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Published: November 15th 2011
Propane!
stand around, have a chat, get filled up with the good stuffNot long after purchasing Lola, I was faced with the issue of how and where you fill up a propane vehicle. Thankfully a google search provided a helpful map of gas stations all across Canada which would happily help us out. Turns out this map was a little old, and thanks to those bloody bbq cylinder swap services, most places listed had gotten rid of their filling stations. This was all becoming extremely frustrating – or a pro-pain in the arse, as I cleverly coined the term.. It was a relief when a few days before the road trip began I came across a comprehensive database by the US dept of energy (
) which outlined where propane was sold, when they were open and what the attendant had for breakfast that day. Our only hope was that it would be more reliable than the Canadian map. As an insightful friend stated at this point, ‘you know, I think this propane thing could really MAKE the road trip!... either that or it'll BREAK it.’
Thanks to some in-depth consultation with the database and the odd stroke of fortune we had made it up and over The Rockies several times, across prairies and deserts without having any major propane troubles. In fact we found ourselves in the south of Colorado in fine spirits and good weather. Our main destination here was Mesa Verde National Park, site of amazing mountain-side ruins. Between AD 600 and AD 1300 a large community of Ancestral Puebloans lived in this area, at first on the gently sloping plateau of the Mesa, and later within delicately-built cliff face dwellings. This community survived on advanced corn-based agriculture, before, somewhat mysteriously moving on and leaving behind some pretty amazing ruins. Today, the only way to visit some of the more important sites is on a free guided tour, which was fantastic, as we're usually too cheap to splurge on tour fees. Rangers Kathleen and Jeff provided us with really interesting tours of Cliff Palace and Balcony House, the latter of which required a whole lot of crawling and climbing to access - the Ancestral Puebloans didn't have such luxuries, they just scaled the cliff walls to get in and out. We also walked a few short walks and enjoyed a great campsite, with a brilliant sunset to ourselves.
Driving south, we passed into a wet New Mexico, which is
Mesa Verde NP
a brilliant sunset all to ourselves supposedly a desert state. Down we went, across the Rio Grande canyon, across plateaus and isolated, colourful desert shacks, down into historic Santa Fe. Guide books and fellow travellers had told us how beautiful Santa Fe was, but as we entered onto one particular highway in town, complete with horrible road works, horrendous traffic and box store after soulless box store, we were certainly getting a different impression. The Walmart carpark was feeling far too sketchy to camp the night so we finally found a motel, went inside met the lovely lady who ran the place and were informed that the loathful highway out the front is (or at least was) the famous Route 66!
Thankfully the joy of getting the Willy Nelson room here at the Silver Saddle Motel brought us back to our usual good moods. The next day we found the historic downtown of Santa Fe, which is indeed beautiful with its countless streets of old, low adobe buildings. An impressive museum stop taught us all about frontier invasion and life on the Santa Fe trail, Puebloan uprisings, and battles of the US-Mexico war. We also did some much needed laundry.
The next few days
were all about putting miles under the tires. West across New Mexico, stopping only for Billy the Kid's grave, across the gas (and would you believe wind turbine) fields of northeast Texas, again stopping only for a statue of Buddy Holly (he grew up in Lubbock, TX), and once more in small town Snyder. In Snyder we were merely hoping for a propane supplier to be open, but we got much more, chancing upon a Mexican Independence day march and chatting about the pains of drought with some genuine old cowboys in the propane (and spare parts) store. Down south and onto the scary 14 lane highways of central Texas, and our destination of Austin.
Part of the reason for our mad rush to Austin was that days earlier we had found out that the city's second biggest music event (after the massive SXSW), Austin City Limits was to be taking place. So we timed our arrival to arrive for the last day of festivities. In Austin we were also CouchSurfing for the first time on the trip - you may recall the success we had just meeting up with CSers in Boulder, CO., but now we were going
all the way and actually surfing a couch. And so we followed our host's directions to 'the pink house' where we met the lovely Sari, who gave us a great summary of what to do in Austin, including the advice of 'avoid West 6th St, East 6th St is way better!' So we went out and hit the town on a Saturday night and sadly confused Sari's sage advice. West 6th street was horrible (Australian's think the Gold Coast nightlife; Americans think Bourbon St). But thankfully we did eventually find East 6th which was interesting and lovely. Just a shame that by this stage we were tuckered out and ready to head back to our comfy couch.
