N'Awlins!!

Tonight was probably most definitely one of the most fun nights we have had to date. It started with an early morning goodbye to Wrigley, Jordan, and Victoria, and we got on the road for another long day of driving. Most of the day was spent enjoying 60 degree weather and the first hint of humidity we've seen in months, then we hit the Louisiana state line. Then it poured, heavily, all the way to the hotel.

No hurricane, just normal Louisiana swampland.

When we arrived at the Queen and Crescent in the french quarter, we were greeted by the Valet guy, aka Denzel Washington. He was very nice and took good care of Ian.  Once we got to our room, Eric was very quick to inform us that the classic historical New Orleans-syle room gave him the heebie jeebies, and it reminded him of the room in the movie 1408. As comforting as this was, we decided to leave and go out.

Queen and Crescent.

Kelly and Tom found an awesome local place for us to eat, drink, and listen to some local jazz. It was called The Three Muses, and it was easy to find from our hotel after a quick drive down Bourbon Street to see some of the sites. The food was delicious, the drinks were exquisite, and the band was awesome! Tom re-discovered his passion for whiskey. As the night went on, more and more people who were walking by came in and joined the band. It was a very fun experience in a very cool timeless atmosphere.

Absolutely unreal.

I was born in the wrong generation.

Big Easy

To her credit, she got the only flavor without everclear.

While Tom and Kelly went out after for some extra exploring on bourbon street for some fun-cup slushies, we are all very excited to see the town in daylight and full color tomorrow (after bourbon street has been bleached) and experience the tradition and culture that comes from this historic and beautiful city.

If Tahoe is heaven, Bourbon Street is hell, and so much more fun.

LETS GET READY TO RODEO, SAN ANTONIO!

Today we went out around San Antonio with Eric's cousin and his girlfriend, Jordan and Victoria. They took us to downtown to see some sights, and a cattle-drive parade, that began a week of barbeque competitions and a rodeo.

Cattle-drive.

As we were walking toward the parade route we passed the Alamo. Pretty impressive, and even more impressive that after the battle it became the center point of an entire downtown of a city.

so many cowboys and ranchers.

The cattle drive and parade was like nothing I had ever seen before. There was so much Texan pride, and cowboy showmanship. The first bit of the parade was a handful of cowboys on horseback leading a pack of about 50 longhorns through downtown as the traditional start to the rodeo. After that it was a standard town parade, but with that Texan twist that gave it an entirely different cultural feel. The standard youth groups from churches, and dance classes, and high school bands were replaced with horseback riding schools, boys making lassos, Apache tribal dances, and mariachi high school clubs.

God Bless Texas.

If there was one place on this trip where I had felt as if I was in an entirely different country and culture, it was Texas, without a doubt. I wish my part of the country had as unique of a culture, and were as proud of that unique culture as Texas is.

And God bless that country to our north too.

We took a tour of the riverwalk afterward. The riverwalk is a section of downtown that has a canal running through it with shops and restaurants along it. If you have ever been to the canal in Providence, Rhode Island, its like that, but it actually has things around it. It gave a great feel to the city and made it very friendly for pedestrians to walk around downtown, something that the Providence version fails at.

Riverwalk.

Tex-Ven-nice.

We had lunch at Rudy's Barbeque, a gas station-restaurant north of San Antonio. They had a sign out front that said that they were the worst BBQ in Texas, and the second I got inside, I knew they were lying.

Awful BBQ.

Not.

The place smelled amazing, and the food was delicious and cheap. Best barbeque any of us ever had. The table got ribs, chop, brisket, turkey, creamed corn, beer, potato salad, beans, peach cobbler, and basically a full loaf of white bread to wash it down with. Regina was almost in tears it tasted so good.

"I'm so full, but it's so good I cant stop!"

Best meal yet.

Then we took a siesta until about 7, when we went out to an icehouse called The Friendly Spot for drinks and tex-mex. An icehouse is an amazing creation that the southwest has come up with. Its a bar, but the only thing inside is the actual bar (hence ice-house), all the seating is outside. So its basically a really chill party in someone's back yard, except theres a bar and live music as well. If it wasn't so damn cold in the northeast they would be such a big hit. We spent a few hours there drinking dressed (lime and salted bottleneck) beers, eating amazing quesadillas and tacos, and watching the Spurrs game on a big projector.... in 60 degree weather.... on January 29th. That's all I have to say about that.

There was also this guy, hauling a tree he chopped down in the back of his F-650.

