houston would look like, but I did not anticipate all the concrete and 12 lane super highways. It's actually quite impressive and the first indication to us that everything is indeed, bigger in Texas.


On the agenda the next morning was a meeting with Karen and Alberto of Greener Grass Design. They run a beautiful and well-curated web store from their home/workshop/warehouse in Houston. We had a lovely discussion about art, design, Houston, Texas, dogs, and road-tripping. They suggested I also meet with Steve at Peel Gallery (photo above). Another great talk with a super nice dude, on a cold call this time. It's always nerve-racking to approach a gallery owner, especially knowing how often they must have to deal with people like me wanting to look at their work. Looks like there are Texas opportunities on the horizon, though. Psyched.


Business taken care of, we went downtown looking for art. The Menil museum did not buy Michelle's suggestion that Freddie was a service dog helping her deal with her "extreme anxiety," so he waited in the shade while we browsed their nice but somewhat random collection. This is a photo of Michelle in front of the building and there is a little boy robot on the roof playing a toy drum. OMG, art is weird!!!


Just down the street was the Rothko Chapel which I super loved. Such a peaceful place. Everyone should go. I'd go once a week if I lived in Houston.




For whatever reason, I had my mind set on possibly surfing in Galveston. We took a drive down which lasted longer than the time we actually spent there. What a trash basket, sorry, Galvestonians. Another Tim and Michelle cranky disapproving faces picture.


I like this picture of Michelle's hair.



We blasted out of there back up to Houston because we forgot to stop at The Orange Show. Soooo glad we went back. Our bellies full of delicious Tacos del Julio, we settled into some tractor seats for Thao and Mirah with the Most of All. It would take me a while to explain what The Orange Show is so you should check out the link. And look at these pictures.








Next stop: Austin!

Swamp Tour

On our second day in New Orleans, we were kind of at a loss. Shopping? Sure, we had done some shopping. Drinking? Sure, we had done some drinking. Flashing? Sure, we had done some flashing. But, what now? Timmy came up with the best idea. SWAMP TOUR! Because when we think of Louisiana we think about toothless Cajuns, alligators, and fan boats!


This is the sight that greeted us as soon as we walked into the building.


Our bellies full of delicious sandwiches from Cochon Butcher (I had their version of a Cuban sandwich and Tim had the pork belly with cucumber...mmm), we were ready to blast around the bayou.


A fan boat is a silly thing, and one that neither of us had been on before. It's incredibly loud and feels completely different than riding in a normal boat. It was one of those 115 on the heat index days, so it felt great to have that breeze.

Soon, we were in the swamp, and spoiler alert, the swamp looks like how you think a swamp looks like.


It's beautiful, but also stifling, and a bit scary.

We were immediately on the look out for gators and didn't see any. BUT! We soon made a turn and stopped the boat. The captain told us he was going to get gator bait, and when he came back, he was holding... marshmallows???

Apparently, gators are attracted to white things, and they just ate them up. As soon as we stopped, we began to see the wakes of a few alligators making a beeline for us.


Then, they were right up next to the boat and jumping out of the water, trying to get to the marshmallows.



Our crazy and awesome captain, who kind of talked like the firefly in The Princess and the Frog (did you guys see that? anyone??) was going to town on these silly gators and grabbing their tails and tapping their snouts. He even passed around a 3 year old baby for us to hold!





Going on an airboat was super fun and touristy and definitely something we had never done before. Even if he had to wear silly protective gear.

NOLA

We rolled into New Orleans late one cranky night, and when we woke up, we almost forgot where we were.

Since I was obsessed with Vietnamese coffee a while ago, I knew we had to go to Cafe du Monde for some cafe au laits and beignets. It was insane hot and humid out, since we have had the privilege of being in a continuous heat wave ever since we left New Hampshire.


We opted for frozen cafe au laits and it was AMAZING. The pieces of fried dough smothered in powdered sugar weren't too bad either...

We ate a lot here, and all of it was delicious. Some of it was not photographed. None of it was thrown away.


We went to Acme Oyster house and had what we assumed to be the last of the Gulf Oysters, some sort of Creole version of poutine, and a delicious oyster and shrimp po boy. This picture does it no justice. Of course, the food was washed down with some Abita.

We also went to the aquarium, because it was too hot to be wandering about and we didn't want to hang out in the hotel room. We saw lots of fishies and jellies and cute otters! We also got to feed the sting rays! It was amazing.


The best sign we saw. Why is the eel a perv?


The worst sign we saw was one telling us that the Gulf of Mexico exhibit was sponsored by BP. Yikes.

We adopted a new friend from an artist in Jackson Square - Oyster Cat!


Since we were in the Big Easy (is that something people call New Orleans?) we decided to get OUTTA CONTROL!!!!! Okay, not really, although we had a a delicious Pimms Cup and Sazerac at the Napolean House.

As it got dark, and we wandered Bourbon Street, we went into a bar and ordered the silliest drink they had. I wandered out one hand grenade richer and eight dollars poorer.


I'm probably frowning because I got hit with a strand of beads blasted from a balcony.