The next morning we met Nashielly, her boyfriend Craig, his mate Brandon, and a cast of other strangers as we went out for a Mexican breakfast. Here in the middle of the Texas capital, all ordering and interaction with the waitresses was done in Spanish - which came back surprisingly quickly, thankfully - and the food was hot and amazing. Some breakfast Micheladas (Mexican beer with tomato juice in it) set the tone for the day as we all conviced Sari to
abandon her tend-to-the-veggie-patch plans and join us at the festival. Inside the festival gates we were all joking around and bantering like old friends under the hot Texas sun. Great times with great friends who just hours earlier had been complete strangers. Thankyou CouchSurfing! The festival itself was fantastic too. Highlights included The Walkmen, crazy latino pop rockers Bomba Esterero, catching a couple of songs from Manu Chao, seeing my doppleganger play bass in Gomez, swaying along to Elbow and seeing the always impressive Arcade Fire close out the night.
From Austin it was only a couple of hours on wide-laned highways down to San Antonio, in historical terms one of the most important of all Texan cities. Incidentally, it is a city with which I have long had a mild obsession (all three fans of my band Come Up Smiling may recall me singing about Davey Crockett, my favourite basketball team the Spurs, and the famous Alamo in between choruses of "I wanna go to Texas/ to see San Antonio-o-o"). Jen was kind enough to humour me as we went from site to site, including the Alamo (actually, she was pretty excited about this one too), where some
well paid mercenaries including the legendary Mr Crockett were once overtaken by General Santa Anna's Mexican army. Importantly, the savagery of this battle provided sufficient cause for revenge by the Texans (who were invading into Mexican territory), who would go on to 'win the war' and initiate the then republic of Texas. In the gift shop I bought a keyring to mark the occasion.
Another massive day of driving took us to the southeast corner of Texas, stopping only for a lunch break by a park where some grannies were selling raffle tickets for a tower of guns! In the road map a nice patch of green showed us a bird and wildlife reserve which opened up to the Gulf of Mexico. Based purely on the map we figured this might be a lovely place to camp for the night. This turned out to be a mistake. What we got instead was a rather eventful night. We weren't completely surprised by the extent of the oil ports and gas plants down by the gulf, I mean, we were in Texas after all. But still, it went on forever and ever. Once we finally got to the wildlife reserve our
Jeff and Gerry at the New Mexico border
yes, this was a long, rainy day stuck in the van fears were realised. There was no campsite as the map had suggested. No walking track. Work trucks driving by between gas plants, and the vegetation was so encompassing that we couldn't see the wetlands for the reeds. Didn't really see any birds either.
At first we were relieved to find a patch of grass by the reeds where we could park and sleep for the night, alone and undisturbed. We had a nice dinner outside until the mosquitoes became unbearable (I'm talking Alberta bad!), and we were forced back in to the van to attempt to sleep in hot and muggy, cramped conditions. We had just settled inside for the night, swatting mosquitoes all the while, when there was a massive thump on the back of the van. We bolted upright. I locked the doors, Jen shined the torch out the windows but we couldn't see a thing. It was, we decided, a fairly large animal paying us a visit. A gator? Perhaps a bear? In any case it set the mood for a restless night. Things certainly hadn't improved any when our solitude was broken by a car pulling in to the grassy patch beside us, at 2am. Again
Most people get their Kicks on Route 66
we get 2 bags full of dirty laundry done! we bolted upright. We were clearly in serial killer territory, so this made us somewhat concerned. When nobody got out, but the car remained idling for the next hour and a half, we knew we had a really crazy type of serial killer in our midst. During this ordeal we took turns at peeking out through the windows, whilst the other would daze in and out of sleep. Jen was on lookout duty when the car stopped idling. She woke me with news, 'He's getting out of the car'... followed by 'oh shit! He's got a ****** GUN! And it a big one!!'
