Sunday, 12th July 2009 – Cruising around N’Awluns (that’s how the locals pronounce it) and then from N’Awluns, LA to Tuscaloosa, AL. 306 miles.

We started our day by packing up and saying goodbye to Lamonthe House. It was okay but I wouldn’t rush back to stay there. This was the courtyard outside our room and the pool in the background:

Our friend Four who we know from Newman College but who is originally from Alabama came and picked us up and took us out to lunch. Four is just full of knowlegdge about, well, most things, and having lived in New Orleans for a few years, he was able to give us a great tour of the town. He took us through some very swanky neighbourhoods, past the round church (so the devil can’t corner you), and out to a landmark New Orleans Eatery:

It was so cool!

And the food was SO GOOD. Not crazy big servings which was good. Just cheap and really delicious. We had to wait in line for half an hour or so to get in there, but it was totally worth the wait!

After lunch, Four took us for a drive around the Ninth Ward and other Katrina-affected areas. It was pretty sad but I was actually really impressed with all the work that had been done in the last few years. Nothing like what I was expecting after the things I’d heard. I won’t go into too much detail, but things are looking up for the city, and it’s previous occupants are slowly moving back and starting again.

One of the levies

An abandoned house with markings on it

The temporary trailers supplied by the government for people to live in while they rebuild. Some of them are still there.

A lot of the cars that were abandoned/wrecked during the floods. There were hundreds of them.

So yeah, still a lot to be done, but New Orleans is still thriving and is a great place to visit! We were really fortunate to have Four show us around, as it gave us a real insight to the city, the people, and the history. Thanks Four!

We hit the road for Alabama around 3pm, but mostly had the roof up as it was looking pretty bleak. Lucky too, as we got caught in a torrential downpour!

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced rain like that! We had to pull over cos we just couldn’t see in front of us. Funnily enough, a few miles ahead, the road was dry!! So weird! We didn’t really know where we were staying that night – we thought we’d play it by ear. We rocked up at Tuscaloosa and thought it was as good a place as any so, for some unknown stupid reason, we chose the Motel 6 just off the highway. There were a few hotels in the vicinity and we did actually go in to them and check them out, but Motel 6 was the only one with a laundry and, well, I had to do the washing that night. So we booked in. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy????? It was so rubbish. Do you want to hear about it?? DO YOU??

Well this post is too long so I’m going to do a part 2…

Saturday, 11th July 2009 – New Orleans.

Happy Bastille Day! Being in the French Quarter and all, we were confronted with seas of red and white and heavy drinking early in the day! It was very festive indeed! We headed down to the markets for a look around and picked up a few cute souvenirs. There used to be a lot of fresh fruit and veg but those stalls haven’t returned since Katrina, so it was mainly just touristy stuff.

We also went for another little look around town. This is the St Louis Cathedral.

And the French Quarter at it’s cutest!

We walked around town for a little while but it really was quite busy so we decided to go for a drive and try and have a look at where Katrina hit. A little morbid? Maybe, but I was really interested, as, thus far, we hadn’t really seen any evidence of it. But we knew we were in the “wrong part of town.” This proved to be futile as we really had no idea where to go, so we gave up and drove back to the hotel, dropped the car off, and went searching for lunch.

It was another gorgeous hot day so we opted for a seat outside, looking over Bourbon St. We stuffed ourselves with delicious ice-cold beers and yummy seafood.

We were substantially stuffed and content after another late-lunch so we went back to Lamonthe House, had a wee nap and then hit the pool for the afternoon.

The foyer at Lamonthe:

You may notice, and be surprised/disappointed that I haven’t mentioned any Jazz as yet. Well, there was always music playing in the streets or you could hear it blaring out of the bars, but we never actually went to a venue to sit and listen. Weird, I know, but we were just in such a relaxed state that we let life take us wherever it pleased, and I don’t think our bodies were used to eating and drinking so much in the afternoon so we were just pooped by about 6pm! It was a really relaxing time for us though, and we LOVE New Orleans!

