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Diffstat (limited to 'published')
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt | 84 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt | 20 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt | 22 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt | 60 |
4 files changed, 186 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/published/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt b/published/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5e0776 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2018-01-24_eastbound-down.txt @@ -0,0 +1,84 @@ +We really loved the southern Arizona desert we've called home for the better part of January, but unfortunately the desert gets bitter cold this time of year, too cold for us. We had a choice -- head further south, into Mexico, or head east and south, back to the Gulf Coast. We really wanted to go to Mexico, but the Georgia DMV lost our registration papers for the better part of two months and it was looking like they were never going to get to us. No registration, no Mexico[^1]. + +We ended up deciding to head back to what remains one of our favorite places -- the southern Gulf Coast. + +We loved the southwest desert, especially the our corners area, but generally most of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. If the weather were different we'd have headed north into northern Arizona and southern Utah again. But we go where the weather is warm and so we're headed back to the south for now. + +While Mexico still has a strong pull on our future, there are few things in this country quite as nice as spring in the south. We're looking forward to it. Especially because we felt like we had to rush through Louisiana on our way out west. + +It is of course, a long way from here to there. We hit the road for some long driving days across New Mexico and Texas. We rarely do more than 200 miles a day and hardly ever drive back to back days. But from the time we left the Dragoons we covered roughly 1200 miles in five days with only one weekend as a break. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-22_123826_texas-driving.jpg" id="image-1069" class="picwide" /> + +One night, the day we left the Dragoons, the forecast called for 18 degrees overnight so we got a hotel in Deming NM. I ended up sleeping in the bus anyway and it wasn't that bad, but we try to err on the side of caution for the kids. From there we went on to Las Cruces, ostensibly for the night, but we knew we wanted to head up to the Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns the next day and that area was having winds in the 60-70 mile and hour range. + +I wanted to see what the bus would be like in those kinds of winds, but Corrinne wasn't having it. We holed up at a state park outside Las Cruces for the weekend. Even there the wind was bad enough that one day I don't think we left the bus for more than 20 minutes. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-19_152431_leasburg-dam.jpg" id="image-1067" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-19_152328_leasburg-dam.jpg" id="image-1066" class="picwide" /> + +When things finally calmed down we hit the road again and made the Guadalupe Mountains only to discover that -- despite what the news was saying -- the park was closed for the government shutdown. I really didn't care because I was still so excited the bus had actually made it over Guadalupe Pass without incident that the whole world could have been on fire and I wouldn't have cared. I made it over the hill damn it. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-22_122925_texas-driving.jpg" id="image-1068" class="picwide caption" /> + +We ended up camping in a parking lot just down the road for the night, along with a few other rigs in the same situation. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-22_145014_texas-driving.jpg" id="image-1070" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-23_062404_texas-driving.jpg" id="image-1071" class="picwide caption" /> + +The next morning the government was back in business so we drove up to Carlsbad Caverns and had the place pretty much to ourselves. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-23_092914_carlsbad-caverns.jpg" id="image-1072" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-23_094625_carlsbad-caverns.jpg" id="image-1073" class="picwide" /> + +Carlsbad was just like Corrinne and I remembered it from our childhoods, with one exception -- there's almost no water in any of the pools now. Turns out the park service was artificially filling those pools the keep visitors enthralled, but at some point it thought better of that and now lets nature run its course, which means very little water. + +It's a very strange thing to descend 800 feet underground, but what surprised me the most was how quickly the kids became hushed and whispered in the darkness. + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-23_112457_carlsbad-caverns.jpg" id="image-1075" class="picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-23_113742_carlsbad-caverns.jpg" id="image-1077" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-23_115633_carlsbad-caverns.jpg" id="image-1078" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-23_112626_carlsbad-caverns.jpg" id="image-1080" class="picwide" /> +</div> + +We spent the morning underground. Part of the reason there was no one in the cave was because the elevator wasn't working. We'd been told that it would be fixed around 10, but that turned out to not be true. There was about half an hour there where we thought we'd have to hike out. Not the end of the world, but not really what the kids were looking forward to. Just about the time we were going to give up and start hiking out we heard the hiss of elevator doors and we ended up escaping the underworld the easy way. So long Hades, Persephone, Dionysus and all the rest of the vegetation cycle personifications around the world. The underworld is fun to visit, but I wouldn't want to stay. + +We had a quick bite to eat in the parking lot and then continued on our way. The drive south from Carlsbad to Fort Stockton was the single worst road we've driven, and I'll go ahead and say it's