Tomorrow we are off to New Orleans, where we are staying at the Queen and Crescent in the French Quarter. We plan to eat and drink our way through the neighborhood. There will be lots of pictures. We wanted to thank Jordan and Victoria for being lovely hosts to us and bringing us to delicious places to eat during our stay in Texas.

Don't Mess With Texas

Right. So to add on to the first blog that we posted this morning, we have an updated account on our 10 hour drive through western Texas to San Antonio. For the most part it was pretty uneventful, so here's a quick run down of the main highlights:

1. About half of our hotel's inhabitants were vacationing from the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. This calmed my fears that not everyone from Ciudad Juarez was involved with Cartel business, and some were just normal people who work or vacation in El Paso. Regardless, why you would want to vacation in El Paso bewilders me. They had cool license plates too featuring Emiliano Zapata that I bet none of you have ever seen before.

2. Western Texas is prettttty boring. In a more positive light, it is not as boring as Kansas, not as dirty as Nevada. You can also drive really fast through it, and have to reallly screw up to get pulled over.

Thats right. Everything is big in Texas.

3. Cars in Texas come in 4 flavors of 'Murrican pickup truck: Ford, Chevy, GMC, Dodge. No exceptions. Bonus points for it being a white pickup, or having extra-sized wheels.

Seriously, Kansas was worse.

4. Lunch was Subway (again). Kelly discovered their buffalo chicken flat bread which became topic of conversation for the next hour or so.


5. There was this truck:

Just in case you need a fake pig...this guy has one.

 At about this point, Kelly and Tom had completed their portion of driving for the day, so they took a happy hour in the parking lot with some Budweiser tallboys bought from this gas station.

6. Upon arrival in to San Antonio, Eric's cousin, Jordan, took us to a really neat place to get fish tacos and fun Texas style burgers. We sat outside (yeah, I said it) and listened to live local music and chatted about our trip.

7. Jordan has a really cool Labradoodle, we're debating stealing him for the ride back to Delaware.

Tomorrow we're off to downtown San Antonio to watch a cattle drive. Apparently the rodeo starts next week, so this event is like the kick off. After that, there is promise of famous southwestern barbeque.

Grand Canyon...in 3 hours

Pictures do not do it justice.

Yesterday morning we woke up about 10 minutes away from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. It was slightly colder in Arizona than what we are used to (40s) but we found it to be bearable. We entered the national park and started our fast track through the canyon. Regina was describing the canyon as "so big, it's a little bit obnoxious"... she was kind of right. However, every stop we made offered different views of one of the wonders of the world. We knew that we had a 10 hour drive to El Paso, Texas waiting for us, so we had to limit our time and get through the park...fast. All in all, we spent about 2.5 hours driving around the canyon and stopping at the look outs to take pictures. There was a short hike that we took to stretch our legs.

Rick lookin sharp at the canyon.

The rest of the day proved to be uneventful, as most of it was spent driving. In Phoenix, we stopped to get Greek food and kept driving. On interstate 10, there were a few exits for the US/Mexico border...right. Kelly spent a good amount of the evening reading wikipedia articles on Ciudad Juarez and their drug cartel. Just to note, Ciudad Juarez is our neighbor city in the next country over (as in we could probably see it from El Paso. Wikipedia said that Juarez is the most dangerous place in the world outside of named war zones. Not to worry moms, we're safe and well...and getting out of El Paso, ASAP.

Oh yes, did we mention it was 73 degrees?

It's 9 am, and we're back on the road today for 10 hours to San Antonio to see Eric's cousin.

Pacific Chronicles, Part 3

Apologies across the board of directors of this blog for not updating for the last few days. We woke up too early to blog Tuesday morning, and got back too late to want to blog. Vegas made us pay for internet, which we refused. SO here we are on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, in the middle of a forest in the middle of a desert in the middle of Arizona. We realize that not updating and going through about a day of no cell phone service made many of our fans think we may have died, but we are fine and well and ready to report back some great stories to the east coast, and some friends we have made along the way.

Yesterday morning we woke up in Vegas. Now, its usually normal for people to go party in Vegas all night, find their friend on the roof of a casino, and adopt a baby waking up to remember none of it. Well we were too tired to do anything but take long showers and go to sleep. So there was no tiger in our bathroom in the morning, only the remnants of the beard I had grown since St. Louis.

Venetian

Grand Canal of The Venetian

Scary enormous bunny inside the Palazzo.

