We had saved up a pretty penny in orer to afford this trip (which we'd be happy to write about if you're interested) and had been living off of our savings for the last 4 months, at that point. We still had plenty of money but after a couple more truck payments we'd be hard pressed for groceries. Trying to stay ahead of the need for money, we decided we'd take a few weeks off to pick up odd jobs in Colorado to replishi the supply. With the weekend in Auburn was over, we offically began our round-about way of getting back to Colorado. However, we had no reason to hurry, so we decided to hit up New Orleans since it happened to be Mardi Gras. We arrived on Fat Tuesday, which wasn't as crazy during the parades as we expected. It seemed like a very family oriented expereince, with families lining the streets with step stools for the kids to get a good view, lawn chairs, and coolers full of snacks. We didn't see any boobs; beads were actually handed out based on how excited you were for them and direct eye contact with the float occupants. High school marching bands from all over the state were sweating it out in full uniform for their city's tradition, while still playing some damn good music.
After watching a good chunk of the Rex parade and acquiring our first beads so we didnt look out of place, we headed over to the French Quarter for some sightseeing and lunch. The French Quarter is filled with beautiful architecture, lively music, and good natured people. We walked up and down every road we could, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells. Its the only big city I've been in so far where I didn't feel like I was on high alert the whole time as a tourist, trying to avoid being robbed or scammed. I guess that's why its called the Big Easy. Everything just felt super laid back.
It was a hot day, and after lunch I decided I'd swap out a tight constricting warm shirt for a more flowy and cool one. Given how laid back this place made us feel, it seemed like it wouldn't be too big of a deal to just do a quick change on the side walk. As soon as I have my shirt over my head, I see this big beautiful black lady's head whip around and lock eyes with me. She bee-lined over to me, her supposed husband in tow and said, "Mm girl, you have the prettiest nipples!" She could just barely make out the shape of my nips through the bralet I was wearing under my shirt. Excitedly, she asked if she could touch them. In the spirit of Mardi Gras, I gave her permission and after a brief and gentle boop to the nip, our lady-friend left quite happy. That was honestly the weirdest thing that happened to us in New Orleans, which is supposedly pretty tame by most standards.
We had had such a great time wandering the city on Mardi Gras that we decided to camp out nearby and hit the city again the next day for beignets, a sculpture garden, and some more sightseeing. When we awoke in our camp ground, which was really just a grass lawn next to the entrance to a wildlife preserve, Corbin let me sleep in a little while he started breakfast. Now, there is a whole sub-culture of people who do what we do, but for much, much longer. They often stay in these sames places we do, but rarely do we get to interact with them. Mostly because Corbin and I tend to keep to ourselves when we've just woken up and also because we dont tend to stay very long in high occupancy locations. But this morning was different. Corbin waved at one of our neighbors and wished him a good morning, which prompted him to come over to our truck.
I was still in the bed wrapped up in blankets while Corbin was heating water for coffee on the tailgate when a large man with a slight waddle made his way to our tailgate for a chat. His name was Jeff and he had been living on the road in some kind of vehicle or another for the last 20+ years. He was super stoked to see some younger people living a "free" lifestyle and had some interesting outlooks on our shared lifestyle. For example, he told us of a time when he sat down with a pen and paper and actually figured the cost of waking up each day in a standard lifestyle based on what he thought his time was worth and the actual cost of his home, utiliies, and the like. Its not an experiment that I've done at that level, but the cost of our lifestyle is something that both Corbin and I grapple with often, both on and off the road. Jeff also told us as his days as a member of the boarding parties that would board foreign vessels in port to go over their cargo and customs information. He told us how he typically worked with the Soviets and that he had never met a people who were so gifted at imbibing, specifically vodka, in unmarked bottles.
He was a facinating person to watch. He smoked tobacco which he rolled himself, but often forgot that he was smoking. He'd hold it between his fingers, absent mindedly thumbing the filter until it came to pieces and tge burning tips went out. He'd re-light the cigarrette several times during this process, and maybe only get two puffs before forgetting it in his fidgity fingers again. Once it had burnt down to a stub just from sitting lit, he'd tear it open and roll a new cigarette with the tobacco that hadn't burned and toss the destroyed remainder of its predecessor. After a nice long chat about everything from knives, to flea markets, to kids, to guns, to weed, to politics, to freedom and lifestyle choices, Jeff bid us adeu with a parting gift of an old Soviet propaganda lapel pin. We've no idea what the words on the pin mean, or if its even legit, but it was still a super nice momento and gift from your friendly neighborhood van dweller.
