May 20, 2008
You can ACTUALLY see this one from space. We rolled into Grand Canyon National Park about 30 minutes before sunset. When we got out of our car and walked over to the edge (the south rim) all I could do was stand there with my jaw dropped. Our friend Kris had been here before, and what he said about it seemed to ring pretty true.
“You could stand there for months and just stare at it and be dumb.” -KML
He’s absolutely right. The canyon is something like 4-20 miles wide the whole way through and at least a mile deep. It is absolutely unreal, and it really is impossible for me to consider the possible of this being manmade. This is the result of millions of years of erosion and the depositing of different minerals. On top of all of this wonder and awe, there was an incredible amount of elk and other wildlife in the park.
The plan was to camp for free at the park. The execution of this plan was rather shoddy and we may or may not have broken the rules on camping. After searching for a fabled free camping ground (according to David’s travel book) we found that they no longer allowed camping. So we ended up pulling off to a picnic area with other cars (mind you it is after sunset at this point), hiking about a 1/4 mile off the road and pitching our tents. Now, there were no signs regarding camping and whether it was or was not permissible, but there were other cars there which we assumed were also camping. After dinner, we went to bed or at least attempted to. The temperature dropped to 31 farenheit and we found ourselves struggling against nature.
The next morning we woke up and had breakfast (around 6am or sunrise) then decided to go hiking down the south rim. The goal was to go down far enough to gain some perspective on the north rim, but we only were allowing ourselves about 3 hours to do this (we had no water with us). The result was a complete and utter failure. We only managed to get down about 1000 vertical feet and the north rim looked EXACTLY the same as it did before. We hiked back up to the top, and wouldn’t you know, we ran into some neighbors who lived in our townhome complex and went to USC! It caught us by surprise to even see people wearing USC gear, but to actually know one of them? So we chatted with Gabi (I think thats how it’s spelled) and eventually finished hiking to the top. Then we grabbed some lunch (altho when it’s before 11AM I guess it’s called brunch) and then hit the road for the city of sin.
May 20, 2008
It’s about 600 miles of driving to get to the Grand Canyon from Las Cruces. Well, if you stick to the shortest route. With so much natural beauty just a step off the road though, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see these amazing sites. So we ended up driving through the painted desert and it was absolutely amazing. Of course what gives the painted desert its name is all the colors of the sand, rocks and land formations. All the changes in colors are caused by the many different minerals in the sand/rocks.
We also drove through the petrified forest which is basically a bunch of pieces of trees that are lying on the ground… Oh and they haven’t been alive for the last 250 million years. How on Earth do these trees not rot away you may ask? Well it all has to do with the “wasness” of the is (I stole this from Professor Mancke). The trees used to be in a swamp (in the middle of Arizona, go figure) and when the trees died, their insides slowly crystallized (replaced by quartz) and what is left is a collection of tree stumps as hard as rocks. Some of them also have some really interesting colors.
After winding through these natural wonders, we had to make one final gas stop before we headed on to the Grand Canyon, and we made it in Winslow, Arizona (oh now I get the title Josh). For those of you who still don’t follow the title, listen to some more of the Eagles and you’ll get it. Anyways, Winslow was kind of a small town and parts of it hosted the historic route 66. Our next stop was the Grand Canyon.
May 18, 2008
We landed in White Sands around 4:30 Mountain time and yes, this was our third time zone in 4 days. I’m really enjoying this part of the trip. Along the road leading up to White Sands, we were fortunate to see a pile of white sand along the road before we actually got into the national monument. I got a plastic baggie filled with it and also took the bulb of a desert plant that was nearby (found out later it was called a Senna). White Sands National Monument was absolutely incredible. I honestly kind of felt like we were either at a beach in the middle of the ocean or we were on Tattoine… only with white sand. We attempted to sled down some of the dunes with a bowl sled, but it really didn’t work out so well. I think it was because the friction of the sand was a little bit more than we expected. So we stopped that, and began a long jumping contest over the dunes. I didn’t participate due to my fear of hyper-extending my knee (got a bone bruise with some meniscus damage), but it was still fun to watch. We also played some games like tic-tac-toe and Connect 4 in the sand and then wrote some large messages. The sunset was pretty incredible (despite any cool cloud formations) because the sand developed an eerie blue color. It was so quiet you could hear a sneeze a mile away.
We rolled into Las Cruces a little before 9PM which is a big deal in a small town where everything closes relatively early. We got some dinner at a Mexican Restaurant that closed 5 minutes after we got in. We met up with our local tour guide/host Jon and he recommended anything with a chili. As a result, I went ahead and ordered some stuffed green chili’s which were delicious. After that, we went to a local brewpub called the High Desert Brewing Company. I was really impressed by their local flavor and the fact that they only served the beer they brewed.
Of course, this is again a small town, so they shut up shop pretty early around 10PM so we only tried two of their beers. Jon explained to me that this was one of the three poorest counties in the US, but according to him, mostly because of how cheap everything is. The next morning we had some breakfast burritos at a place called Nellie’s. They used to deliver burritos in town and thats how they got started back in the 60’s. Once again, this town loves their chili’s and of course that was one of the ingredients listed for the burritos. We had our breakfast burritos (still don’t top Bob’s) then hit the road for one of the most amazing stretches of driving yet.