in the top ten worst roads I've driven anywhere in the world. The reason? The fracking industry. This is west Texas, the water table won't support fracking, so water is trucked in. Hundreds and hundreds of trucks all day every day will absolutely destroy a road. And of course whatever water table was available here is full of chemicals now and, from a human perspective, forever. + +Fracking is bit like burning the furniture to keep the house warm, and all you need to know about the current state of oil in the world is to drive though an area where the old oil pumps are rusted and collapsing and water trucks are rolling by in the steady stream -- we're getting desperate and nothing illustrates that so well as a fracking field. This is the third we've driven through and by far the worst. + +After a night in Fort Stockton we continued on toward Kerrville and somewhere on that drive, I can almost pin it down to single climb over a single hill, you're no longer in the west. You're also not yet in the east. Nor are you in the Midwest. You're in something uniquely Texas for a while. By Kerrville though you're more or less back in the south. I got a little giddy at the grocery store walking the aisle and seeing okra, collards, grits, Duke's Mayonnaise and all the other things I love about the south. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-01-25_084545_texas-driving.jpg" id="image-1081" class="picwide caption" /> + +Westerners and Northerners always look at me funny when I say the south is my favorite part of America. Doubly so when they find out I actually grew up in Los Angeles. Whatever the case, it's good to be back in the south. And yes, there's more to it than a few foods that I've come to love. For example southern campgrounds put soap in the bathrooms, you really need to look into this westerners. + +To be totally honest I've never been able to put my finger on exactly what it is I love about the south beyond saying that the people are kinder, more open, and friendlier. If you want to be left alone and never have to talk to anyone at the grocery store, head to the west. If you prefer to engage with your fellow spaceship travelers you'll have a more rewarding time of it in the south. + +Sometimes this gets called "southern politeness", but I dislike that term. I prefer kindness. What I mean by that is that you say hello to people when you can, yes, strangers. You hold the door for them if you can, you pause to let them go first, you wait for them when they walk and you're in a car, you respect them and treat them as people even if you don't like them at all. This last point is especially important. Even if you thoroughly dislike someone, perhaps especially if you thoroughly dislike them, you still treat them with respect, you treat them as if you loved them. + +The reason I prefer to term kindness is that the whole politeness thing gets obsessed over by northerners and westerners who think it's somehow quaint and charming. It's neither. It's much simpler than that. It's something that used to be called common decency, which you would extend to anyone -- anyone with whom you have an I-you relationship. That is, anyone you consider a "person". When people get rude and people get dangerous it's because they have convinced themselves that you are an "it" not a "you"[^2]. + +That's why I don't like the term polite. In fact even the term kindness should be unnecessary. I would prefer to call the kindness nothing at all and instead define northern and western behavior what it is -- coarse and rude. + +One thing we've painfully noticed in 8000 miles of travel around the U.S. is that the lack of respect, the lack the treating the world around you and what's in it as equals, is a huge part of so many of the problems our country is having just now. When you deal with the world outside yourself as a collection of "its" things have a way of turning ugly rather quickly. + +There are, in my experience, more people with more "yous" in their lives in the south than elsewhere. + +This is part of why, despite the economic strife, lingering racial prejudices, and the arrogant dismissal of the rest of the nation, southerners remain a generally happier, friendlier bunch than most. And of course it's doubly impressive when you consider that there are more differences among people in the south than in much the rest of the country. + +That's not to say the south doesn't have terrible people or is somehow a paradise. It's flawed like everything else. It's a mess too, but the people in it have at least retain the ability to go about the daily lives with a certain grace, dignity, and kindness that I find missing elsewhere. I should also probably say that, by the same token, we've met very nice, kind people in the west and are glad to call many of them friends at this point. + +One of the interesting outgrowths of leaving the south has been discovering that southern culture extends beyond its borders. I can't tell you how many people have come up to us to talk because they saw our license plate. We've met Georgians, Carolinians, Louisianans, Alabamans and others who wanted to talk simply because we were also from the south, because they knew we would talk, because they knew we would treat them with respect, and perhaps because there is an unwritten understanding among those from the south that we must stick together in the face of the unkindness that has engulfed the rest of the nation. + +Truth be told I feel like, unfortunately, many of the things I like about the south -- nebulous and difficult to define though they may be -- are fast disappearing. They seem already gone in many larger cities, except perhaps New Orleans, but New Orleans is really it's own thing, not exactly part of the south. + +Still, if you stick to the small towns, particularly those lining the gulf of Mexico, the further out from the interstate and cities the better, you can still find some of the south Henry Miller describes in his 1939 drive across America. + +For the foreseeable future, that's our plan -- visit the small towns, the backwaters, the places in the south that time forgot so to speak. + +[^1]: Our registration eventually showed up and got to us in Tucson, but by then we'd already made reservations all along the Gulf Coast (the one downside of the Gulf is that you can't just show up and expect to get a campsite in most places). +[^2]: I'm borrowing those terms from philosopher Martin Buber because I think they work quite well, so long as you keep in mind that all dualities are concealing a third possibility. diff --git a/published/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt b/published/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef08262 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2018-02-07_on-the-beach.