States? DONE. NEXT

We've been in Ireland just over a week now, but I'm gonna post some things from the end of our road trip first.

Tennessee

Our first stop was in Memphis, we really wanted to go to Beale St. and Graceland. Beale street was cool, but we had to dig a little bit to find a bar that wasn't overrun by tourists and without a cover charge.  Graceland was interesting, somewhat of a modest home by the standards of todays celebrities. The decorating was the pretty eccentric, Elvis loved goblins...and themed rooms. 

Kentucky

At to his point we realized we were running out of time and had to cruise through Kentucky for the most part. We did get to spend most of the day in Mammoth Cave National Park, and also went
to Abe Lincoln's Birthplace and one of the bourbon distilleries.












West Virginia

Nothing to see here, move along. No, West Virginia is pretty, but we had to drive on through it. John Denver's song is WRONG anyways, the Blue Ridge Mountains are in plain ol' VIRGINIA.

Philly!

This is one city I had anticipated visiting for a long time, and it didn't dissapoint. Lots of history and museums. Learned a lot of cool things that I don't have time to talk about. Oh, and we ran up the steps like Rocky.

D.C.

 We spent 3 nights in D.C. visiting a friend of Rachel's from college that she hadn't seen in a number of years. Her friend Ren has been working with politicians in D.C. for awhile, so we got all the insider info, like what kind of cigarettes John Boehner smokes. Had a great visit and even mobbed around the city on our "speedsticks" one day since the weather was so nice. D.C. is one of those cities I can never spend enough time in. Endless free museums, awesome parks and monuments, and a whole lot of history.









The End

The rest of the trip was mostly odds and ends while making our way back to Illinois. Along the way back, I managed to hit the last state that I hadn't been to, Iowa. 50 of 50. Spent a few days in Illinois with Rachel's family and had a real nice visit, and learned a lot of new phrases from Pop to add to my repetoire.

Mardi Gras and Beyond

When I was a kid, "Cops" was one of my favorite tv shows. Every year they would have an episode that would take place in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. The Police Officers would be walking through big crowds of people, sometimes on horses, looking for someone doing something illegal, which seemed nearly impossible in a city and time of year where just about anything goes (at least in the French Quarter). They always managed to find somebody at which time they would approach the person and start screaming in their face, then throw them on the ground and cuff em', and throw them in the back of the meat wagon. I loved this, and knew one day I would have to go to Mardi Gras.

The parades were incredible , the people were entertaining, and I even got to personally view a few of these scenes that excited me so much while watching "Cops" as a kid. The cops acted just like they did on tv, big smokey bear hat, hair cut to the skin, and hair trigger tempers to match. Rachel invited a friend of hers from Mississippi to come meet us up on Fat Tuesday. Out of the 3 of us, only 1 got the privilege of wearing handcuffs. It was alot of fun, but the next time I see Mardi Gras in New Orleans, it will be from the comfort of a living room, with a big nostalgic grin on my face.

After Fat Tuesday, we went to a couple historic sites around the city, and to some of the neighborhoods Rachel had worked in during the gulf recovery project she was involved in in 2007. The city is looking pretty good, so much so it was hard for her to find some of the most recognizable landmarks she had known. Alot of things were unrecognizable to her, as she was accustomed to seeing the city in an early post-Katrina condition. Enough of that though. After Mardi Gras, I had only one thing on my mind...crawfish!!

And boy were they good, ate right in the self proclaimed Crawfish Capitol of the World, Breaux Bridge! But we had bigger crustaceans to fry, and that was getting our butts up to Arkansas.

Arkansas

I've always been drawn to Arkansas, ever since thumbing through old books containing pictures of the Ozark mountain people, tromping around through the brush barefoot, rifle in hand, doing whatever it is that barefoot people with guns do. This stuff was always interesting to me, and I went to Arkansas wanting to see some real crazy stuff. Like deformed people playing banjoes on a porch, or humans that have been isolated from the mainstream population for so long they have become their own race. Well, the hills didn't have eyes. - Tyler