After breakfast we headed back into the city, starting with the sculpture gardens in City Park. If you visit New Orleans, be sure to take some time to wander about in this park. It's gorgeous! Full of beautiful sculptures, lots of green space, and some of the oldest Oak trees around. We spent an inordinate amount of time looking at a sculpture called "Karma" by an artist whose name escapes me. It was of a man standing with other, smaller versions of himself crouching on his shoulders covering his eyes, but repeating what looks like infinitely into nothingness. There're a couple photos of it below, which are worth the look.
City Park was also amazing to us in that it was free to park in the park and there were bus stops nearby into the French Quarter and other interesting things to see and do. We bought a couple 24 hr bus passes for the city transit and were able to fully enjoy our time in the city without having to worry about parking or paying an arm and a leg like we had the day before. And the bus system is pretty well established too and took us exactly where we wanted to go. We explored Bourbon Street, which was weirdly empty of people in spite of the open bars proudly selling to-go cocktails. Having been raised in the midwest where open container laws are strict, being somewhere that allows, let alone encourages, drinking in public was a bit of a culture shock, and one that took us a little adjusting to be comfortable with participating. We made our way to Jackson Square to check out the cathedral there, but stopped part way to visit a little used bookstore which was more like a cave of books with book-stalamites filling ever corner. It was a dream come true for Corbin and we spent a solid hour exploring there.
The urge to pee hit me hard, so we decided to tour the church on Jackson Square and see if the good Lord couldn't provide me a toilet. Unfortunately, being such a big tourist place, it understandibly did not have restrooms, but it had beautiful artwork which distracted me from my body's cries of fullness, but these soon overtook me and we headed back out into the city to find a toilet and snacks, neither of which were hard to come by.
We had passed by Cafe du Mond the day before and after several friends, strangers, and the internet had recommended it, we decided to give it a whirl. Corbin and I had never had a proper New Orleans beignet before, only immitations at our Colorado cajun restaurants. I got in line to get a to-go order of 3 while Corbin ran off to purchase us a beer to pair with our sugar. I won't lie, I expected these little puffballs of sugar to cost a couple bucks each and was quite surprised to find that a bag of 3 only cost $2.75. What a steal! We should have gone back for a dozen and subsisted on beignets for the rest of the trip. We re-convened at Jackson Square to drink our beer (in public!) and try beignets. Corbin was floored. He had just said that he found it hard to believe that these could be much different than a fancy doughnut and didn't really have high expectations. But after his first bite he retracted his ignorant statement and became a convert to the beignet. They were incredible and well worth the wait.
After snack time we explored the French Market and some other surrounding towns and then made our way back to the truck to begin our haul into the rest of Louisiana before storms were supposed to come in that evening. Overall, we loved New Orleans and would love to go back and maybe do the full Mardi Gras experience or even just stay longer and see a show or musical or visit one of the museums.
As people who grew up in tandem with the boom of technology in individual personal life, we don't often stop to think about anomoly that is having a computer in our pocket. However, this trip has made us keenly aware of how much we depend on it and also just how amazing it is and how different a trip like this would have been had we done it say, 20 years ago. A friend's daughter asked us what we thought the most important thing
we brought with us was, and at the time saying "my phone" felt like such a silly answer, but its so true. We use my phone and its access to the internet to find campsites, find the cheapest gas, find interesting things to do in a place, look up directions, avoid traffic, check the weather, keep in touch with people, listen to music and podcasts, and a number of things. I don't have to rely on the directions of a gas station attendant, or hope that that coffee shop has a public toilet. I can just look it up. And while this is amazing, it's somewhat taken a more human element out of our travels. We get to do things our way, which is great, but sometimes we wonder how many more crazy stories we'd have if we just asked people instead. The night we left New Orleans, we were glad to have my phone and have checked the weather.
There were some pretty intense thunderstorms that came through North of Baton Rouge with such a heavy downpour that the interstate travel slowed down to about 35 MPH due to such low visibility. I seriously couldn't see more than two or three carlinks in front of me. Thankfully, we had known these were coming and were able to be safe and dry driving instead of drenched and walking around in the city. Yay technology! We made it to Kisatchie National Forest for a nice sleep after a long day playing tourist.
At some point we had decided that we wanted to go to the Ozarks in Arkansas, though I'm not sure why or when. I'm incredibly glad it was on our itinerary though. If you've never been to Arkansas, you probably don't think too much of it. It's likely flat and boring with lots of farm land like Kansas and probably a good amount of game land as well. Well, you're not totally wrong, but its an assumption we prove to be wrong to ourselves not only about Arkansas but Oklahoma and even a little of Kansas too. We drove through the incredibly gorgeous Ouachita National Forest, which boasts some pretty awesmoe driving and sightseeing roads. We decided to camp up in Ozark National Forest on a FS road after a lovely day just enjoying the drive.