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-03_111150_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1120" class="picwide" /> + +Soft sand? Ten thousand pound vehicle? What could go wrong? + +If you want a view like this though, you have to park in places like this: + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-03_112402_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1123" class="picwide" /> + +Ordinarily I probably wouldn't have done it, but when we pulled in there was another rig parked further down and its own came over and offered to pull us out with his truck should anything go wrong. I walked the sand it seemed firm enough so we went for it and it all worked out fine. There's nothing like free ocean front camping. + +If you use the websites I mentioned in the last post, notably freecampsites.net, and you zoom in on the south Louisiana coast there are basically two places to camp, Holly Beach and Rutherford Beach. After not finding much to like about [Holly Beach](/jrnl/2018/02/hugging-coast) we were prepared to be disappointed by Rutherford a well, but it turned out to be pretty near perfect. It's also listed as one of the best shell beaches around and it definitely has more shells than anywhere I've ever been. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-03_111909_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1122" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-06_142435_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1126" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-03_111841_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1121" class="picwide" /> + +We spent five days on the beach. It stormed a good bit and fog would roll in pretty much every night, hiding the lights both onshore and off, making it feel like we were all alone in the world. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-04_093500_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1124" class="picwide caption" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-04_093520_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1125" class="picwide" /> diff --git a/published/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt b/published/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f9b0cc4 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2018-02-08_on-avery-island.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +Avery Island is best known to me as the title of a [Neutral Milk Hotel album](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Avery_Island), but for most people it's probably better known as the home of Tabasco. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-08_105718_palmetto-tabasco.jpg" id="image-1130" class="picwide" /> + +I love hot sauce, all kinds of hot sauce. A quick inventory of the pantry just now produced seven different bottle of hot sauce, including one home made ghost pepper sauce. Despite that I've never really like Tabasco, it's too vinegary to me. Still, people love it and it's been made more or less the same way, by the same family, since shortly after the Civil War. That's a longer, more storied history than any of the bottles in my pantry. + +My father-in-law grew up on this area and toured Avery Island in grade school, we put the kids in his footsteps. Or sort of. Back in the fifties they let you actually go in the salt mines, today you get to walk through a Disneylandesque replica. Otherwise though I doubt much as changed. For as widely distributed, and seemingly huge as the Tabasco company seems, production is decidedly down home. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-08_112314_palmetto-tabasco.jpg" id="image-1131" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-08_112710_palmetto-tabasco.jpg" id="image-1132" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-08_114010_palmetto-tabasco.jpg" id="image-1133" class="picwide caption" /> + + +Part of the reason Tabasco is on Avery Island is that the island -- which is just barely deserving of the name island -- is made mostly of salt. When Tabasco was founded everything was right there, plant peppers, mine salt and you're away. + +Avery Island also happens to be one of the tallest points in southern Louisiana, sitting at 163 feet above sea level. It doesn't sound like much, but it's allowed the structures on the island to survive over a hundred years of hurricanes. Apparently that's changing though. Rita, which hit this area hard in 2005, flooded the marshes and much of the island, and things are getting worse every year. + +The marsh that protects the island loses about 30 feet per year as saltwater from rising seas seeps in and kills off the fresh water plants. As those plants die the soil loosens and dissolves, washing out the sea. Dredging for shipping canals and oil exploration canals abandoned by the oil companies also hasten erosion of the marshes. Without the buffer of the marsh the storm surge of the more frequent and stronger storms reaches further inland, up onto the island. + +The McIlhenny family has been working hard to combat the soil loss, planting cordgrass and building its own levee and pumps system, which is not uncommon down here. There's simply too much coastline and it's disappearing too fast for the government of Louisiana to deal with, towns and companies in the area are [building their own systems](http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2017/08/levee-ing_the_odds_southwest_l.html). In the end nothing is going to stop the sea, some places will survive just fine, and Avery Island may well be one of them, but even the current heads of the McIlhenny family admit they might have to [move](http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2018/01/tabascos_homeland_is_in_a_figh.html) someday. + +In