For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls [Dec 2010]

Vicksburg to Tullahoma

More than a week after my arriving home, it occurs to me that if I don't update the final leg of the journey soon, I'll forget anything worth saying about it.  And so, finally, here is the account of the last day.

I awoke in Vicksburg and, after updating the blog, returned my final room key of the trip. Comparatively, the last day would be a short one, so I had time to spend tooling around historic Vicksburg, following the Scenic Drive signs.  A wall of murals along the river allowed Frankie this photo op:

Along the scenic drive, I happened upon a restaurant I'd seen advertised in the hotel and stopped.  You see, on this ride home I hadn't found many roadside attractions, and certainly none akin to the “Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere!” I'd found on my way through Groom, Texas on the drive west, so when presented with the opportunity to stop for lunch at a restaurant featured in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, I took it.  The Walnut Hills Restaurant serves "southern plantation cuisine" in a round-table-boarding-house fashion similar to that of Miss Mary Bobo's in Lynchburg, TN, and though I'm not a fan of "southern food" as a rule, I find it hard to complain when it's done that well.

I took my seat at an a la carte table (an option not available at Bobo's to my knowledge) and was given my choice of the salads, meats, and veggies they were serving at the round table for a more reasonable one-traveler-alone, controlled portion price.  The cole slaw (my salad) may have been the best I've ever eaten.  The rest was pretty darned good as well.  And of course, when you eat plantation style, you drink tea.  I don't generally like tea, but even that was a pretty tasty and refreshing treat after a few hours photographing rats by murals in the morning sun.

After lunch, I completed the scenic circuit and continued home, through the rest of Mississippi, crossing Alabama, and into Tennessee.  These states did not offer much in the way of new exploration to me as they are so close to home as to have been visited many times, and the flora and fauna of the American South is relatively constant, so after lunch the day consisted mostly of driving through the rain which plagued all three states and limiting stops to rest areas and gas stations on the continuing search to complete the keychain-from-every-state collection I was creating for both myself and my goddaughter.

I arrived at home not late in the evening and was greeted almost immediately with company ready to welcome me back.  A lot had happened in the small town while I was gone and I would hear much about it in the coming days.  I would also be staying in the house which for the last several months has been under renovation and which has not yet been connected via cable or internet to the rest of the world.  And so this update would have to wait.

When I finished the drive west in 2006, I completed the posts of the trip with an audit or sorts -- a record of what was spent and what was learned along the way.  I do plan to share a similar audit of this experience, but that will be the next post.  This one, at least, got me home.

Abilene to Vicksburg

This morning in Vicksburg, Mississippi I have an earlier checkout than at other stops and slept later in the first truly comfortable bed of the trip.  Fortunately, there is not much to tell about yesterday's leg.

The predetermined route and the GPS were in agreement as I followed Interstate 20 east through the remainder of Texas and across Louisiana into Mississippi.  I'd had high hopes for my first visit to Louisiana, even knowing that the more famed portions were closer to the gulf than I'd be traveling.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  There were still hours to be driven getting out of Texas.

Now everybody knows that Texas is a rather large state, but it's the actual driving of it that does the convincing.  Using mile markers to best make my point, you can travel north to south across Tennessee in roughly 180 miles, with Chattanooga around exit 178.  The Louisiana panhandle, west to east, chimes in at a similar number, perhaps closer to 190 miles from border to border.  Texas, however, tops a whopping 640 miles from west to east.  In most of the country, you can (and today I will) cross through three states with that much wear on the tires.

But exiting Texas was no more thrilling than entering it and the only stop I made, apart from the requisite stops for gas, was for lunch at a BBQ and Fried Pie shop in Canton called Baker's Ribs.  Because when you're in Texas, that's what you eat.  Ribs.  And they were pretty darned good.

It seemed a lifetime before the Louisiana state line appeared and the sign marking it was one of the last things I saw for the next three hours.  Interstate 20 through the panhandle is difficult to describe because for a short while the road which carves through thick, lush greenery is rather pretty but as the hours drag on and the view does not open up or change, it does become monotonous.  A mountain, a lake, or a billboard for some THING would have been welcome. (I did, by the way, pay my dollar to solve the mystery of the desert in Arizona, answering the question of "The Thing"). In fact, I had to hunt to find the convenience store or gas station which would sell me the requisite souvenir key chain before I left the state.  Sadly, that stop, when found, was no exciting backdrop for Frank Sinatrat, who failed to find a photo op in the day.

