We’ve been published!

Tonic.com has published an article that Cayce and I wrote about our first half of the trip. The editor got in contact with us through my friend Rosie Haney, who writes for the website, and we agreed to submit a couple of articles throughout our trip. You can read the first article here.

Rosie Haney also interviewed us and wrote an article prior to our departure on the trip. You can read that here.

We’re in Denver now, and we’re starting to realize how long we’ve been on the road. We’re still loving it!, but it seems that our blog updates have fell by the wayside a slight bit with the more things we experience. I promise, updates will come asap!

We Found Internet Again!

So it has been a while since I was last able to post, and a lot has happened in the time in between. I ended the last post with our late night adventures in Arkansas. Since then we’ve visited 7 more states and made it all the way to Southern California. After leaving Arkadelphia, Arkansas, we drove south to Franklin, Louisiana (just south of Lafayettte). There we stayed with a business friend of Cayce’s father. He lives on the Chitimacha Indian Reservation there, with a beautiful bayou behind his house. He and his wife welcomed us and let us stay on their houseboat. We cooked dinner on the bayou and had a relaxing night. 

The next morning, we drove into the city of New Orleans to explore. I had been to the city twice since Hurricane Katrina, but Cayce had never seen it, before or after the storm. The city has come back in a lot of ways that I had not thought would happen so soon. The core of New Orleans is rebuilt and somewhat revitalized, with much more of the population returning, but there are many areas, especially the Lower 9th ward, that are still wiped out or run down. We spent a good amount of our day driving around the Lower 9th Ward. What was once a large neighborhood filled with houses has now become a grass field with roads crossing through it and a few concrete slabs. The first time that I saw the neighborhood there were boats in trees, houses in the roads, and rolled tractor trailers and buses. We left the city before the sun went down and stayed the night in Lafayette after driving a few hours.

On the next day, Day 5 of our trip, we drove along the Louisiana coast to Houston taking back roads. We passed a lot more of the oil industry than we could ever want to see as we drove along the beach. It was just horrid to see all of the pollution and the intense juxtaposition of the factories against what should have been pure wildlife area. We stopped along the beach, but it was fairly dirty, causing us to not stay very long. We visited with Cayce’s Aunt Rosemary and Uncle John and family outside of Galveston, Texas and then with my Great Aunt Connie and family in Houston. Then we made the drive up to Dallas to stay with my Uncle Homer and Aunt Melinda. We arrived very late in the evening and went straight to bed.

We spent the next day hanging out around the city of Dallas. We mostly hung out near White Rock lake and cooked pancakes on our camp stove. We wanted to stick around to see Homer and Melinda for dinner after they finished work since we had come in so late the night before. Homer ended up being tied up at work, and we had a nice dinner with Melinda before driving to Norman, Oklahoma for the night where we stayed with my Uncle Jim and Aunt Suzanne. Most of my father’s family lives in Norman, so we spent several days hanging out with them, relaxing, and catching up on things. It was great to see Grampy (my grandfather) again, as he is one of my favorite people. Cayce and I spent some time looking through old pictures with him and taking pictures and audio to document at the same time.

My mother ended up spending time with us while we were in Norman. She flew into Oklahoma City so that we could drive her to my Great Aunt Brucilla’s funeral near Dallas. We took an extra day out of our planned itinerary to do so, but it was important for my mother to be there and it allowed for Cayce to meet and for me to see some family members that I had not seen in a long long time. Upon our arrival back in Norman, we spent some time seeing my grandfather (my mother’s father) who has recently been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was shocking to see him without his usual full head of hair, but it was a pleasant and well-needed visit. Altogether, we spent three nights in Norman, Oklahoma.

I will continue writing this post tomorrow, as it has grown late in the night….

 

 

 

Hello from the Deep South!

So we are now in New Orleans, posting from a hipster coffee shop. We haven’t processed our photos from being in the city today, but we have had a heck of a past couple of days. We stayed our first night at a friend of Cayce’s father in Milan, Tennessee. We planned to stay our second night at a free campground that we had heard rumors about online. From Milan we trekked through Memphis and on to Little Rock. We drove on the back roads to Little Rock, and stopped in the city to find internet and research our stay for the night. After a run-in with the silly people at Starbucks who no longer provide internet (I guess we didn’t expect them to do much good for us anyways.), we ended up at a Panera on the west side. From there, we drove to to Mount Nebo, Arkansas, with the sun starting to set. Driving up Mount Nebo, we encountered hair-pin, narrow, and steep turns as you’ll soon be able to see from Cayce’s photos. The view from the top was incredible as the sun set in the distance and we could see for mile upon miles over the rocky outcrop. Then we had to get moving as the sun had disappeared and we had yet to descend the mountain. Our campsite was still two and a half hours drive away. We drove in pitch darkness on Arkansas Route 7, riddled with big hills, quick turns, and abundant wildlife. My eyes were glued open to watch for deer, foxes, and armadillo crossing in my path. It was 45 miles long through Oachita National Forest. Cayce drove us after we got off of 7.