the mean time, the hot sauce is still too vinegary in my opinion, but the factory tour is well worth it, even the finished product isn't your thing. diff --git a/published/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt b/published/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e62bf21 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/2018-02-12_mardi-gras-deux-facons.txt @@ -0,0 +1,60 @@ +When we were first plotting out a route for the spring it didn't occur to us that we'd be in Louisiana for Mardi Gras. Like most of the nation, for us Mardi Gras was just another Tuesday. Once we realized that our timing would put us there though we knew we had to go, preferably out deep in the Cajun/Acadian region from which Mardi Gras originates. + +I won't pretend to understand Mardi Gras, or where it comes from, though at least some of what we saw apparently dates from the Middle Ages when various guilds and small secret societies would celebrate, er, something? Some say it goes back to the feast of begging, in medieval France, but a good argument can be made that it's much older than that. Whatever its origins, it's insular enough that if you aren't part of the culture, I don't think you'll ever really understand it. That won't stop you from enjoying it though. + +Part of what makes it complicated is that there are so many different ways people celebrate Mardi Gras. What you see in one place often bears no resemblance to what you see in another. + +The only thing historians of Mardi Gras seem to agree upon is that at some point Mardi Gras became intertwined with the Catholic celebration of Lent. Mardi Gras became a celebration of excess in preparation for the deprivation of Lent. I think. Beads, heavy drinking and most of the other things we outsiders associate with Mardi Gras are apparently quite recent though, starting some time in the late 1940s, or '50s, or '60s, depending on who you ask. + +The basis of most celebrations these days are the parades, huge floats full of people decorated with beads marching through towns, throwing out candy, toys and beads to those of us who gather to watch. We got beads, so many beads. + +We attended two Mardi Gras celebrations, the first was a children's parade in Lafayette. It wasn't the best day for a parade, rain poured down just as it was about to get underway, but that didn't stop anyone, including us. + +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180210_122604.jpg" id="image-1152" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180210_123913.jpg" id="image-1153" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2018/20180210_124216.jpg" id="image-1155" class="picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180210_124609.jpg" id="image-1154" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180210_125322.jpg" id="image-1157" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180210_125119.jpg" id="image-1156" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180210_125649.jpg" id="image-1158" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-10_125435-1_mardi-gras.jpg" id="image-1135" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-10_125431_mardi-gras.jpg" id="image-1134" class="picwide" /> +</div> + +We managed to make it back to the campground in time for the golf cart parade. Like I said, Mardi Gras is all about the parades, even when they're small. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-10_144943_mardi-gras.jpg" id="image-1137" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-10_145046_mardi-gras.jpg" id="image-1138" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-10_144055_mardi-gras.jpg" id="image-1136" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-10_145540_mardi-gras.jpg" id="image-1139" class="picwide" /> + +Before there were beads there was the Courir de Mardi Gras, which is Cajun French for "Fat Tuesday Run". As with so many things in America over the last century, "run" morphed into "drive" and (probably) this is where the whole parade thing started. The biggest home of the old style "Courir" is in Mamou, where, apparently we [might have seen Anthony Bourdain](https://www.instagram.com/p/BfJ1JZkH0dA/), but we decide to go to Iota for a Tee Mamou, or small mamou. + +There was plenty of food and two stages with various Cajun bands. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_131516_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1143" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_122307_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1140" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_124005_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1142" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_123706_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1141" class="picwide" /> + + +Before the main run, or drive in this case, there was a children's version that led up to stage for some dancing. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_135443-1_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1144" class="picwide" /> + +Then the main run started, costumed people descended on the downtown area, chasing chickens, dancing, and begging for loose change. There's plenty of drunkenness, going on, but it's not the chaos you might expect. There's a Capitaine in charge of keeping people in line and he has a whip to back up whatever the rules are. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_143757_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1147" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_143739_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1146" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_143734_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1145" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_143803-1_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1148" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_143820_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1149" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_143836-1_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1150" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-13_143955_tee-mamou.jpg" id="image-1151" class="picwide" /> |