We spent the morning eating a hearty breakfast at Hash-house a gogo in the Imperial Palace. Then we walked around the various casinos on the strip, saw the inside of Paris, Bally's (where we were staying), the Venetian, the Palazzo, the Bellagio, (which we saw the water show from), and then met up with Kelly's high school friend Conor Hastings, and he showed us around the new strip casino, the Cosmopolitan. So shiny.

Shiny 3 floor spiraling bar inside the Cosmo. Bling Blang.

We watched the water show outside the Bellagio, and played some slots. I guided Regina and Eric through their first times on a slot machine, and we spent a few dollars playing the slots. Eric won $2, and I won $10. We bought some rum slushies with our winnings, and took off for the Hoover Dam, which we toured as the sun set over the desert.

Hoover Dam

Pat Tillman Bridge over the Dam.

We rolled some pennies down this thing.

Our drive to the Grand Canyon tonight was the darkest stretch of Earth I have ever been on. We stopped on a lonely stretch of Arizona highway 64, and got out to look up at a milky star-filled sky. There were so many stars and galactic bands that the classic constellations were hard to find since there was more light than dark, and the sheer number of stars caused the earth to actually be illuminated. Being an avid stargazer, this was one of the most amazing sights of my life.

Thank you for letting us leave Nevada.

Tomorrow, now that we are finally up to date, we will hike around the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, and make our way into Texas, stopping in El Paso tomorrow night.

Pacific Chronicles, Part 2

Tuesday we woke up early and drove the famous California pacific route 1, attempting to drive it all the way from Half Moon Bay, near San Jose, and make it to Santa Monica, near Los Angeles. We had our hugs and goodbyes with Dorothy and were off.

A tide pool in Monterrey

Carmel-by-the-sea with Pebble Beach in the background

The drive was amazing. Each place we went got better and better, as we drove from the beaches of Monterrey around winding cliffs, and pristine beaches, and precious towns with fairytale cottages.

Oh, hey. I live in California, and my front yard is a natural grotto.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, 2 more feet of snow fall.

The amazement turned into angry jealousy by the time we hit Carmel, where we ate lunch on the beach, and then drove through town. The phrase "Screw you, we want your life" emanated in our thoughts around every corner. All of us wondered why we live on the east coast, as another foot of snow pounded down on our hometowns.

I descended a dusty gravel ridge, beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge...

From Carmel, the drive got even more picturesque, with the cliffs rising to beautiful vista points. One of my favorites was at the Bixby Canyon Bridge, which didn't even look real to me.

Until I eventually arrived, at the place where your soul had died...

All the way from San Francisco...

Around sunset we arrived on a beach with seals nursing their pups. Just some of the amazing things we saw along this road. Around this time we realized that we were never going to make it to Santa Monica in time, and certainly not Las Vegas in the same night.

As I chased the end of your road... cause I've still got miles to go.

So about 50 miles short of San Luis Obispo we turned east for the first time this trip and headed inland toward the valley. Around 8am, shortly after dark we ended up in dense dense fog. With about 5 feet of visibility, we crept slowly (without cell phone service) toward Bakersfield using the GPS as radar to notify us of any turns in the road. Defintely some of the most intense driving we had ever done, and Eric handled it very well. Once the fog cleared it was a straight shot to Vegas, and around 2am we were blasting Chamillionaire down the strip.

I wanna show all my haters love...

This songs for you.

Quite a day.

Pacific Chronicles, Part 1

Foster City, CA

Monday morning we took a walk around Dorothy's lagoon. The joys of living in California is your neighborhoods are planned down to the terrain they are built on, so you can have cool things like lagoons in your back yard.

Detained

"Broadway of the prison"

Then we set out to put Ian (our car) in for an oil change. Got on the BART to head to the ferry to Azkaban, I mean Alcatraz. Now, typically when you go to a tourist attraction, you get a picture forced on you in the hopes that you will buy it at the end of your time at the attraction. Nobody likes doing this, so we tried to make it more fun. There was this older Indian woman kind of wandering around near the souvenir picture station looking somewhat lost. We could tell she wanted her picture taken in front of the fake background of Alcatraz, so we invited her into our picture. It definitely made her day, our day, and confused the photographer a lot. To top it off, the following picture is an illegal full-on copyright-infringed picture of the print that we weren't going to buy for $22, courtesy of badasses Kelly "does what she wants" McCreary and Eric "who cares lets just do it" Sorkin

"Yeah, shes our grandma or something"

We cruised across San Francisco bay, and landed upon Alcatraz Island. It was a really really cool tour, where we were able to hear about the various escape attempts and the native American self-determination movement, as well as walk about the entire prison and go into cells and shower rooms and such.

