More wigwams!

You know it's time to get off the road and get a job when driving 98 miles out of the way to sleep in a concrete wigwam seems like a good idea. Lucky for me that I got immediately slapped for that idea; a wigwam was specially opened for me and I lasted 2 hours until the bitter cold drove me out.
I'm still a little upset that it snows in Tennessee and Kentucky. I thought I was still "down south" which, in my version of reality, is warm and sunny in February. Ahh but I was wrong. The wigwam was lovely and the guy managing it was very sweet. He had placed a little heater in my wigwam but let's face it folks - when it's 27 degrees and snowing a concrete triangle is not going to get warm. So I huddled in bed (very comfortable) for as long as I could stand it (2 hours) then fled to an econo lodge down the road.
I hang my head in shame.

New Orleans

You can go to New Orleans, as I did, and stay in a French Quarter B&B (http://www.bananacourtyard.com/) and wander about the quarter, eat good food, hear good music, even spend a morning riding your bike through city park and not come up against the reality of the Katrina flood. New Orleans is beautiful and vibrant and to see the damage, to understand the magnitude, you have to make an effort.
On the morning I left I went on a van tour (http://toursbyisabelle.com/) that opened my eyes. You know I think of myself as well informed but really I didn't understand what happened there. The reality is you drive by levees with new cement walls and you look out onto - in the 9th ward - a vast almost empty swath of land. In St Bernard parish you see brick houses, the big ones refurbished and occupied, the small ones empty and gutted. Two and a half years after the flood a cessna still sat atop a garage roof. People are still living in their front yards in trailers. And East New Orleans. We were driving back to the quarter along the highway passing apartment complex after complex, strip mall after strip mall all vacant, all gutted. I hadn't realized this until I saw a roof with a hole in it and then looked harder; miles and miles of empty destroyed buildings.
And where are the people? My guide, born and raised in the city, made it through the storm and subsequent flooding with minimal damage but after his wife read a newspaper article about the levees she insisted that they move. They moved 40 miles out of the city. His brothers' house was in St Bernard parish and is uninhabitable, his nephews the same. Both are living elsewhere and hoping to hold onto their lots - "ride out the times". His family had arrived in New Orleans in 1902 from Italy and now are scattered throughout the region.
I decided to go to New Orleans and spend a few days because it seemed to be the one place I knew I wouldn't begrudge spending money. And I didn't. I don't have any insight or answers about the city but I do have this: go there, spend your money, have a great time, and write Washington to remind the powers that while the waters have receeded the needs of the city and the people have not.

Oranges and the ocean

It all started off okay. Yes I was in Texas, Houston to be exact, but the entry to the Orange Show seemed friendly enough:

True it was a gazillion degrees and there was no one else there but the Orange Show is great american folk art. I'm told. Anyway it was a gazillion degrees and I was the only one there and there was enough breeze to make things go creak and I just got all creeped out and itchy. But then I opened a door (I know I was watching the movie shouting "don't do it!" but it was ART so I did and well...

I didn't scream. I just calmly read about oranges and purity and oranges and santa claus and oranges and indians and things just got a little weirder.

So a guy in the 50s buys an empty lot and starts to build a homage to oranges. He works every day building this extravaganza of tile and concrete with the idea of putting on shows and educating the world about the wonderfulness of oranges. So now he's dead and a non-profit takes care of it and people come by for a gander. I think it's a perfect setting for a horror movie about pedophile clowns.

So I needed a little air after my encounter with oranges so I went to the ocean. For those following along on the map, Galveston, Texas being east of Arizona is technically on the way to Massachusetts so off i went.

A nice beach to help rid myself of lingering orange thoughts was followed by the sighting of the homliest mermaid I have ever seen.

I then took a quick ferry to a plate of crab nachos and a town that took the threat of flood very seriously.

West Texas

Just as Iceland had a lasting impact on my soul so too will West Texas take up a dark corner of me. I relived those childhood summer vacations; boredom so deep that nothing can reach it, not a new game, not an angry mother.  Nothing but the end of the day.  Thus I found myself rolling through West Texas - bored, bewildered, cranky.  No amount of itunes, audible or NPR could save me.  It just had to be gotten through and now that it has I will be stronger.

God loves me

I know that God loves me because at the end of West Texas he made the Tee Pee Motel.  The teepees were in ruin until this man (I call him God) won the Texas state lottery and bought the ruins of the motel.  He refurbished it and now it awaits the West Texas downtrodden who make it to Wharton Texas. 

I don't know what it is but the night I spend sleeping in concrete teepees are incredibly restful.

I'm told there's another wigwam/teepee motel in Kentucky - that's on the way to Massachusetts, right?

Sands 3

The White Sands National Monument in New Mexico is one of the most incredible places i've ever been (the other is Mt St Helens). Miles and miles of white sand and moments of such profound silence. I spent hours here - walking on dunes, making snow angels, taking pictures. I could have spent a week here and still wanted more.

On the road again

I'm back on the road and already i'm both bored and amused. How else to start the trip than a visit to the famous road runner of Las Cruces, NM? Built of completely recycled materials (tennis shoes, machine parts), the benevolent bird overlooks the city from a high point off the highway. Apparently the bird was moved from it's original spot and now hangs out, forever grounded (do roadrunners fly?), to watch over the land.