Friday, 10th July 2009 – Chillin’ in New Orleans

We started the day with a continental brekky at the “hotel” and prepared ourselves for a very hot and humid day out. We set off on foot for the New Orleans Museum of Art for a photography show they had there; The Art of Caring: A Look at Life through Photography. It was a lovely warm day and most of the way we were in some type of shade.

We also found a community garden along the way and decided to play a game of chess. (Well, pretended to for the sake of some fun photos!)

The photography exhibition was very impressive and although it was nice to get out of the 38 degree heat, the 18 degree temperature inside became a bit too much towards the end. We were there for a couple of hours (there were hundreds of amazing photos) and then we headed back in to town for more exploring. It really was very hot and humid so when we came across a little corner shop that sold ice creams and squishies, we simply HAD to partake! (Apologies for the portrait orientation!)

We chose a delicious strawberry flavour and my gosh you should have seen how much syrup they put in! It really hit the spot!

Once we got into town, our objective was to find a barber to give Hubs a straight shave. It didn’t take us long to find one, and even though I was very nervous, the barber mentioned that he did these every day, so that put me at ease somewhat.

Here’s Hubs before:

During:

And after!

Isn’t he sexy!? It really was very super-smooth and it took an extra couple of days for it to grow back! Very nice indeed!

It started pouring down rain while Hubs was having his shave

so we found a little art studio to look around in, then we went to a pokey little bar called the Chart Room for $1.50 beers and a great atmosphere. Once the rain stopped we headed out to find somewhere to eat and took a recommendation to go to the Napoleon House. I thought the service was very good, and after our very yummy Pinot Noir, bruschetta, and Po’boys, we rolled on home for a swim, a nap, and another night in. Those big meals and wine/beer on a hot afternoon were a killer!

Thursday, 9th July 2009 – Jackson, MS to New Orleans, LA. About 200 miles.

Another cruisey day of driving today and not too many photos to show for it I’m afraid. We were very impressed by the beautifully manicured highways on Louisianna though!

We took the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway – the longest bridge in the world at 23.8 miles – over to New Orleans and got a great view of the city skyline, including the Louisiana Superdome.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with New Orleans, as we had had quite a few people telling us that it was still in really bad shape since Hurricane Katrina, but what greeted us was a friendly city with lovely people, great food and a slowly rebuilding economy. But more about that later.

I had booked a place to stay in New Orleans on line, and we arrived around 1pm to a luke-warm welcome. This is where we stayed:

The Lamonthe House is a guest house on Esplanade Ave, New Orleans. It really was quite sweet but the customer service was very poor and on the first night we had a shower with the world’s worst shower head (seriously SO bad) and then we broke the bed (we were just sitting on it! I SWEAR!) and it seemed a great inconvenience to them that it was 8pm and they had to move us. Anyway, the 2nd room they gave us was a bit bigger, but the shower was as bad, if not worse than the first! But we weren’t there to sit around doing nothing, so before all that happened we went out to a late lunch at The Praline Connection and shared a mixed plate of fried chicken, jambalaya, red beans and rice, ribs, corn bread, greens, and butter bread. It was a very hot and humid day (like summer in Queensland!) so we also had a couple of local ice-cold beers. The serving was rather large, and we ended up taking the butter bread home for dessert later. It started raining on the way back to the guest house, so we decided to have a little nap.

And when we woke up we took a little dip in the pool! (with the waterproof camera!)

We didn’t feel like eating again so we just went for a walk up along the water, down Canal st, and then completed the loop down a bit of Bourbon st and a bit of Decatur St.

It was a lovely night for a walk and we were still feeling full from our meal at 3pm so we just went home and finished off the butter bread with a couple of drinks and enjoyed each other’s company. This was the start of a lot of walking, swimming and eating!

Wednesday, 8th July 2009 – Arkansas to Jackson MS via Memphis TN. About 200 miles.

We left our hotel around 10am and headed across the Mississippi into Memphis, Tennessee, population 670,000. Something I found interesting about America is that it has towns and cities of every size, from 100 people to 20 million people and so much in between, whereas Australia doesn’t really have any towns between 400,000 people and 1.2 million, and nothing over 5 million. Not that I can think of anyway. I just thought that was interesting. Moving on. Hello Tennessee!