Okay, so you got us, we didn't get buckwild down in NOLA, but guess what we found when we got back to the hotel room??


FREDDIE GONE WILD!!!!!!!

The Shed - Biloxi, MS

We're not gonna knock Alabama and Mississippi at all. We only drove through the two little land grab panhandles which extend to the gulf so that everyone can have a bit of coastline. It's very likely these are not representative and we should have driven north to check out some of what these states really had to offer, but we didn't. With New Orleans so close on the horizon, any derivation back to the north seemed like traveling backwards so we kinda blasted through these states that I was pretty interested to check out in the beginning. We did want to stop over in Biloxi, though, on a food tip from our friend Sameen (thanks, Sameen!).

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The (original) Shed is just outside of Biloxi. I think there are 2 or 3 other locations which I'd happily eat at, as well, but this place was the authentic experience. From the outside it looks like a shed, BUT INSIDE it looks like a shed. We got there pretty early and possibly on an off day so there was no live music. Bummer. The stage and outdoor seating seemed to indicate this place gets pretty super fun on the right night.


Michelle and I had eaten not too long ago, but was that going to stop us? Of course not, nerds. We ordered the smaller of two combo plates after being informed that this smaller (not small, smallER, mind you) plate is just under 3 pounds of meat plus two sides.


I am proud to say we GD demolished that meat. There were ribs, pulled pork, sausage, shredded beef of some sort, and surprisingly delicious chicken. (At this point in our trip we were slowly learning that chicken in the south is so much more amazingly delicious than in the north because they know how to keep it juicy, even the white meat.) Ugh, soooo good. As Michelle would soon inform Sameen via text message, I literally ate until I nearly barfed.


We repped NH on the counter and moved on to Biloxi.

We have no photos from Biloxi. Did you know it's all casinos? We didn't. I was trying desperately to find the Celtics game on in a bar somewhere in town with little luck. For some reason the Hard Rock Casino seemed like the right place to look for this. Of course, it's not. Michelle and I gambled away $3.03 trying to make enough money to spend the night in this very silly hotel, again with little luck. We were up that extra $.03 at one point, then we lost it all. We're both enrolled in gambling addiction programs now.

The rest of the night was much too long and involved me cursing at the ESPN Radio iPhone app, Michelle and I fighting about where we were going to sleep, a stop in a depressingly sketchy truck stop, a very brief encounter with a Motel 6 lobby (real live meth addicts!), and a final "screw it, let's just drive all the way to New Orleans and check into a hotel one night earlier than expected."

Alabama

Mobile, Alabama is "a thing," right? We certainly thought it was. But this was one of those cities where, once again, we found ourselves struggling to find a reason to be there. We sat down at a Starbucks and furiously... touched, rubbed, caressed, molested.... is there a word for the way one interacts with an iPhone? Well either way, we looked to our phones for answers and found nothing. We had seen road signs pointing to a place called Dauphin Island earlier, so we thought we'd partake in the Alabama Gulf coastline's latest tourist attraction: tar-ball season.


We got down to the area and took one of those long beachy drives down a road with sand dunes and houses propped up high on pylons that we've grown so accustomed to. The place was in a weird state of transition with bulldozers moving sand around and very few other cars like ours on the road. We kept driving until the road ended and we found ourselves among a gaggle of CNN news trucks. We were soon approached on the passenger side by a young man asking to see our "badges."

"Oh, we don't have badges, we're just... driving."

"Well, what did you come down here to see?"

"Uhhhhh, we're not sure, why don't you tell us what we came down here to see?"


We were told we couldn't be there and were forced to drive back. Apparently, a police officer was on a break or something, because we missed a check point a few miles ago where we would have been turned around. Everything felt very strange, like we stumbled upon some sort of secret government operation.


We stopped at a section of the beach that was inexplicably open which we'd passed on earlier. The beach was huuuuge, so we made the long oppressingly hot walk from the parking lot to the lapping shoreline where we found...


OIL! I really didn't think we'd ever see anything, we'd missed it by a few days in Pensacola apparently, but there it was just at the water's edge, tiny little blobs of brown oil glistening in the Alabama sun. They could easily go unnoticed, looking like some sort of unfamiliar seaweed, but there were crews of people carefully shoveling each tiny blob out of the sand and dumping it into garbage bags.


We were confused, however, to learn that this was definitely not tipping off the locals to the situation because they still seemed to be completely ok with taking a dip in their jorts. Hmm. As we stared at the tar balls, stunned, exchanging incredulous glances with another amazed woman, said local in jorts approached us to proudly show off the dollar bill he'd just found floating in the water. Ok. Well, I suppose if we let this oil thing get to us then the terrorists win... right?


Our shoes stained by tar balls and our consciences pleading with us to go back and clean some pelicans (shut up conscience, those pelicans will NEVER thank us!), we left the beach, got some shaved ice, saw a trademark-infringing run down shack, took a photo of a big ol' pile of oyster shells and moved on to Mississippi.


Michelle looks cranky because the teenagers working inside this place were super cranks.