Alcatraz, surrounded by dementors.

We came back to the mainland to go eat in the city one last time, where we got In N Out Burgers one more time (Eric got a double-double), and Ghirardelli sundaes one last time. We made it back to our car with about 10 minutes until the place closed, which would have left us car-less with too much traveling to do. Luck was on our side.

That night we took off to Santa Cruz for an amazing dinner with Kelly's aunt and uncle. Her uncle distilled his own wine and had a huge wine cellar, which was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. He shared a bottle of his white wine with us, and we had a delicious home cooked Italian meal of baked chicken and risotto. We drank, ate, and talked until about 11pm.

We want to thank both Dorothy Gorman for opening her home (and shower faucet) to us for a week, and Dave and Barb Donofrio for cooking and entertaining us for a wonderful evening.

Quick Report

Today we spent the day on the east side of the bay. In the morning we took a quick tour of UC Berkeley. It was a nice campus, but kind of an seedy town at parts, with a college flair thrown in. It didn't have anything on the beauty of Delaware's campus, which was surprising because when I think of Berkeley, I think of ultimate college everything. So it goes.

After that we drove down to Walnut Creek to watch the Jets game with Eric's extended family. They were once again awesome hosts and treated us to another meal. It was nice to meet everybody out here, and it was a great time overall, even though the Jets suffered a heavy loss.

Tomorrow is our last day in San Francisco. We will head up to Alcatraz in the morning, and then to Santa Cruz for dinner. We didn't take any pictures today, but we have changed our original plan a bit and from here back east it will go like this:

Tuesday we head down Route 1 to Santa Monica, and then on to Las Vegas for the night, where we will be staying at Bally's. Wednesday we drive to the Grand Canyon through the Hoover Dam. Thursday we drive to El Paso for the night. Friday we get out of El Paso and drive to San Antonio. Saturday we are visiting Eric's cousin in San Antonio. Sunday we drive to New Orleans, and are staying in the French Quarter. Monday we spend the day in New Orleans. Tuesday we drive to Nashville. Wednesday we tour Nashville and stay with my (Tom's) Aunt Lael. Thursday we drive home to Delaware, with enough time to give us a break before the semester begins on that following Monday.

From Pandora to Paradise

When you see it...

We woke up at about 7 this morning and left for Muir Woods at around 8am.  Tom drove us across the Golden Gate Bridge and through the winding mountains around Sausalito until we got to the ancient looking Muir Woods.

Realllly big trees.

The 150-200ft tall Redwoods seemed to soar endlessly into the sky with trunks being 10ft+ in diameter.  It felt exactly like pandora, and Tom and Regina were waiting for a brontosaurus to come give us a ride around while I waited patiently for Jake Sully to come save us! We hiked up and down the side of a mountain in the redwood forest for almost 2 hours and were pretty tired when we got back to the car.

Waiting for our Brontosaurus.

I (Eric) drove back down through the mountains in 75 degree clear weather until we got to gorgeous Sausalito! It was a beautiful and extremely wealthy town on the edge of the bay. There were so many cyclists riding around who didn't care for cars one bit, so it was tough weaving around them! We got some tasty sandwiches for lunch, walked around a bit, and then got back in the car to head towards the Marin Headlands. 

The drive up the mountain to get to the lookout points was fantastic.  We stopped along the way at each lookout point and took some incredible photos.  Everyone says I must have driven off the road and killed us back in Salt Lake City because we were in heaven! It was very interesting being at the each lookout point too because old World War II fortifications still existed from when the US thought the Japanese might attack the San Francisco port.  We spent about 2 hours going to each lookout point until the sun started setting.

View from Baker Beach

We had to keep chasing the sun!

We ran back to the car and headed back across the Golden Gate bridge on our way to Baker Beach to catch the sunset and dip our feet in the Pacific Ocean! We made it successfully and had a great (but VERY cold) time dipping our feet in, but the couldn't see the sun set exactly because part of the land still covered its decent.  At that point, we decided to make a mad dash over the mountain still covering the sunset and made it the cliffhouse JUST in time to watch the sunset.  It was like something out of a movie.  Regina, Tom, and I scurried onto the beach again and ran around in the Titanic-cold water before calling it a night.

Cliff House

Finally caught the Pacific sunset.

We got back to Dorothy's, went out to her favorite Chinese food place in town, got some frozen yogurt and ice cream after, and headed back to call it a night.  Tomorrow we're headed to Berkeley to check out the campus and then on to McCovey's to meet up with my family to watch the Jets destroy the Steelers!!!