Natural and Unnatural Wonders

(San Luis Obispo, CA)

…Still trying to catch up to the present, so I’m going to try to run through events as quickly as possible…

Since we entered the southwest, we have been constantly in awe of the scenery and natural landscape that surrounds us, but Arizona was the most baffling of all. On our way to Phoenix, we drove through the Painted Desert (twelve miles of crevices and hills turned tons of different colors – red, white, blue, orange, green, purple – by mineral deposits), two national forests (Who knew there were so many trees in the southwest?), and the regular desert landscape of sparse vegetation, tall cacti, and sandy mesas.

We stayed a night in Phoenix with my mom’s cousin Suzy and her daughter Gina, who were fabulous, in the style of the rest of my family. There wasn’t much to do in Phoenix, but we did get out and watch the World Cup final (Viva la roja!!!), then headed next for Sedona.

People say Sedona is some kind of center for energy vortexes and like, Mother Nature power vibes or something, so the town is full of hippies and stores that sell hippie things like crystals and relaxation therapy and meditation aids. The place itself is beautiful – huge red rock cliffs and canyons, tall oak trees, and mild temperatures thanks to the elevation. We camped for a night and hiked the next day in Oak Creek Canyon, on a trail that crossed the canyon’s creek 18 times and ended at a shallow pool where we splashed around a bit and ate lunch. To this day it was the best hike we’ve done, the most fun and the prettiest.

Straight from the trailhead, we split for Vegas, went through the obnoxious process of driving past the Hoover dam, where traffic slows to a stop-and-go pace due to unnecessary security checkpoints and stupid tourists running across the highway with cameras and children. Dumbest landmark ever, in our opinion, but we got through it and made it to our destination, our friend Dave’s apartment, about a 5-10 drive from the main strip on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Vegas is like a weird mix of Times Square, Branson, MO, and a Jersey Shore boardwalk. We were surprised at how much we disliked it. Temperatures were in the hundreds even at night, so we did not go outside in daylight. Our host, Dave, is in Vegas just to work on the Harry Reid Senate campaign, so we spent a good deal of time hanging out with him and his excessively-proud-to-be-politically-active-democrats campaign friends, who kept us entertained and recruited us to help with mass mailings. Among many things, they explained to us why Vegas exists in the first place – founded as a town of guilty pleasures for Hoover dam workers and mob bosses. God bless America. Vote for Harry Reid.

Katie’s birthday was our one and only big night out in Vegas, and it was a blast. We hopped around to a few casinos, blew way too much money on overpriced drinks ($14 wells, what?), but were moved through lines quickly and without cover charge. Meanwhile, at our final destination, a club called Surrender, our guy friends were asked to pay a $30 cover and decided to go home without us.

So Katie and I make our way into this place, which I guess was what it should have been – multiple outdoor bars surrounding a huge swimming pool, with a main dance floor sporting scantily clad and impressively talented pole dancers. Typical club music, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, etc. We were satisfied with it, but we did not expect it to spark the night’s events. Then Katie ordered a drink, and Russian John entered our lives. He offered to pay for Katie’s drink, and when she thanked him, his eyes widened. No one ever says thank you here, we come to find. Girls just expect free drinks, take them and walk away. “Your friend is a good person,” Russian John tells me, and decides to hang out with us for the rest of the night. Despite an average appearance, the man is loaded. When we get tired of the club, we exit into the casino (connected, along with a hotel called Encore), where he orders us, no joke, two thousand dollars worth of poker chips and demands that we play roulette with them. When we ran out of those, he ordered more. “It’s nothing, nothing at all. I have it, you don’t. I want nothing.” It was true. You would think he was a creeper, but there were no strings attached to his generosity. He finished up the night by popping a bottle of champagne and showing us the view of the strip from a huge picture window in the top of the hotel. Then he bought us a cab home. Never in our lives have we been so rewarded for having good manners.

