Obfuscator writes: The morning was hunky dory, if somewhat earlier than I would generally like. Of course, National Parks like to wring every cent out of you that they can, so our $17 campsite didn't include anything useful, like a shower. That meant that we were up and moving by about 6:30, while the Visitor's Center and ticket office didn't open until 8:00. We drove over to them though, so that we could get in there right away, knowing that a lot of Mammoth Cave tours fill up rapidly. To kill some time, we hiked around a little bit, along the [View Full Entry]

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Posted by Onaxthiel: Thanks to a good night's sleep at U's house, we were prepped for what would be a fairly long day of driving. We went with U to a local restaurant for breakfast, and the waitress shared a bit of knowledge on some of the local spots to see on our way towards Nashville. They were in an area known as land between the lakes, a zone we had been considering visiting anyway. With breakfast completed, we dropped Road Warrior off for an oil change and did a bit of shopping at the Paris Walmart. Thankfully, since Walmart wasn't [View Full Entry]

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Obfuscator writes: We woke up in the morning and headed out to see a bit more of the town of Vicksburg. Walking around the previous evening, we had seen some very pretty looking buildings in the historic town. We found in the morning that we actually had some really great views of these buildings from the floor of our motel that our room was on, so we took some shots from there. When we were satisfied, we drove on down to the waterfront to see that a little bit. There's a big wall of murals all along the river, and a [View Full Entry]

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Obfuscator writes: Having decided the night before to set our sights more definitely on home, we abruptly turned away from home, and back to the southwest. Our goal for the day was Jackson, MS. We hadn't spent enough time in Mississippi to satisfy us, and the capitol seemed a likely place to start. After a fairly lengthy drive, we arrived in Jackson, and made our first stop at the Old Capitol. Normally there's a museum there, and it looked like it could be pretty interesting. When we visited though, the Old Capitol was closed for massive renovations. The Old Capitol was [View Full Entry]

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Posted by Onaxthiel: It was a slightly soggy morning in Alabama as we started out towards Birmingham. We didn't have too many specific places we wanted to see there, but there were still a few stops. The Civil Rights Park in downtown, and the world's largest cast iron statue on a hill just to the south of downtown were both known spots we wanted to take a look at. After spending quite a bit of time lost in the skyscrapers and small shops in the heart of the town, we opted to head to the statue of Vulcan first. High up [View Full Entry]

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Posted by Onaxthiel: Evergreen, AL isn't really an overly stimulating town to spend your morning in. We had stopped for the night there mostly because it was a good jump off to get to a potentially more interesting town in eastern Alabama. This town is called Enterprise, but surprisingly, this stop was in no way connected to our nerdy love of Star Trek. Instead, it was connected with our nerdy love of kitsch and Americana. Enterprise is known (if known is really the appropriate term for the town,) for having a statue of a boll weevil in its town square. This [View Full Entry]

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Posted by Onaxthiel: I wouldn't really say we “woke up” with the coming of dawn in our campsite. It would be more accurate to say that we “chose to give up” when the clouds first started to light up. The whole night had been hot, moist and filled with insects. It was not an experience I would care to repeat. After a shower in the campground facilities, the insects really noticed us. It reminded me of why I don't like the south once it starts to warm up. Between swatting at gnats, Obfuscator and I elected to move out of the [View Full Entry]

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Obfuscator writes: The morning was a pleasant one, fairly bright, not raining, and cool. Our kind host at the New Orleans Guest House gave us a light breakfast of fruit and croissant, juice, and tea. It was tasty and hit the spot. We packed up our gear and checked out. Our plan was to tour New Orleans for a while, and then move on. As it turned out, we would spend pretty much the whole day there, which was all right, since we didn't really have anywhere else we needed to be. We started off by finding a parking lot in [View Full Entry]

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Posted by Onaxthiel: Lafayette isn't the most interesting city in Louisiana. I'm sure it would be on a weekend, or anytime we wanted to go out and party, but on a Tuesday night it's just not a hopping town. That's alright with us. All we really wanted to see in town was an old Catholic cathedral by the name of St. John the Evangelist. Luckily, that was easily found and we had the the unexpected opportunity to view the church's necropolis. As in much of the rest of the state, Lafayette keeps most of its dead in family crypts. This is [View Full Entry]

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Obfuscator writes: We left our Natchitoches (pronounced Nagodish, apparently) motel, and headed into the town. We discovered early on that the red dot that drew us to the town the previous night, had little bearing on the actual town. There was no site called “antebellum homes,” but luckily, there were plenty of other things that seemed pretty interesting. The historic downtown of Natchitoches has quite a few really old buildings and storefronts. There's a street running along the Cane River front that's paved with bricks, though about half of it was torn up at the time of our [View Full Entry]

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