I'm not sure if we've mentioned a couple of Sherpa's quirks before in a blog, but he doesn't have a low fuel indicator or a reserve tank. When the gas gaugue hits E, we're actually and totally Empty. There have been a couple of times we've run out of gas because of this "feature" and thankfully we noticed we were running quite low when we finally parked for the night so that we didn't just drive off exploring the wilderness where AAA probably wouldn't find us when we inevitably ran out. So, we decided to head back to town just a few miles South of the forest to get some gas where our day was hijacked by a brown little bugger.
Corbin was pumping gas while I was looking up some interesting drives and scenes to check out in the area for us to spend our day doing. When I looked up, there was a dog in the gutter eating some trash and due to not being very frightened of cars, almost getting hit. Corbin noticed it at the same time and he walked around trying to see if someone was giving chase after their escaped animal. But there wasn't anyone. So he approached it and tried to coax it over with a soothing voice while I watched. The dog came over to him but quickly returned to her dangerous meal in the road. He still called for her and she seemed conflicted between joining Corbin and whatever road delicacy she was after. I got into the food bin and retreived some peanut butter and we managed to get a rope around her to keep her from the road.
We spent the rest of the day wandering the nearby businesses trying to see if anyone had lost a dog in the parking lots we were nearby. Without much luck, we took her to the nearest animal shelter to have her scanned for a chip and to see if anyone had filed a missing pet report for her. She was a sweetheart, and seemed happy to be along for the ride but aprehensive about all the new things we were exposing her to like the inside of a car and a squeaky toy. The shelter didn't have anything on her and she didn't have a chip. The lady informed us that even though she's not our dog, we'd still have to pay the $50 surrender fee to leave her there. While we were discussing, the lady got a call from her co-worker stating the the big brown dog by the Wal-Mart parking lot wasn't to be found and was heading back. She quickly asked us where we found her and upon hearing our response took the leash and said, the fee will be paid by the state since Animial Control was called for her. And she was gone.
We walked outside and both of us felt a strange saddness. We'd gotten attached in those few hours. We've been talking about adopting a dog for a long time and even though there were a few fosters that we had in Fort Collins that stole our hearts, we never committed. Sometimes we're too responsible for our own good. We decided to take that lesson about being open to what presents itself to us that we had learned in Asheville and in Florida and run with it. We walked back inside and asked the lady if she had processed the dogs paperwork yet. She said, not yet, you want to keep her? We did. And after confirming we were prepared to get her the vet care she needed, she handed the dog over to us!
By this time is was already into the beginning of the evening, and we were supposed to already be headed into Oklahoma. So we started driving and after several hours pulled over at a rest stop to walk to the dog and figure out where we were going to camp that night. We ended up speding a solid two hours here picking all the ticks that we could find off the dog. She just slept most of the procedure, which confirmed to us that we had really stumbled upon a pretty alright dog.
We ended up camping in a little park about an hour to the East of Oklahoma City that was isolated and deserted, except for the high schoolers who drove in to either make out or some other condemned activity but quickly left when they realized they weren't alone in the park. The next day we picked some more ticks and then made our way towards Kansas.
I mentioned earlier that we sometimes felt like we might be missing out by just looking everything up online and taking highways to all of our destinations. When we left New Orleans we made a modification to our Google Maps preferences, avoid highways. This took us along the scenic routes and tiny roads in both Oklahoma and Kansas and enabled us to see a part of both of those states that we otherwise probably would have missed. They're really pretty in their own right, and not as flat and boring as the interstate makes it seem.
We did quicken our pace back to Colorado after picking up the dog so that we could get her to the vet and get her tick problem, which we were mitigating with removing them as we found them. The truck is our home after all, and having a tick filled dog in the back seat isn't our idea of ideal cleanliness. But we still savored our drive through a new part of the country. We also discovered that while definitely complicating our lives some, having a dog has made life on the road a bit more slow going for us, of which we are very appreciative.
Our beloved friends in Colorado still welcomed us with open arms and hearts, even with the added chaos of Zaja, which only makes us love them more for how amazing, understanding, generous, and kind they are. They're the real heros.
Now, I'm sure you're thinking, " What about Texas! Texas is like the super south, right? You drove right around it!" You're right, we did and it is. But we skipped it because 1) its enormous. It's like a whole other country and we didn't want to just skim over a tiny bit of it in our semi hurry back to Colorado. 2) My dad lives there, and we'll be making several trips to Texas in the coming months that will allow us to explore the state the way we want and at the pace we want. But, even without Texas I think we had a very educational and insightful trip through the South, and hey, we got a dog too!