After the two following days yielded miserable heat, the truck broke down on what was supposed to be our last night in Vegas. We could not have been more frustrated. Luckily, Katie’s dad was sensitive to our growing restlessness. He rented us a car, and we temporarily removed ourselves from the wasteland that is Nevada…

Blood runs thicker than water (especially in the desert)

(Las Vegas, NV)

New Mexico now seems so long ago, but it went something like this:

We arrived at my (great) Aunt June’s house in Albuquerque in the early evening and immediately received the grandma treatment – giant hugs and food galore, even though we had dinner plans in just a few hours. The evening continued with wine on the back porch and a southwestern barbecue dinner with June, my mom’s cousins Kevin and Molly, and their spouses.

I enjoy my family so much, and Katie did too after hanging out with them for a few days. The constant, blunt yet goodhearted banter, the rehashing of favorite stories, the love for singing and the ability to make oneself heard – we got heavy doses of it all. Listening to Aunt June and my cousins enjoy being together, and their memories of my grandfather (her brother), my grandmother, my mom and uncles, I felt so lucky to be a part of this huge clan of wonderful people. The best was hearing June talk about my grandfather and the fun they used to have sitting and drinking on the same back porch where we sat to have wine that first night in town.

Since June had to leave town, we stayed with Molly and her husband David, in their amazing home in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. We enjoyed hiking on some trails in their neighborhood and checking out the spectacular view of downtown Albuquerque. Our second night in, Molly and David treated us to a dinner of New Mexican-style food (didn’t know there was a distinction before) including fish tacos, carne adovada, and lots of things flavored with green chile. I loved it – finally some good, spicy food! We followed dinner with a John Denver guitar/song session on Molly and David’s balcony, taking in the cool, brisk night air. As if that weren’t enough, the next morning David took us flying in the small plane he shares with his brother. Along with spectacular views of the city’s surrounding mountains, plateaus, and suburban sprawl, I got a brief flying lesson. I’m now well on my way to professional pilothood.

Once again, we were spoiled rotten by some excellent hosts. In addition to Molly and David, my mom’s cousin Kevin, his wife Caroline, and their sons Sean and Shane, showed us even more of life in New Mex. Sean, who was nearly our age, introduced us to his friends and took us around to some good nighttime hangouts. We went barhopping in the downtown strip, which was fun, although on a Wednesday night it didn’t maintain the same energy as many of the other cities we’ve seen. The next day Kevin and Caroline added delicious homemade salsa, tacos, and gazpacho to our New Mexico palette, and we visited with them and my other cousin Lisa for more laughs and family stories. Finally, for our last night in town, Sean brought us along to his friend’s birthday party in a casino named after the mountains, Sandia. We enjoyed some drinks, practiced our roulette and slots routine (gearing up for Vegas) and explored the resort premises until some late hour or another. It was a good cap to our stay.

I’ve obviously been slow on the posts, but we’ve been on the move since NM and there’s much more to be told! Updates on the way…

This post is bigger because it’s about Texas

(Albuquerque, NM)

Even though Texas clearly thinks it’s its own country, our time there involved a whole lot of love for America. In Houston we stopped in at Rice University, where another former roommate, Lauren, is currently doing her Teach for America training. We played volleyball in the rain – because it was STILL raining – with a bunch of her new TFA friends and tried to decipher their teacher-y jargon and inside jokes.

Over the fourth of July weekend, we couchsurfed in Austin, and our newest hostess introduced us to the joys of barhopping on 6th street. Two highlights of the night: 1, riding a mechanical bull at The Trophy Room. I nearly broke my neck but stayed on long enough to not be a total failure. 2, meeting up with my friend Meghan (from St. Louis), who showed us some of her favorite Austin spots and recapped with me a few tales of our high school friends.

Miraculously, the sun shone in the morning, and we got to see Austin by day. We toured the capitol building (which in my opinion reveres the Republic of Texas over the U.S. of A., naturally) and took a hike on Mount Bonnell, where we got a view of the city skyline at one end and the array of unbelievably large mansions lining the Colorado River at the other. We watched the mansion dwellers take their speedboats up the river like their own private highway and wondered if they were aware of us commoners looking down on them.

