Alligators, Tar Balls and Bourbon Street

There were a number of interesting groups staying at our Fairfield Inn in Orange Beach. When we went down to get our complimentary breakfast yesterday morning, the lobby was abuzz with a little league baseball team from Puerto Rico. Teenage boys munched on corn dogs (yes, for breakfast) and futzed with the waffle machine.

After an hour or so off weights and running in the hotel's small but functional "fitness center", I finally saw an alligator. The lazy reptile apparently hangs out in the canal that ran beside our hotel, and was totally uninterested in the many people who crowded around to watch him loll about in the water. There was even a sign on the fence that read: "Do not feed the alligator." I did not get close enough to measure him, but my guess is that he was about as long as I am tall. I know he has many very sharp teeth and enough jaw strength to break my femur, but watching him move slowly through the water didn't strike fear into my heart. It also didn't inspire me to take a dip in the canal.

But we weren't in Orange Beach to see 'gators. We'd come to see the Gulf coast, and we went to Gulf State Park to do that. I didn't know what to expect when I got to the beach. Truthfully I expected to smell oil--or gasoline. I expected to see pelicans drooping with tar and ducks drowning in black crude. I did not see what I expected to see. The first thing I saw when I walked down the little ramp from the parking lot to the beach was this sign:


The phrase "oil-related chemicals" is an interesting locution. Are they talking about the oil itself? The dispersant? Some other unknown oil-related chemical? And the word was "advised" not to swim, not a terribly strong statement, and one which a few brave (or stupid) souls clearly ignored. We did not swim.

I'd heard the phrase "tar balls on the beach" again and again, and a few of my loyal readers even requested that I bring them a tar ball or two. To that request I can only say: go to Gulf State Park; walk 50 feet in either direction from the entrance, keeping your eyes on your feet the whole time. You will have tar balls of many shapes and sizes and sheens to choose from. The word "ball" is misleading because it suggests something round, like a golf or tennis ball. And there is something orderly about the word that is distinctly untrue of the deep brown globs and slabs and chunks of oil we stepped over and around on our brief walk down the beach. Let me not misrepresent the facts. Most of the sand on the beach was white. And there were quite a few people sitting out on the beach under their umbrellas, enjoying the sun, building sand-castles, frolicking in the surf (though very few swimmers). The sea birds I saw (and we saw plenty) were not covered in oil and appeared no worse for wear from the disaster.

What strikes me about this particular disaster (and I am sure there are places much worse off than Gulf Shores, AL) is that in some places people will be able to ignore it--or almost ignore it. The people we saw sitting in their chairs by the water, reading novels and drinking beer out of koozies appeared to be doing their best to do just that. Their was still enough sand on the beach that wasn't contaminated for us to enjoy. But every few steps something brown and sticky popped out or stuck to my feet. And I could see where last night's tide stopped hours after the sand had dried because of the brown stain the water left.

I hope that's the worst Gulf Shores and Orange Beach sees. Of course as I write this sentence another 42 gallons of oil (a barrel) has already risen out of the earth and into the Gulf.

We drove on to New Orleans. We are staying in the French Quarter, a block down from Bourbon St. And on Bourbon St. there's very little evidence (save the many drinks with hurricane related names) of Katrina. But driving into town I could see that many houses and clusters of houses are stills boarded up. I was surprised to see so many skeletons of houses, structures without walls, just the framing and a few scraps of roof remaining. Today we're going to go out into the city and see more for ourselves.

I dislike Bourbon St, or at least the most touristy part of it up the street from our hotel. It seems like a seedy Disneyland--self-contained, self-referential, and self-indulgent. And expensive. We did manage to find a Rio Mar, a nice seafood restaurant on the other side of Canal St. where we had a fine meal. We are both a little tired of fried food, but we found the yuca fries and the fried eggplant with honey glaze delicious. And we both had fish from the Gulf that was well-cooked and didn't taste anything at all like oil.