Again I bolted upright. At this stage we were resembling Scooby Doo and Shaggy - two bundles of fear holding each other. I looked out the window and saw what was going on.. 'Oh thank god.. Its just a rifle! He's going for a pre-dawn hunt..' (for some unfortunate birds, I hoped).
And so, we arose from the van a couple of hours later, having only had a couple of hours sleep each. The other car had just left, with an empty-handed hunter, and we went round to the back of the van where we saw a
bell tower fragment, Santa Fe
the Puebloan insurgents attacked the cathedral bells first - a key symbol of Spanish control series of footprints across the rear bumper and ladder - that thump had been a bobcat trying to get in and tear us both to pieces!!!
The next night we stayed in a hostel. And where was that hostel? None other than NEW ORLEANS! This is the city where jazz was born, along with rhythm and blues and ultimately rock and roll! We rolled into town, put down our bags, and jumped on a street car straight to the famous French Quarter. We were a bit lost at first, and even got mixed up in Bourbon St, where a ridiculously overweight guy, 'Big Joe' or some such, was crooning to a room full of drunk and noisy middle aged ladies. Quick, out of here! Thankfully we found our way, and avoided Bourbon St for the rest of our nights in town.
On Frenchmen Street we found our musical home. The Spotted Cat Music Club was full of locals and music-loving tourists like ourselves, dancing and a-jiving to a phenomenal swing band. The next night we were back checking out some reggae at dba, catching a soul band at Balcony Music Club and some old school blues rock at
Silver Saddle Motel, Santa Fe
an artistic representation of unsuccessful attempts to breed short-legged steer. They couldn't walk, and so starved to death! Check Point Charlie. 'Hey, isn't that the bass player from last night's band?' 'Yeah!' 'And look, that sax player just finished his solo, walked out the door and across the road to play in another band.' 'Yeah, but that's okay, some guy in the crowd has a sax and now he's up on stage and listen to him go, go, go!' All night long, from bar to bar, and genre to genre we went, drenched in Louisiana sweat and the gorgeous sounds of real, raw music.
We surfaced late the next day feeling a little worse for wear. Thankfully we happened upon a lovely little place which made everything better. Chickie Wah Wah is a small, laid-back bar with phenomenal gourmet tacos (I can't remember the last time I tasted something this good!), cold Restoration Ale (the profits from which go post-Katrina rebuilding projects), and most importantly, the incredible Sweet Olive String Band playing the most beautiful and soothing music on the planet. Being early afternoon, we had the band - three 'amateur' string musicians - just about to ourselves. Now call me a man of simple pleasures, but the two of us sitting there watching three ordinary guys
Fort Sumner graveyard, New Mexico
Joe Grant shot by W. M. Bonney (aka Billy The Kid) in a saloon argument. Bonney's grave is locked up (left background) to prevent another theft pluck and harmonise their way through some amazing songs of their own and others before them, well, I couldn't help but think - it doesn't get much better than this!
Everywhere we went in New Orleans there were two very familiar words, posted over all types of souvenirs, spraypainted on walls, announced on radios and spoken in the streets: WHO DAT! Now this took us completely by surprise, as we had been using this term ever since hearing it in Central America (see
Entering Sandinista country). Turns out it this is an old New Orleans idiom, which in recent years has come to signify the city's obsession with its football team, the Saints - 'Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?' It is even used a noun describing a Saints fan. Suddenly, the words chanted by that toothless old man in Nicaragua on Superbowl night back in 2010 were making sense. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina the Who Dat Nation was born, as New Orleans and surrounds, looked to the Saints to unite a community which had been shattered by a hurricane and effectively abandoned by its government.
Even the old Cajun fishermen we passed on our boat trip
Lubbock, TX.
This guy is pretty much why we stopped here through the swamps on the outskirts of town were glued to their tv as the Saints played the visiting Houston Texans that Sunday. They provided us with score updates when we passed by their shacks. In between seeing alligators, racoons, and awesome Bald Cypress trees, our entertaining boat guide threatened to leave anybody who was not Who Dat out in the middle of the swamp to fend for themselves. Thankfully the Saints won, and we returned back to the road, just in time to start the great drive north!
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