Austin is supposedly the nation’s capital of live music, but I was unimpressed. A visit to 6th street in the daylight revealed only three bars, out of far more, with live acts, and these were one-man shows. Nashville has Austin beat on that front as far I’m concerned, but maybe we just weren’t looking in the right places. We did, however, come across a fair number of dirty hippie/vagrant type characters hanging out on street corners, tons of bike riders, and a casual friendliness that fit the town’s reputation as I’d of it heard before. Things seemed a little run down in places, but comfortable.

Another great night on 6th street added a few bars – the Blind Pig and Maggie Mae’s – to our repertoire. Our hostess had suggested the Blind Pig specifically as a good place to meet genuine southern gentlemen, and her guidance once again yielded fabulous results (even though the gentlemen we found weren’t necessarily southern). Our Fourth of July began with a drive home at the break of dawn…

…BUT the real celebration was yet to come. After a few hours of sleep, Katie woke me up like my little sister on Christmas morning – she, dressed and ready to go, waiting as patiently as possible for me to accept the fact that I wasn’t allowed to stay in bed any longer. But it wasn’t Santa that brought the goodies on the Fourth of July. It was Willie Nelson.

Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic featured over 25 acts, tons of big names in country music that Katie lost sleep over but I had never heard of. Once we got there, though, I had a blast and enjoyed every artist, every song. Some favorites: David Allan Coe, Folk Uke, Del Castillo, Kris Kristofferson, and The Reflectacles. Possibly even more entertaining was the crowd. So much long hair, so many American flags, and Texas flags, and so many old hippies, young hippies, children, parents, grandparents, booze, weed, and Willie Nelson’s face plastered all over every T-shirt, baseball cap, and piece of jewelry around. I knew the guy was famous, but I had no idea it was to such godlike proportions – slightly creepy. The idol himself didn’t come on stage until after midnight, and I swear I thought the crowd was going to riot if he waited one more minute. Nevertheless, the music was wonderful all day – finally the full dose Austin’s reputation had promised.

Perhaps Texas-ed out, we left Austin for the long drive to New Mexico. Putting up with horrendous post-holiday traffic, we persevered through the rest of the state, passing scenic cattle ranches, an oddly high number of taxidermy shops, and a few “cowboy churches” – still not sure what that is. Spent the night in Wichita Falls, and finally made it out the next day and into the loving arms of my southwestern relatives. From there, a wonderful reunion began!...

Charm and Heartbreak in the Big Easy

(Austin, TX)

There’s more to New Orleans than the French Quarter, we soon found out. Our new hostess, Shana, lived in the Garden District. She explained that back in the day when the British first bought out this area of the city, they overloaded it with all sorts of vegetation, to cover up the nasty smell of the river. Like the French Quarter, almost every house had two levels with beautiful open air porches on each floor, but in the Garden District this facade was always draped and framed with tropical trees, ferns, flower bushes, and the occasional cactus. Every house was prettier than the last.

It rarely stopped raining (in fact, it still hasn’t stopped raining, 5 days later now), so we didn’t get to roam around much, but we did take full advantage of the nightlife. After a short round at this dive bar/burger joint/laundromat/notary’s office (??), we met one of Shana’s co-workers on Frenchmen Street, where the live jazz brought the city’s reputation to life, and these bands did not disappoint. Not only did the tunes keep us on our toes, the musicians kind of kept to this smooth transition of members. A singer would accompany the band first, and then four saxophonists would casually join her, then take over while she faded into the audience for awhile, and so on, a constant ebb and flow. We heard later that the lead singer of the first act we saw had left in the middle of his show, jumped in onstage at a bar down the street for a few songs, and come back. No one missed a beat.