We arrived at the visitors centre and the lady behind the desk said “You gahtta go suee the Peabaahdy Ducks. They’re aaahn in twenny-faaaahv minutes.” Lady, if you’re going to talk to me in that gorgeous southern accent, I’m going to do whatever you say. So we covered ourselves in sun cream (it was hot already at 10:45am), left our car at the visitor’s centre and set out on foot in search of these Peabody Ducks. I can’t say it was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, (or hardly saw – the place was packed by the time we got there!) but apparently it’s the thing to do in Memphis so I’m glad we went. The photos on the link are probably better but here’s what we were looking at:

We left the little duckies and headed towards Sun Studio. I was feeling pretty uneasy by this stage as there were no other people walking down the streets. Seriously – it felt like a ghost town. This was one of the main streets to Sun Studio. Where is everyone???

We arrived and I was happy to get into the air con and out of the heat.

We paid for our Sun Studio tour and headed upstairs with our tour guide, Eldorado. It was a really worthwhile tour to do and I can highly recommend it. He told us about the history of the place and then we headed back downstairs to the actual studio – the studio where all the big names of Rock ‘n Roll cut their first records. As we were standing in the studio, Eldorado (I couldn’t take him very seriously) would play music that was actually recorded there, including the Million Dollar Quartet.

Here’s what we were listening to. Very cool.

And some more groovy photos taken by Hubs. (Yes. I just said groovy.)

This is the office where all the bookings for the studio would have been made.

Even though the tour was pretty cool, I was pretty unimpressed by the people who ran the place – a bunch of young, obnoxious musos with no customer service (Hubs overheard one of them saying that he hated Aussie tourist. You’re in the tourism industry. Perhaps a change of career might be in order?) and they stupidly discussed, quite loudly, a shooting that occurred just around the corner from them on the 4th of July. Seriously? Is that meant to make me like Memphis more?? Cos you’re really not selling it to me love.

We left and walked to Beale st to find somewhere to have lunch. Again, the streets were pretty deserted, but excitingly enough, we came across the nightclub where the shooting had taken place. Oh joy!

(Wifey through clenched teeth “hurry up and take the damn photo before we get shot too!!!!!”)

We had some very delicious and HUGE ribs – we shared this plate – and enjoyed excellent atmosphere and service at the Superior Hotel.

We then just strolled back to the car along the river

and headed out of town via

We drove past Graceland but didn’t have any great desire to stop in so we just drove the 200 miles to Jackson, Mississippi. I was going to go into a whole spiel about how awful that evening was, but it’s already a long post so I’ll leave it at that. Let’s just say we stayed at a Motel 6 that was rubbish, we were warned that we were near a “dodgy part of town”, we got lost looking for some dinner and I felt like we were on the “wrong side of the tracks”, had a rubbish fast-food dinner, but thankfully we found some booze to calm the nerves. It was also here that I started noticing a bit of anxiety creeping in, with what felt like my heart skipping a beat whenver I was nervous. We couldn’t leave soon enough…

Tuesday, 7th July 2009 – Ozarks, MO to just outside of Memphis in AR – 334 miles

We left Big Dick’s for the last time at 11:30am which was very sad. But we were taking memories with us that we knew would last a lifetime. Thank you so much Kimberley and BJ for such an amazing week!!

On our way out along Cup Tree Drive, we took a photo of the cup tree and were on our way.

We stopped in on our way through Lebanon to visit Colleen’s Mum (we visited Colleen’s brother and family in Springfield earlier on our trip) who was even wearing an AUSTRALIA t-shirt for us! But unfortunately she had hurt her back so it was just a quick visit. It was lovely to meet you Kate! Hope you’re all better now.

Today was our favourite day of driving thus far. We were on smaller, more secluded highways, with gorgeous scenery and no trucks trying to run us over. And Woody-Woodpecker was watching over us from above, so what more could we ask for!?

I took this shot as the sun was getting lower in the sky…

And it was a beautiful sunset.