Oh and by the way, the reason gypsum is in the title, is because that is the mineral in the sand that causes its white appearance.
May 16, 2008
Driving to Las Cruces, New Mexico from Austin is really just a fancy way of saying spending 6 hours on the same interstate in the same state, getting close to Mexico and then arriving. After getting through Texas hill country, the landscape got very flat and we could literally see the road go straight for miles. The speed limit jumps up to 80 and even though we were going under the speed limit, we only got passed by 3 cars over the course of 3 hours of driving. The general idea I’m trying to get across here is that space in West Texas is certainly NOT at a premium.
When we got to El Paso, the urge to jump over the border was pretty big, despite the fact that if we did that, we would jump right back. Unfortunately, one of our travel partners doesn’t have his passport yet, so that wouldn’t have happened. We did however take the time to drive through downtown El Paso and at least see the several sets of fences that mark the border. We also saw UTEP’s football stadium (the Sun Bowl) which is set in a few mountains and must look really cool from inside.
One thing that really floored me, was how easily you could tell the difference between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. I would not think of El Paso as a huge/wealthy city by any stretch of the imagination, but next to Juarez, it might as well have been Los Angeles. Juarez was mostly just shacks and sheds while El Paso’s downtown looked down on it. I was left wondering things like, “does this town have running water?”, “how many people are just waiting to jump the border into the US either legally or illegally?” It really put into perspective what a less than spectacular Texas city was to the rest of the world.
May 16, 2008
This place finds itself among my favorite cities in the world. It has a very inviting atmosphere kind of like Columbia only it is a good bit larger, still a college town with some of the best music in the world in it. We rolled into Austin around 4:30 in the afternoon and one of the first things we saw was the capitol building. It’s the tallest building in the city, and is the only capitol building allowed to stand as tall as the US capitol building. Another interesting thing to note is that the Texas flag is allowed to fly as high as the US flag and it is also the only state that can legally secede from the union. This is a result of the terms made when Texas joined the union so many years ago.
We walked down the infamous 6th Street. I imagine it being a lot like Bourbon Street, only cleaner (in every way), younger, more musically inclined and weirder. Its real claim to fame lies with its rich music. Every year around spring break, Austin holds what is probably the largest independent music festival… South by Southwest. We wandered into a couple of stores (a music and hat store) which are very typical on 6th Street. Another thing that really differentiates Austin from New Orleans is the presence of a HUGE college in the city limits. While New Orleans does have a couple of schools like Loyola and Tulane, UT-Austin is much bigger than the 2 of those put together.
For dinner, we grabbed some burgers at a place called Hut’s Hamburgers. It’s won a lot of awards and serves some of the best burgers in Texas. After eating and putting our gear at my brother’s apartment, we headed down to the Congress Avenue bridge for sunset. This is the famous Bat Bridge of Austin. Every night at sunset, thousands of bats fly out from underneath this bridge on into the sunset. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen on our night in Austin. We could see the bats flying around beneath the bridge, but they never took off. We were wondering if that had to with the overcast weather. After that, we got to bed early so that we could wake up early.
We woke up that morning and had one of my personal favorite breakfast items, kolaches. They are a Czech and Slovakian dish that is basically a bread roll filled with just about anything. After this 5:45AM breakfast we hit the road for New Mexico.
May 15, 2008
This update comes from our third time zone in 4 days. We’ll start with Houston.
Interesting statistics about my home town include it being one of the fattest cities in America along with one of the most polluted cities in America. I still love it.
We pulled in around 3:30 on Monday. The drive took us through the Atchafalaya swamp so we got to enjoy a 19 mile bridge. When we did pull in, we took a long drive around the city so we could see some of the big landmarks like the Astrodome (the first professional indoor sports arena for an outdoor sport) and Williams Tower (the tallest building in Houston). For dinner, my parents cooked up some steak, corn and mashed potatoes, a true Texan dinner. After dinner, I interviewed an old friend, Army Specialist Dillon ******. It was good catching up with him, and then we went out for drinks (local beer of choice was Shiner Bock). The next morning we went down to Bob’s Taco Station for breakfast tacos and coffee. We had lunch at a cheap Chinese restaurant near my high school and then we packed up and headed for Austin.
The diversity of Houston is really something else. I videotaped this in the neighborhood near my high school. It is located in the middle of very Asian neighborhood (most of the signs are also written in an Asian language) and a very Hispanic neighborhood. In fact, the big grocery store nearby is called Fiesta. Another thing that we saw was a neighborhood of dayworkers. I used to work at a place nearby during a summer and I remember driving by and seeing hundreds and hundreds of men standing outside a Shell gas station just waiting for work. When we drove by (around 1) there weren’t as many left, probably not much more than 50 or so.