We later took a spin at Miss Mae’s, a twenty-four hour bar with dollar wells (yes please!), where we chatted it up with new acquaintances, including Shana’s insane co-worker who proceeded to talk at me for like two hours. He nearly cried describing the week the Saints won the Super Bowl (apparently the city was so obsessed with football and mardi gras parties that crime dropped like crazy), then went on about his absolutely absurd political theories and how he is one hundred percent destined to one day be President. I stopped listening after he told me he would die in office because people would love him so much they’d never vote him out – what country are you in?

The next day included one actually New Orleans-y activity – Po’ Boys for lunch/dinner (whatever you call it when you’ve become semi-nocturnal) at Parasols – a dive, but delicious. Then it was off again for drinks at The Saint, our final and favorite Big Easy bar. We stayed until nearly sunrise, doing karaoke and getting to know a few of Shana and Luke’s much more normal friends. Not one dull moment passed. When I finally made it back to Shana’s in the morning, I discovered one last surprise waiting for me on her doorstep – the over-talkative weirdo from the other night had left me a love letter, accompanied by four, count ‘em, four, mix CDs. He signed the letter POTUS: President of the United States. Swear to God, I am a magnet for the crazies. But Katie and I got a total kick out of seeing what music he chose. It’s such a shame I had to break his heart and leave.

Meanwhile, my heart was broken having to leave New Orleans. But we had deadlines to make in Texas, so we braved the incoming hurricane and moved on

Is this real life?

(Houston, TX)

Continuing the never-ending drive out of Florida, we stopped in Tallahassee last Saturday to watch the U.S. lose to Ghana (I did not publicize my partial leaning toward Ghana, especially when surrounded by red white and blue painted faces). We had a great time and met some really friendly and hospitable people, a precursor to our even better evening, when a last-minute success with couchsurfing led us to sleep on the futon of this old hippie and his family. The house was like a live 3D version of those I Spy books – randomly assorted items on every shelf, in every drawer, on every wall. This guy had collected insane numbers of old maps, doorknobs, toy cars and army men, glasses, hats, photos, and tons more, that kept us entertained for hours. He also operated on a 24-hour open door policy, so certain friends could stop by just to get a glass of water and play with whatever new little antique gadget the guy had acquired – even if he himself wasn’t there. This was the beginning of the unbelievable southern hospitality we have experienced for the past several days now.

The drive then took us through the rest of Florida, including a stop at Santa Rosa Island, about half an hour east of Pensacola, where we took a short break on the beach. Along with blinding white sand and warm waters, we found what we think were the first signs of the oil spill hitting that beach. Neither of us knowing exactly what a tar ball looks like, we can’t be sure, but scattered everywhere were these little nickel- and quarter-sized chunks of dark brownish red, malleable, course, greasy dough-like stuff that at first we didn’t notice but then couldn’t stop noticing. It was all over the place, and it stuck to our feet when we left. The weird thing was, when we stopped again at the beach in Mississippi, there was no sign of anything like it, or anything resembling crude oil in any form. So who knows.

We got to New Orleans, set up camp at Bayou Segnette State Park (the cheapest place we could find within a good distance of the city), ate dinner with some armadillos who wandered up to the site, and headed in to explore the French Quarter. We fell in love. Where else in the world can you go out for the night in flip flops and T-shirts, get three drinks for the price of one (standard in most upper level bars), and sit on a beautiful veranda to consume them as you listen to a live (and actually good) band, on a Sunday night? This city knows how to have a good time on the right level. No “pretty people” bars – no high heels and pretention. But on the other end, a certain amount of refinement – a scarcity of ignorant rednecks, to put it bluntly. This is the balance on which I thrive.

Fate took care of us that first night in New Orleans. We got to talking with our bartender, Shana, who turned out to be very active on couchsurfing and offered us a place to stay for the remainder of our time there. We moved in the next day, and thank God, because it rained from then on – camping would have been horrendous. Shana and her boyfriend, Luke, turned out to be total godsends, and they made our stay unforgettable. Vagabonding only gets better when you have a few locals to show you around, and New Orleans definitely got better and better…