So we went looking for an after dinner drink. We took the obligatory stroll down Bourbon street and saw very young looking girls wearing nothing but booty shorts and nipple pasties. And we heard rock and blues (almost no jazz) played at such high volumes it seemed impossible that the music from one bar didn't interfere with the music from another. And men in suits attempted to persuade us to come in and get lap dances. ("Nothing says I love you like buying your man a lap dance.") And we decided pretty quickly to get the hell off of bourbon street, so we wandered down Dauphine street, until we came across a dark, fairly quiet place called Good Friends Bar. I wonder what it means that I am more comfortable in a New Orleans gay bar than I am on Bourbon St. It is also worth noting that Rebecca didn't realize we were in a gay bar until I pointed it out, about half way through our 5 dollar Heinekens.

I forgot to mention that when we checked into our Hotel we ran into a former colleague and his girlfriend. We went our for drinks with them at the quiet, dark and expensive Bombay Club, the bar attached to our hotel, where we told them the story of how we got together. That's too long a tale to get into now, but it was a nice way to spend our evening (and a hundred dollars on drinks). At one point they even compared the telling of our tale to the 1989 Rob Reiner classic: "When Harry Met Sally".

We had beignets for breakfast this morning.

Blackhawks and Boiled Peanuts

We crossed the 1,000 mile mark just west of Walthourville, GA (in front of Coastal Auto Parts) on US-84 W. We have been on the road for just over a week, and as we trekked across the back roads of southern Georgia, we were heading west for the first time on our adventure.

Our first stop yesterday, after a seven hour car trek, was Enterprise, AL, home to Rebecca's cousin Lara and her husband Michael It was a treat to stay in an actual home filled with familiar faces after a week in hotels. As we were driving in, Lara told us that "all the houses looked the same" and that we could find her house by the ribbon on the door. We weren't really prepared for the overwhelming sameness of the houses in the neighborhood. The houses were built quickly and cheaply, and provided much needed and relatively inexpensive homes to soldiers and their families. After seven hours in the car, we were looking for a little motion, so we toured the neighborhood, and saw the same houses over and over and over again. There was something disorienting about the sameness (Lara told us stories about strangers walking into the wrong houses and nearly getting shot and about accidentally parking in her neighbors driveway many times), but there was also something sort of...pretty about it all, the incredible orderliness. We went out to dinner that evening at The Mellow Mushroom and had damned good pizza with even better beer.

The next morning we got up well after Michael had gone to the simulator (at something like 4am). Lara made us a delicious breakfast, and Rebecca ate turkey bacon. She is one step closer to eating real bacon, thus making her the perfect woman. I had been told that turkey bacon, when cooked long and crispy, takes almost exactly like real bacon. I am not ready to support that claim; I will say that the texture was very close to real bacon, and it had that pleasing, salty crunch of the genuine article, but it did lack a certain je ne sais oink that I can't quite put my finger on.

After breakfast and a quick visit to the Boll Weevil monument we took Brick (Lara and Michael's confident little dog) to the park for a long walk in the sweltering heat. Now the Boll Weevil is a very important creature in Coffee County, AL. As the story goes, cotton was king in that part of Alabama for a long, long time. And then the Boll Weevil came in such great numbers and ravaged the fields so thoroughly that the farmers all had to switch crops and began growing peanuts. The peanut crops thrived, and an era of (relative) prosperity took over the region. So grateful were the people of enterprise to this swarm of insects that they erected a monument to it in the town square. In peanut related news, we had boiled peanuts as part of our lunch today. Rebecca spit hers out almost immediately, mostly because of the texture. I ate a few, but I'm inclined to agree with Michael who said: "Maybe I'd like 'em if I'd never eaten a roasted peanut. But having had one roasted, why would I ever eat one boiled?"