It really was such a great relaxed day. The days were still really long so we were watching the sun set around 8:30pm. We were going to camp overnight but all the tent spots were full at the campground we passed, so we found a super budget motel (a non-smoking room that clearly people smoke in – yeuch) and grabbed Burger King for dinner. FYI the Whopper tasted the same as in Australia. We had a quiet night in with our burgers, some duty free vodka and Roseanne on cable. Oh, and I also learnt that Arkansas isn’t pronounce phoenetically. Funny!

Another great day.

Monday, 6th July 2009 – A few miles driving around town 1 last time.

Today was a little bit sad as it was our last full day in town so we made the most of it by lounging around at home and doing the washing. Oh, and then we decided we needed to go out and find another lakeside bar to drink at! We ended up at Coconuts which was huge and pretty cool but the service was a little rubbish and they had a “dive in bar” and a bikini contest (not at the time thankfully!) and I find both of those things a little dodgy.

Anyway, here’s a plethora of photos from our last full day at the Lake of the Ozarks, including another timed shot at Big Dick’s Docks where Hubs is running back for the photo. There were more s’mores that evening, as well as more firworks and a stunning full moon. I’ll just let the photos paint the pictures.

Sunday, 5th July 2009 – 50 feet driving on the wrong side of the road.

Today we set out to do some bush walking at Ha Ha Tonka State Park which was about a half hour drive from Kimberley and BJ’s. We left around 9am armed with fruit, sandwiches, water, hats and sunscreen. We stopped in at the visitors centre to pick up a map and decided on a couple of different walks. It was a perfect day for it – overcast and a bit cooler than that previous few days.

And here’s some photos of the Natural Bridge (I’m so strong), a Cardinal, us following the blue path, and the ruins of the Ha Ha Tonka Mansion (and Hubs running back for the timed shot! So cute.)

Now, if you look carefully at the things I listed to bring earlier in the post, you’ll notice the absence of aeroguard. This proved to be quite an oversight…

I actually felt really really bad that I forgot the aeroguard. The thing is, the mozzies were ANNOYING me, but they weren’t actually BITING me. They thought Hubs’ blood was much juicier than mine, so they just went to town on him. Poor poor Hubs. 🙁

The video didn’t turn out so good but it’s worth a look anyway!

It was a lovely day spent outdoors and we decided to stop in at the Walmart Supercentre on the way home to pick up a few things. 2 hours later we were on our way home! (Did I mention we LOVE Walmart!?) That night we had a cocktail and dinner at the bar (Hubs had a Reuben sandwich – one of our favourites and I had a grilled fish roll – so good!) and then we headed back “home” to make s’mores:

Gather your ingredients – A Hershey’s Bar, Graham Crackers, Marshmallows

Break the Graham Cracker in 2

Place 2 pieces Hershey’s chocolate on 1 cracker

Roast a marshmallow or 2

Place roasted marshmallow on chocolate, put the lid on (the other Graham Cracker) and enjoy with a good friend!

Damn they were good. We had our first one and then we wanted s’more! The second one made us feel a bit ill but we still wanted s’more!! I think we went halvsies. There were still some fireworks leftover from the 4th of July Celebrations, so we enjoyed watching them explode over the lake. Ah the serenity.

Saturday, 4th July 2009 – on the lake

Another cruisey day with little other than walks along the lake, and lunch at the bar to kick off the 4th of July for us.

It’s the biggest day/weekend on the lake so by about midday we could already hear the sounds of fireworks being set off. Yeah. In broad daylight. But you know, when they’re only a couple bucks each, who cares if you can’t see them!? BJ’s Dad took us for a cruise in his cruiser up the lake for an hour or so and it was great fun. Very relaxing indeed…

Kimberley contemplating life. What else can you do when you’re so relaxed!?

The pretty pretty clouds and sunset.

Just as the sun was setting, a storm was rolling in but we were undeterred. We grabbed our margaritas (well, everyone else did. I still can’t go NEAR tequila) and deck chairs and set up on the water’s edge. The darker it got, the more ominous the storm clouds looked, and by the time the fireworks had started, so had the thunder, lightning, and downpour! We took refuge in the car, but not before Hubs got some very tricky shots of the fireworks and the full moon.