Shortly after sundown I reached Vicksburg, barely across the state line in Mississippi.  Though I had no particular plans to spend time in the city before hitting the road again, I do have the time to spare as the drive home to my own bed tonight should be roughly 7 hours, give or take.   And, darn it, Frankie needs a photo!

Lake Havasu to Abilene

My report from Las Cruces, New Mexico was not forgotten but rather prevented by a lack of internet connection.  In the four years since my trek west, I've made several improvements for an easier drive east, but no improvement has been made to the laptop I'm carrying with me; and while four years may be insignificant to the life span of attractions along the road, it is not insignificant to the life of a computer.  A Dell machine of my particular vintage, I was told, notoriously wouldn't communicate with the hotel's system.  And so, no report was made.  Which leaves me with quite a bit of catch-up to play this morning from my hotel in Abilene!

On Thursday morning in Lake Havasu City, I visited the London Bridge -- shipped to Arizona stone by stone in 1971 -- and the English Village surrounding it.  At a relatively early hour (by which the temperature had already reached 110), all the shops in the village were still closed tight, but  no matter.  It was the bridge I was there to see.

From there, I also visited an interesting yet also closed-tight set of shops farther from the lake, called Shambles Village.  Modeled after The Shambles in York, it has a quirky and distinctive architecture.

After my tour of Lake Havasu City, I drove east toward my Las Cruces destination.  On the way, I stopped for lunch in Phoenix at Giuseppe's on 28th.

I should mention here that on my trip west I made a point to stop at selected Roadfood restaurants.  Though selections along the Mother Road were not exactly plentiful, they were certainly more abundant than those along the more southerly route I have chosen for my return.  And so for this route I also examined the travels of Food Network's Guy Fieri. Giuseppe's had been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. 

For the sake of brevity (still more to cover here before check-out), I'll say that the small Italian restaurant set into an Arizona strip mall was a nice lunch find.  And the portions were conveniently generous, as finding dinner later in the day would prove more difficult.

The drive through Phoenix and the search for Giuseppe's had slowed my travel, and the 9-hour drive stretched out with additional stops to fill one tank or empty another.  As a result, I arrived in Las Cruces after they had rolled up the roads.  As Las Cruces boasted one of the few interesting Roadfood suggestions en route, I was disappointed to find Nopalito closed before the clock struck 10pm.   Still full from lunch and ready to sleep, however, I picked up a burger from a national chain and called it a night.

On Friday morning I awoke in Las Cruces, New Mexico with plans to visit White Sands National Monument.  In fact, I'd opted for this rather southerly route through the Mojave Desert in the midst of July expressly with that purpose in mind.  And so that's what I did.  An hour's drive onward toward Alamogordo led me through the White Sands Missile Range and into the park.

I haven't mentioned him yet, but those of you familiar with the first cross-country trek have probably wondered whether Frank Sinatrat was taking this adventure with me as well.  Well, folks.  Yes he is.

I thoroughly enjoyed my stop at White Sands.  With the constraints of the road trip determining the hour of my arrival, however, I was visiting the park with the sun directly overhead.  One day, I would love to go back for pictures with morning or afternoon shadows.  However, I was quite pleased with this shot of Frankie -- one of my favorites of him.

With sand on my tires and in my shoes, I left White Sands with the practical aim of getting to Abilene before midnight.  The drive from Alamogordo should have been only a little more than 7 hours (a shorter day of driving planned to give me time at the park), but I'd learned how easily an extra hour to could accumulate in pit stops and time zone changes, so I forged ahead. 

Now, if you look at the map above, you'll see the route I PLANNED to take to Abilene.  All interstate: I-10 to I-20.  This is not the way I actually went.

You see, this time around I have a tool I did not have on the drive west: a GPS.  This proves to be a mixed blessing.  It's a wonderful helper when finding restaurants, gas stations, and hotels... however, it has a mind of its own when it comes to finding a route lush with them.  Leaving from Alamogordo rather than Las Cruces, it abandoned a backtracking to the interstate and instead found every back-road state highway imaginable through New Mexico and into Texas.  Often I found myself driving for hours through farm country with fear that I'd run out of gas before the next stop.  It was only a few miles short of Abilene that it met up with the interstate again, and the state roads had taken me farther through New Mexico than planned, through the Lincoln National Forest and north of El Paso where I'd expected to stop for lunch.  When I finally found a lonely gas station, I filled up and bought a sandwich, not knowing when the next stop would come.  Good thing, too.  For the next several hours I drove through fields of windmills and oil drills with a rather crude (ahem) odor filling the car.