Enterprise, AL is also home to Fort Rucker. Many things happen at Fort Rucker, but one of the most important is the training of the US Army's helicopter pilots; Michael, Lara's husband, is in training to fly helicopters. Fort Rucker also houses the US Army's Aircraft Museum, which contains quite a few interesting flying machines (from a Wright Brother's plane to a Sopwith Camel to Vietnam-era Hueys and more modern Blackhawks and Apaches). The Air Force handles most of the flying in our Armed Forces, but they leave the helicopters to the Army. And I was surprised to learn that quite a few of the things other branches of the military do (like rescue people from the ocean) were done first by the US Army. Michael gave us what he called the "fifty cent tour." But it was worth at least 10 bucks to me, possibly more. It was nice to get a sense for the fascinating machine from someone who actually flies them. According to Michael, the helicopter is a machine that does a "really good job trying to kill the pilot." I left with a renewed appreciation for the complexity of DaVinci's flying machine--and with a deep respect for the young men and women who fly them every day. Rebecca and I got to sit in a cockpit (the cockpit wasn't actually attached to a helicopter). Those things have lots of nobs and levers and buttons.

We drove south through Alabama, drove across the Florida panhandle and along the gulf coast back to...Alabama. We're staying in Orange Beach tonight. Tomorrow we'll go check out the beaches (we've gotten many requests for Tar Balls), and then on to the Big Easy.

Leaving Georgia

Yesterday, in honor of this great nation's birth, we visited Fort Pulaski. The taking of this fort by union troops and their rifled cannons proved to be the end of brick fortifications in North America. Apparently there are still rifled shells (think bullet, not round shot) embedded in the brick walls. When we arrived at the fort a baseball game, 19th century style, was in full fourth of July swing. Grown men in Union uniforms played with...a group of young children. I think the adults were letting the children win.

After viewing the fort we jumped on the bikes and went for a long bike ride along the bull river, stopping from time to time to do some serious calisthenics. At the end of the trail, we came across a kind of shrine; we aren't sure to what, but hikers, bikers, boaters and walkers left little notes behind on whatever they could find. I'm not sure what distinguished some of these monuments from piles of garbage, but I'm no expert in monumentation.

By the time we got back to our car, we were both very sunburned and very hungry, so we fired up the GPS and punched in AJ's Dockside Restaurant (stickers for which had been posted at a number of places on the shrine). This place had come recommended to us by some friends of mine, and didn't disappoint (of course as hungry as we were it would have been hard to disappoint us). After scarfing down a chicken sandwich (over-cooked) and a crab burger (delicious) we drove back to our hotel, grabbed Rebecca's fancy camera and headed out to the beach to capture some photos of the 4th of July festivities.

The beach was packed. Hundreds of people with a staggering array of portable beach structures had built a little city on the sand. Kids shot back and forth in the surf on skim-boards; gangs of teenagers, bronzed in the sun, walked about oggling each other and gnawing at their braces; a mediocre rock band played Steve Miller band tunes in the Gazebo on the pier. Gallons and gallons of Budlight was consumed inside an ecclectic collection of koozies (which many people here actually carry around with them, pulling them out to keep their beers cooled at lunch). Rebecca just got back from the beach and said that the cleaning crew is hard at work, and that the mess out there isn't that bad.

We have now used and thrown out maps from DC/MD/VA, and North and South Carolina. Today we will tear through the map of Georgia on our way to Enterprise, AL. We will cross the 1,000 mile mark on our journey during the drive, probably somewhere in central Georgia.

Tybee Tropics DJ

This is about a minute of audio of the DJ/bartender at the Tybee Tropics pool bar, which you may remember is in the parking lot of our hotel. He started doing his routine at about 10:30 a.m. It is 5:29 pm as I write this sentence, and he is still out there doing the same routine.

Mini-Golf Domination! (And more food...)

