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.

A quick note

Hey yalls, we're currently in Marfa TX, and don't think we forgot about posting, cuz we didn't. But for now, if you want to see a ton of unedited photos with very little commentary, check out my flickr.

Hearts and love and tacos,

Michelle and Tim

Pensacola, FL

There was really nothing else for us anywhere around Dinosaur World, so rather than force some sort of Tampa experience, we decided to split. We drove up the west coast of Florida foreverrrrrrrr finally stopping in Tallahassee where we would have our first Red Roof Inn experience. Not so bad! This was basically an "off night" for the trip, we got some Jimmy John's sandwiches and watched the Celtics/Lakers in the room. No photographic evidence of any of this is available.

Like I said, it really takes forever to get out of Florida, so we drove another 3 hours the next day to get to Pensacola. We decided kind of last minute that we'd make this a stop, but it was pretty nice as far as beach towns go. We got some pulled pork and brisket sandwiches at The Happy Pig - any restaurant with "pig" in its name is a-ok with us - then we decided to take a drive down to the dog beach. This was more or less a small plot of sand on a little inlet/bay, but it was super duper cute. I like these photos of Fred swimming. There are a number of rodent-like swamp creatures he could be.

Puppy stand-off.

After the dog beach we went to the people beach. Of course we did, it's what we do. But we don't go to people beaches to be around other people, so we drive until we can be relatively alone. Just about where the pin on the map is. We drove pretty far east to get there but after we'd had enough sun we kept driving east to Navarre (also shown on the map). We stumbled on a beautiful beach there with a beautiful fishing pier and some surfable waves. I was amazingly psyched, Michelle knew this meant some alone time with Freddie for her.

The pier.


White sand.

Just west of the pier, some mellow thigh-high rollers. Sweet cutback.

Freddie smuggled onto yet another beach where he is not welcome.

Beach van.

Not anymore, ya jerks!

3,000 miles worth of splattered bugs washed away.


That night, we went to a strange Irish pub/restaurant that has $900,000 worth of dollar bills stapled to the ceiling. We drank some micro-brew, ate some boxtys and giant hamburgers...


...wrote our names on a dollar bill, stapled it to the ceiling and split. Strange place. I convinced Michelle we needed to stay one more night in the area so I could surf again in the morning. We have a "Redicard" for the Red Roof Inn now. Awesome.

Dinosaur World!!!!!!

The eight year old Michelle would have begged and pleaded to go to Dino World, had she known about it. We thought it would be fun to see this hokey roadside attraction in beautiful (?) Plant City, Florida.



LOOK HOW EXCITED WE ARE!! I'm not sure why there is a random TRex head coming out of the roof and dino feet supports. You don't ask questions like that at Dino World.



Even Freddie was excited! (Just kidding, he hates us). It's been so hot that Freddie will just sit down and refuse to walk with us anymore. What a baby.

Some of the dinosaurs are really well made with nice textures and are impressive because they're quite large





Others... well the artists phoned in a lot of the others.







I don't know about those two dinos in that last picture.

Was it so bad it was good? Not really. It was so bad that it was just still bad, but I am happy to see this little weird roadside attraction survive.

If you feel like visiting, there is one in Kentucky and Texas as well.

Bye from Dino World, says wooly mammoth Fredster! (Have I mentioned how he hates us??)

Vero Beach

June 4th found us driving down to Vero Beach to see Tim's cousin Steven graduate high school. We spent the next few days hanging out with family, lying on the beach, and soaking up as much air conditioning as possible.

Freddie loves Vero because he gets to spend time with one of his best puppy pals in the world: Zeus! For the first 24 hours, they refused to stop playing and running through the house together. Adorable.



The best part was finding this in the house, drawn by Tim the budding artist in the early 90s

Walt Disney World, where dreams come true

Magic Kingdom!



We all need a bit of magic in our lives, especially in our mid twenties, when the shine of college has worn off and real life is edging ever closer, if it's not already here.




No worries about Mr Fredster, we put him in doggy daycare at Best Friends Kennel and paid an extra 4 dollars so he could get ice cream time. We're suckers.

We went on Space Mountain, and it's as great as ever. Sooo great that we went twice!



We went on Pirates of the Caribbean, and they updated it by having live Jack Sparrows running around amongst the animatronic pirates

Then we saw a parade that told us to believe in our dreams! Thanks uplifting parade!



Of course, we had to go to Splash Mountain and the Haunted Mansion. I really wanted to get a princess hairdo in Cinderella's castle but it was an hour wait :(

We also went to two of my favorites: the super creepy and wonderful Country Bear Jamboree and the midcentury Alexander Girardtastic It's A Small World



Overall, I think we had more fun there than we would have had we been 12. It's amazing to be somewhere where basically everyone is happy and smiling (besides kids throwing tantrums, of which there are plenty) and everything is nice and wonderful and if you don't like your blind box vinyl toy, they let you trade.

Thanks for a great day, Disney World!

St. Augustine and the Alligator Farm

We rolled into St Augustine late on June 2 and found our fave kind of place : a public overnight parking lot with outdoor showers next to the beach. As soon as we parked, we blasted outta the van and ran into the ocean. It was glorious hitting that 80 degree water, although Freddie wasn't as interested into going into the ocean and just waited for us on the beach.

The next day, we took a nice early morning walk on the beach and went down the road to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm.


We thought it would be hokey and lame, but turns out this alligator farm was awesommmeeeeee!


Normal alligators


Weird crocodiles


A crocodile that had caught a bird


Silly birds


Giant tortoises trying to get romantical


Nesting Egrets


And the wild amateur photographer in his natural setting


Here's the best picture of the bunch:


This was on a timer and taken right after I smashed Timmy's thumb turned Pez dispenser with my hand. Priceless expressions.