Louisiana & Texas

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Our first stop in Louisiana was New Orleans, which certainly lived up to its reputation as a lively city. Our couple of days were spent wandering round the famous French Quarter and other districts by day and heading out to check out the local bars by night. We started off on Bourbon Street for cheap drinks (including 3 for 1 offers!) before heading off the beaten track along Frenchman Street to find some really cool jazz and blues bars where we caught some amazing live acts.

From New Orleans we took our sore heads northwards into rural Louisiana where we spent the next couple of days driving right up through hicksville, camping at a couple of state parks along the way. It was great driving up through the countryside with some spectacular scenery and some weird and wonderful places - think ours was the only car we saw for 2 days as the state is infested with pick up trucks. In northern Louisiana we stopped at a small town called Natchitoches where Steel Magnolias was filmed and had lunch at a restaurant called Lasyonnes which is famous for its Louisiana meat pies and we can see why!

We then headed over towards Texas and visited Fort Worth (next to Dallas) for a taste of the old Wild West including a live cattle drive through the town. We also met some old guy that insisted on showing us the talk of the town - no not Billy Bob's the largest honky tonk in the world - a light bulb that has burnt for over 100 years along with his barbed wire collection! (it made Neil's day anyway).

It was then a long and very scenic drive across Texan cowboy country all the way to Amarillo - just one very straight road! Before we hit the city we stopped off at Palo Duro Canyon, which is the second largest in the USA (120 miles long and 800ft deep). We camped at the bottom of the canyon for the night then got up at dawn to take an early morning 6 mile hike to a rock formation called the lighthouse - as you'll see from the photos the scenery was amazing!

We're now in Amarillo City and glad to be in a motel after 5 nights fending off raccoons, coyotes and flys whilst under canvas. Went to Amarillo Zoo in the centre of a huge park followed by a drive down the historic 'route 66' that is now in need of some love and care. Last night we dined at Big Texan, which is a famous steak house - it's where you can get a 72oz steak free if you can eat it and all the sides within an hour. Needless to say we didn't attempt that (although a couple of blokes did whilst we were there and failed miserably!) but we did have a great meal (even better than the steaks in Oscars)and sampled a few various speciality beers along with it as we have been chauffer driven there by the Big Texan limo for free. Check out www.bigtexan.com to get a feel of what it's like!

Packing up now and heading off over to New Mexico, so should be at Sante Fe later this afternoon.

Speak soon.

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Comments

[Pam]

Great to see you're having an excellent time! hope not missing home too much.... yeah right, as if ;-)