Yesterday we woke up in the frosty air of our hotel room, then sauntered across the vacant parking lot in front of our hotel (where beach parking spots go for 25$ per day!) to the Breakfast Club, supposedly Tybee's Island best breakfast. Neither Molly Ringwald nor Emilio Estevez were present, but they had good hash browns and waffles. They proudly serve Maxwell House coffee. After breakfast we drove to Island Mini Golf for our second high stakes game of miniature-golf. Sports historians will recall that the last time these two fierce competitors met on the greens Rebecca handily defeated Gil by seven strokes in Dickinson, ND. Pulling into the parking lot, Gil, amped up on two cups of Maxwell House, said: "Are you ready to be dominated?" Rebecca said: "Don't get ahead of yourself." But Gil quickly got ahead and stayed ahead throughout the game, ultimately beating (one might even say dominating) Rebecca by 14 strokes. Notice the calm in his, er, my eyes as he, er, I putt with a tree on my back.

From mini-golf we drove a little bit further towards Savannah, stopping at Desposito's, a seafood restaurant ringed by chain link fences, near the boat ramp in glorious Thunderbolt, GA (best name for a town ever, in this writer's opinion). You can see for yourself that the place looks almost abandoned from the outside. What it lacks in charms it makes up for in singularity of purpose. This is a seafood restaurant. And by seafood they really mean: snow crab, blue crab, oysters and shrimp. One of your beloved adventurers isn't interested in eating most of those things, so she had a fairly pedestrian grilled cheese sandwich, and got a funny look from our epically slow waitress. The other, more food-venturous traveller, had a 1/2 pound of snow crab legs and 6 steamed oysters (turned out to be seven; I got a two-fer).

I hadn't eaten steamed oysters until yesterday. I have eaten raw oysters on the half shell a few times, and found them to be an odd sort of pleasure. I was smart enough to know that I needed an oyster knife to liberate the succulent little muscles from their calcareous vaults. I should have asked for a chain mail glove as well. Cracking apart my first oyster, I stabbed myself in the palm with the knife, which, luckily, is pointy enough to slip between the two halves of the oyster shell, but not sharp enough to penetrate my hand. If it had been I would have needed a trip to the hospital. I wish I could have recorded the look on Rebecca's face as I ate this rich and delicious (and, to be fair, calorie- and nutrient-light) meal.

We drove into Savannah and walked the streets for a few hours. We stopped and got a smoothie because one of us was so hungry he thought he was going to fall down, then sat in one of the many tree-lined squares and enjoyed it. We decided that Savannah is much more pleasant than Charleston. That may just be because it was cooler and there was more shade; but Savannah seems like a place where people actually live. Charleston had dozens of enormous houses that no one lived in, that were there only for home and garden tours. Savannah seemed packed with life, with people living and breathing and moving through the city streets.

After doing some light window shopping (R mostly shopped; I mostly complained about shopping, though I must admit that I was only one to actually purchase anything: sourwood honey and some honeycomb at Savanah Bee Company), we went to Vinnie Van Go Go's, a pizza joint by the city market. At this point I was so hungry I was getting delirious. We put our name in for a table (30-40 minute wait, said the hostess!), and then sat across the street waiting in a park where people sat on park benches drinking beer from paper bags or plastic cups and a group of kids ran back and forth playing a game with inscrutable rules. We went back to the hostess table a few minutes later, and a woman waiting with her three kids told us that we didn't need to wait to go sit at the pizza bar, so we skipped the line and sat at the cozy, crowded bar and ate a delicious pizza with artichoke, spinach and feta cheese. It was nice to eat something that wasn't deep fried.

Right now in the parking lot pool bar there is a man announcing through a public address system that the Tybee Tropics Pool Bar has been voted the best pool bar on Tybee Island four years in a row. "It's wake up time! We can't serve alcohol until noon, but we hope that you come get your first drink on the island here. Remember that we'll have a guest DJ inside the house." The current DJ really likes the sounds of Michael Jackson and his own voice.

Happy fourth of July, everyone. We're looking forward to seeing some outrageous displays of patriotism down here in Georgia.