My interview with Dillon was pretty interesting. He fought in Iraq and was shot in the neck by a sniper. As a result, he was paralyzed from the chest down. The last time I saw him, he was at the VA hospital in Washington DC and couldn’t cough up phlegm on his own and had very limited hand movement. About a year and a half later, he has both improved and gotten worse. He does a much better job of getting around on his own, although he still needs help with some basic things (such as getting dressed). His wife divorced him a few months after he returned to the states. I found it fascinating that despite all that has happened to him, he remains optimistic. He told me that he gave a lot of thought to going career in the Army, and that he had planned to do that until he got shot. He has dealt with a lot of adversity during his life and still manages to focus on what he must do. He is currently going through physical therapy but hope to get a job in law enforcement when he finishes with that. When asked if he would do it all again, he said he would with absolutely no hesitation.
May 13, 2008
Yes the title says New Orleans, but this update will be typed up from the comfort of my Houston suburban home and will also talk some about the driving from Columbia (point A for those who missed it) to New Orleans (point B).
The trip started with a delicious breakfast burrito and some awful weather at 5:45 AM. We found ourselves in the middle of a tornado watch from Columbia through some parts of Georgia (before Atlanta) and we just took it as a sign that God wanted us to vacate Columbia as quickly as possible. We ended up getting gas after about 143 miles (only half a tank) and then switching drivers. Our car has gotten about 30 mpg so far so we are getting some good gas mileage. We stopped in the middle of Alabama to fill up and eat at mile 450. We made ourselves some sandwiches and had some snacks. Right here I picked up my first gift for Rudy Mancke (some sand/dirt off the road). Don’t worry the gifts will get better, especially once we start visiting the national parks.
When we pulled into Louisiana, we were quite dismayed to find the visitor’s center closed. We had planned on booking our hotel from there since they supposedly had some good discounts. Lucky for us, we found the New Orleans visitor center and were able to book a hotel from there. We stayed at the hotel St. Marie which was in the middle of the French Quarter and less than a block from the infamous Bourbon Street. We strolled around the Quarter and then down to the riverside (the Mississippi River) and saw the plethora of small monuments along the bank. There was also a steamboat working its way along the river and some street cars coming and going. We also were able to see the outside of the oldest cathedral in the United States (St. Louis Cathedral, founded in 1720) but gates were up keeping the general public out. Later that night, we had some gumbo at The Gumbo Shop for dinner and spent the rest of the night visiting some bars on Bourbon Street. The two most famous drinks in New Orleans are hurricanes and hand grenade and we enjoyed both of those. They’re quite strong and I would recommend pacing yourself with these. I found it pretty amusing that no one will tell you how to make a hand grenade, although the recipe for a hurricane is well known. We continued walking around and heard some jazz (performed by Steamboat Willie) from an outdoor restaurant so we stopped in to freeload. Then we were in bed by 10:30PM… no seriously. We were exhausted and ready to sleep at 10.
The next morning we woke up and had some beignets at Cafe du Monde. Inside was pretty full and food was cheap at about 2 dollars for 3 beignets. After breakfast we checked out of our hotel and drove over to the garden district. The houses and trees were amazing all around. We saw lots of magnolias and a good deal of live oak. As we walked around there, we fell upon a cemetery. New Orleans cemeteries have no underground graves because of the high water table in New Orleans. If they were to bury their dead like any other city, they would float back up to the surface. Then we packed up, and headed down the road towards Houston.
One thing that I noticed was the state of some of the houses in East New Orleans. Some seemed very renovated, but others looked quite dilapidated and still suffering from Katrina. Louisiana receives no federal funding for highways and roads since their legal drinking age is 18 and there seems to be an absence of open container laws while walking around outside. What struck me the most was the incredible number of street performers, artists and beggars. While some of the artists showcasing their work may be starving, there are others who are doing quite well. I ran into one artist who had her own website and was doing a show in June in DC. Most of the artists were located near the river bank by Cafe du Monde and the cathedral but there were virtually none on Bourbon Street. There was a street performer about every 30 feet on Bourbon Street and there was just about every type you could imagine. Magicians, musicians, statues and so on. New Orleans really did give a sense of independence from the rest of the world.
May 12, 2008
Updates on our visit to New Orleans coming when I arrive in Houston.
JRH
May 11, 2008
We have been talking about this trip for what seems like forever amongst my friends, and while we are still 2 men down, I am sure it will be a fantastic trip all the same. While I fully anticipate this to be a very fun trip, I am also taking this road trip as an opportunity to do my senior thesis which I have entitled: “The Rediscovery of America in 2008″. I will be documenting every step of this trip and then present my findings in an illustrated journal for those who wish to see my senior thesis.
The planning of this trip included some trickier aspects, like finding places to stay. In an effort to solve this problem, I created a facebook event and invited every single person I know on facebook.com to attend. Through this event, I have found places to stay in New Mexico, Oregon, Seattle, New York City and Washington DC. We have also been given many a traveling tip about several of the cities we plan on visiting.
We have a couple journals, a few cameras and a camcorder with about 2 hours battery life and plenty of memory to capture this trip, and we will not let this be the one that gets away.
Tomorrow we wake up in Columbia, SC for the last time this month.
-JRH