We were going to stay at Rock Creek near Lake Greeson and the town of Daisy. The town was dark and silent- it was after midnight,  and the supposed campsite was buried in a dirt and gravel road that severely creeped both of us out. When we reached an impass in the road, we turned around and decided it was far to sketchy for us to handle. It was way too isolated and remote. I took over driving, and we set our sights for hotel parking lots in Arkadelphia. At 3 am, we pulled into a Hampton Inn, turned off the car, and zonked out. In the morning, we woke around 9 and hit the road again!

More to come later! Check out our pics yo!

Yes We’re On the Road, and Yes We’re Alive!

We left my house yesterday morning and took off towards Tennessee. The driving has been easy, and the views have been beautiful, although Cayce and I both know that they will be even more grand when we make it out west. Right now we are sitting in a Panera outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. We stayed last night in an apartment belonging to one of Cayce’s father’s friends in Milan, Tennessee. The stay was wonderful, and he was very generous to let us be there for the night. We’ve been staying off of the highways and trying to find the scenic routes as you’ll see from our pictures. We’ve seen our share of giant elephants, cows, and yes, even enormous dinosaurs. Tonight we head to Mt. Nebo in Arkansas. It should be very beautiful. We’ll try to get to an internet connection every few days, but until then, check out our twitter updates from Cayce’s phone!

We've Decided Our Basic Route!

Here are our major cities of interest over the next few weeks. If you have any suggestions or advice on places to stay (family, camp ground, non-camp, we’re trying to lodge for free every night, if possible), interesting locations to photograph in the general area, or a good place to eat, let us know.

We appreciate it! Any contacts along the way will help us be better prepared to travel safe and learn about the areas we’re stopping in.

All the dates posted are approximate and will vary.

Begin, June 20: Fairborn (Dayton), Ohio

Day 1: Louisville, KY – Lexington, KY – Nashville, TN – Memphis, TN

              Stay near Memphis

Day 2: Little Rock, AR – Mt. Nebo (Russellville), AR

            Stay near Mt. Nebo

Day 3: Northern Louisiana

            Stay outside of NOLA

Day 4: New Orleans, LA

            Stay in Southern Louisiana between New Orleans and Texas border

Day 5: Galveston, TX – Houston, TX – Dallas, TX

            Stay outside of Dallas (Uncle Homer?)

Day 6, 7, 8: Norman, OK – Oklahoma City, OK

            Stay with family in Norman

Day 9: Oklahoma/Texas Panhandle – Cimarron, NM/ Philmont Scout Ranch

            Stay near Philmont

Day 10: Albuquerque, NM – Flagstaff, AZ – Sedona, AZ

            Stay near Sedona

Day 11: Grand Canyon, AZ

            Stay near Grand Canyon

Day 12: Las Vegas, NV

            Stay well outside  of Las Vegas

Day 13,14: Ventura Beach, CA – Santa Barbara, CA

            Stay with Aunt Eileen

Day 15: San Andres Fault, CA -Yosemite National Park

            Stay near Yosemite

Day 16, 17: San Francisco, CA

            Stay with Aunt Donna

Day 18: Route 1 to Redwood National Park, CA

            Stay near coast and Redwood

Day 19: Crater National Park, CA – Eugene, OR

            Stay in Eugene area

Day 20: Salem, OR – Portland, OR

            Stay near Portland

Day 21: Astoria , OR

            Stay near Astoria

Day 22: Mount St. Helens, WA – Olympia, WA – Seattle, WA

            Stay near Seattle

Day 23: Lopez Island, WA – Spokane, WA

            Stay near Spokane, WA

Day 24: Dugout Dick’s Ice Cave Ranch, ID – Yellowstone National Park- Grand Tetons National Park, WY

            Stay near Grand Tetons

Day 25: Jackson, WY – Salt Lake City, UT

            Stay with Cousin Will in Salt Lake

Day 26: Salt Lake City, UT – Steamboat Springs, CO

            Stay with Max Wheeler’s Contact

Day 27: Crazy Horse, SD

            Stay in Custer, SD

Day 28: Badlands National Park, SD – Sioux City, Iowa – Corn Palace, Iowa

            Stay in Iowa somewhere

Day 29: Chicago, IL

            Stay in Illinois

Day 30: End, July 23: Fairborn, Ohio