The Best and the Worst in Georgia Cuisine

We've decided this trip is about juxtapositions, like camping by a garbage strewn lake and then staying in a beautiful luxurious hotel. Or maybe that that South is about such juxtapositions, but I'm not ready to make such a generalization yet.

Yesterday we woke up in our very soft but comfortable bed in Charleston and then went for a lovely kayak adventure on the Ashley River. Apparently the American Alligator (alligator mississipiensis) is common in those parts. Justin, who rented us the kayaks, told us a story about how he actually ran his kayak into an "eight footer" who "likes to hang out by the south field drainage tunnel". All this he reported to us with a kind of shrug in his voice. He later asked: "You're not used to running into alligators are you?" To which I replied: "Definitely not."

With such a preamble, perhaps you were expecting a harrowing tale of how we encountered a big gator and narrowly escaped becoming lunch. Sadly for me (but happily for Rebecca, who had no interested in viewing the enormous aquatic reptiles) we saw nothing but herons, cormorants and a giant grasshopper floating on the water. It was nice to be out on the river in a small boat, paddling through the high grasses and wild rice. It was cool, and the breezes were generous.

We drove through Savannah to Tybee Island, GA yesterday afternoon, to the glorious Ocean Beach Plaza Resort. It was hot when we arrived, but we were not yet prepared for the blast of arctic cold that we would experience when we arrived in our glorious (and remarkably expensive, given the quality) hotel room. One of the great contradictions of our journey through the south is being almost unbearably hot outside, and almost unbearably cold inside. Rebecca has taken to carrying a sweater. A few design details to point out about our accomodations (courtesy of the architect in residence of the room): there are six different patterns in the room, all of which are only tangentially related in color. The baseboards in the room are made of carpet (a nice touch), and our beautiful glass double-doors look out onto...the parking lot. We do have a view of the swimming pool as well, because the swimming pool is in the parking lot.

We left the glories of our hotel room and sauntered down to the beach for our first ocean view of the trip. The Atlantic was surprisingly brown and very choppy, but there were plenty of intrepid souls wading in and getting pounded by the waves. The bronze, buff lifeguards lounged in their little huts, and groups of adolescent boys and girls wandered the beach, ogling and flirting with each other.

We decided that we would get a cold beverage, so we went to the Dolphin Reef , a seafood restaurant and sports bar attached to our hotel. It was about four o'clock when we walked in (or rather, elevatored in, since there were no stairs accessing the restaurant that we could find). The advertisement said: "The only thing more spectacular than our food is the view." We had high expectations. There were no fewer than 8 people working in the cavernous space; they ranged in age from 16 to maybe 20. We were seated by the giant glass windows and waited for one of the many servers to come take our order. While we waited (and waited) we took in the view. Yes, we could see in the distance the yellow sand dunes and the breakers and the people sunning, but the first thing that caught my eye was the parking lot. Round hairy men hauled their coolers to and from their cars; families towed children and beach chairs and inflatable rafts; and line after line of truck and sport utility vehicles sat taking in the sun.

After absorbing the view for quite a while, a young red-headed man came over and took our order. He appeared to have trouble forming words, but he got them out finally. We ordered two Shock Tops and the spinach and artichoke dip. He replied that he would have to ask if they did, in fact, have the spinach and artichoke dip. We did not point out that it was the first item on the appetizer section of the menu. He sauntered away, as slowly as he spoke. I should mention at this point that the Dolphin Reef sports bar, with the thirty foot high ceilings and many empty tables and many enormous flat-screen sports-projecting television screens, where we sat was approximately 65 degrees, and Rebecca had goose bumps. We watched Red (as I have now dubbed him) fumbling with the lever for our beers; nothing but a sea-spray wash of foam poured out. After trying to get the tap to work a few times, he gave up and returned to our table, informing us that they did, in fact, have the spinach and artichoke dip and that they had to change the keg for the Shock Top. Would we like a glass of water to tide us over?