Here's the route I ended up taking:

I arrived at the Abilene hotel relatively early but very ready to stop, find an internet connection, and relax.  I decided that with two more days on the road ahead, I would be happy to simply order a pizza for the night and, happily, my room key had the number for Domino's emblazoned across it.  I ordered dinner, fired up the computer, and turned on the telly.  I may be back in the Central Time zone and a little more than halfway home, but there's still a lot of driving ahead.  The break was more than welcome.

Today I'll finish the drive across Texas and, for the first time on this journey, I'll cross a complete state without stopping for the night as the route takes me through the northern panhandle of Louisiana.  Though I won't be viewing the typical tourist attractions near the gulf, I will be enjoying my first foray into that particular state.  

There is more to tell, but it will have to come another time.  I leave you with a photo of my entry into New Mexico, which followed a spectacular lightning display across rainy mountains on all sides -- in front of me, behind me, to my left, and to my right -- but all too distant to impede my driving.  More on that in another post, I hope.

Take Off Your Hobo Shoes Redux

For the last several months, my car and I have been living separately.  An early return to Tennessee for the Christmas holiday generated continuous work in the following months.  Three plays and one home renovation later, I finally returned to San Francisco.  To retrieve my car.

In 2006, I drove from Nashville to San Diego in a 4-day, 3-night adventure across I-40 and Route 66.  The return, with a day's drive south to catch the easterly road, will be one day longer.  And this time, I'm doing things differently.

In 2006, I simply drove.  When I was tired, I stopped.  Whether that meant 12 hours on the road or 8, I stopped where I needed to stop.  Or, at least, that was the plan.  But on two of those three nights on the road, I had to drive beyond my stopping point as I found hotel rooms were booked.  In Oklahoma City, firefighters from nearby states filled the beds as they fought wildfires and in Phoenix there was some speedway event I still haven't identified but which sent me out of my way to Gila Bend.  So this time, I booked ahead.

This means a more structured route and a timetable, which has its ups and downs.  I won't be driving extra hours to find a hotel room, but I can't stop earlier if I'm not up to a 9-hour drive on any day, and my dilly-dallying between hotels will have to be minimal.

On the first leg of the journey -- San Francisco to Lake Havasu City -- this was no problem.  But one forgets when one opts for 9-hours on the road how a 9-hour drive turns to 10 or 11 hours with stops for food and fuel.  The drive across the Mojave Desert was long and hot (topping at 115 degrees) with little to see.  Driving east, the best views were often in my rear view as the sun set over the mountains, but the desert roads offer little in the way of friendly areas to pull off the highway for a photo op.  I imagine I'll make up for the lack of photos on the first leg of the journey very early today.

Last night I found Lake Havasu City before sundown and enjoyed a lovely view of it before finding the Black Bear Diner for dinner.  I ordered what should have been a delicious dinner: a Tri-Tip platter that came with veggies and mash, but some aggressive spice in both the meat seasoning and its gravy prevents my praising the dish.  After dinner, I checked in to the Hampton Inn on London Bridge Road, which is indicative of my first stop this morning, after I go down to scrounge up some hotel breakfast.   According to my Guest Services booklet, the London Bridge was "dismantled stone by stone and transported from England to America at a cost of 7.5 million dollars" in 1971. And the quaint menu at the diner last night also suggests there's an English village below the bridge.  The internet verifies that a "mock English village, modeled after the famous Shambles of York, surrounds London Bridge."

Frank Sinatrat has joined me on this trip, as he did on the drive west several years ago.  There are sure to be photo ops at the bridge -- and tonight, when I stop in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I'll remember to bring in a cord to upload them!

My Twit Face

I am not the first, nor will I be the last, Blogger to wonder whether the proliferation of online social networking would eventually kill his blog; but I have to admit that I miss the time when I believed I had more to share about an idea or experience than would fit into a mere 140 characters.  As it turns out... I don't really.

Perhaps I should expound.

Or... perhaps not.