Certainly. Out the window a flock of seagulls cruised by, a red dune buggy sped down the beach, and a very large woman with an American Flag bandanna on her head fed the parking meter. Our server returned with two waters on a tray. He placed one glass on the table, and as he leaned forward to do so the tray began to tip forward. Both Rebecca and I watched it all take place as if in slow motion, the glass tumbling and the ice and water spilling out all over our trusty map and her sunglasses. Red scrambled to contain the spill, but there was a kind of leisure to his scramble. He did nothing quickly. R and I used our still wrapped in napkins forks and knives to make a dam that kept the water from spilling into our laps. After wiping up the water and before he walked away he asked: "Is your map okay?" My heart broke for him just a little.

Red returned a few minutes later with another glass of water, which he set down on the table successfully, and informed us that they no longer had Shock Top; they had Longboard instead, which he "had never heard of" so he couldn't "tell us anything about it at all." Two Longboards would be just fine. He did manage to successfully produce those two beers, and few minutes later our spinach and artichoke dip came out. The chips were stale, and the dip consisted mostly of mayonnaise, as far I could tell. He came back a few minutes later and asked how the dip was: "It's okay," I said, but we both knew I was lying. We had eaten all of the chips and almost none of the dip. We were hungry enough for a snack, but we didn't want to ruin our appetite because we had big dinner plans. And the dip just wasn't worth wasting our appetite on. We got the check: 15 bucks. I left him a dollar.

That evening we drove into Savannah to Elizabeth on 37th, a restaurant formerly owned and run by the mother of a close friend of Rebecca's. It was the polar opposite of the Dolphin Reef, though it had one thing in common: it was over-air conditioned. Luckily I brought my suit jacket, which Rebecca wore and which made her look like a female lead from a John Hughes film. The restaurant is housed inside an enormous turn of the century house; we sat at a large, two person table in one of the parlors. Our waiter, who had been there for many, many years and had a crazed, Einstein sort of look about him, knew his stuff backwards and forwards. He had this remarkable way of describing the food using the first person plural pronoun "we". For example: "along with the gazpacho, we serve pickled okra and a little vodka, which we infuse with celery and peppercorn." We both immediately liked him. It helped that he remembered Rebecca's friend Celeste, even pointing out where her bedroom used to be relative to our table.

I won't do justice to the food here, but a few highlights: the black-eyed pea patty; the little Prince Edward island mussels with a smoky and spicy aoili that were brought to us on the house; the grouper Celeste (formerly named for Alexis, Celeste's sister), which had a sesame crust and a peanut sauce; the red snapper served on top of a delicate array of vegetables and ham and creamed corn; and the blueberry peach cobbler, which took a little while to come out because it was made from scratch for my pleasure. All in all one of the finest meals I've ever had.

So if you're ever in the Savannah area and have some cash to spend, I highly recommend you check out Elizabeth on 37th. And though I wouldn't recommend the Dolphin Reef, if you end up there I think you must try the Fried Cheese Cake. This description is from the menu I pulled off the elevator: "Fried Cheese Cake: Wrapped in Tortilla and Fried. Laced with Fruit sauce and finished with Whipped Cream. $7.00".

Bring a coat. And then you can decide if the food is better than the view.

So Many Adventures, So Little Access to the Internets

To you rabid fans craving constant updates, I offer my humblest apologies. We haven't had access to the information superhighways since we got on the actual highways four days ago. We are now in Charleston, SC, having our first scheduled "alone time." R is off hitting the shops; I'm in the coffee shop, blogging. Here is what we've seen and heard and felt so far.

We planned to get on the road around 10 a.m. on Monday, and, in fact, we left 30 minutes early. So capable are your beloved adventurers! Ulysses, noble and fearless chariot, is definitely feeling the load he is carrying. Maintaining speeds above 60 mph can be quite challenging, particularly going up hills. Until this trip I hadn't ever seen him hit 5,000 rpms, but when passing other cars or trying to get up hills the needle definitely passes the big 5. We have taken to chanting encouraging words to him. So far, so good.

We arrived at Badin Lake, NC a little after 5 o'clock on Monday. After setting up camp we took the bikes down and did an exploratory ride around the site, zipping up and down dusty gravel forest service roads in the scorching heat. Did I mention it was hot? It was very hot, but we wanted to do something vaguely athletic after sitting in the car for 7 hours. After the ride we drove into glorious El Dorado, NC, popultion one BP station and general store, where we found both fire wood and possibly the most amazing cold beverage ever created, the Cheerwine Slushy.


For those of you who have never experienced Cheerwine (and that's probably all of you not residing in the southeast), know that it is a cane sugar based soda, made with artificial cherry flavors, and when combined with iced slush creates a beverage so cool, sweet and refreshing I fear I will have to return to the rural Carolinas again and again and again just to get a taste of that sweet sweet nectar. Writing that last sentence made my mouth water.

That's me enjoying the Cheerwine slushy. Note the red cup, sans-lid.

The general store where we purchased the godly nectar had a shaded front porch, on which sat a collection of older men, all of whom had come up the hill from the campsite to get some ice cream or a cold drink. One of the men told us that he had started travelling a year ago, and had started his journey from Dallas. He was excited to know that we would be stopping in Dallas on our way to Oregon. We got a little lost on our way back from the general store, but we found our way back to the camp and tried to start a fire on which to cook our corn and our not-dogs. The campsite had this nifty little fire-ring, which was great for preventing forest fires but which made it damned hard to get a good fire going. Most of the campers around us were using charcoal.

Luckily for us a round and friendly man named Tom sauntered up and introduced himself. He was in charge of the camp ground, and had some useful tips on getting the fire ring to work: stick a rock underneath the ring to raise it up and let some air in, then fan it with something flat. I used my very large cutting board. That got the fire going hot enough to cook the corn and warm up the not-dogs. You will notice an orange cat seated at Tom's feet. That's Tom Cat, Tom's cat, who followed him around the camp ground and who came when called, like a dog. Tom was from upstate NY originally, but had lived in Arizona for a decade or so before retiring.

It was a hard night to sleep, hot as it was and threatening to rain. We had the rain fly up on the tent, which killed most of the breezes coming off of the lake. R said that she was so frustrated by her inability to sleep that she almost cried. It took me a while to doze off, but once I did I slept soundly through the night. I imagine my slumbering made it all the more frustrating for my sleepless traveling companion.

We woke up early and had a delicious and nutricious breakfast: homemade blueberry scones (thanks, Mom) and delicious fruit salad (thanks, Dad). Then we geared up for the first ever Badin Lake Quadrathalon: a long hike, a short bike ride, a quick dip in the lake, and then some calisthenics. The hike around the lake was full of surprises: since we were the first out on the trail that day, one of us (me) got to break through the hundreds of spider webs traversing the trail. Wildlife was scarce, but we came across the remnants of a number of large primates who had evidently taken up residence by the lake. (Hard to see in the picture, but the amount of garbage left by humans along the lake shore was horrifying.) At one point we found an abandoned fire ring that contained a pair of women's underwear, a charred bottle of Vodka and an empty can of Hormel Chili. I don't want to know what was going on around that fire.

Here's Rebecca either modeling the latest trend in biking dresses or doing an advertisement for Surly bikes. After our not-so-refreshing swim in the luke warm lake, we had a delicious lunch of PBJ on hot-dog buns, and rode back to the car. After taking hot showers in scorching hot and totally filthy facilities, we ran back to the car, blasted the AC and headed south towards Charleston. We passed through Marlboro County, SC and I did not have a single cigarette. We stopped at a Shoney's before getting on I-95 again; my chicken finger had a cool, pink center, which I sent back for further cooking. For 8 dollars it was our cheapest and worst meal so far.

We went from roughing it in the Uwharrie National Forest to the lap of Luxury at the Inn at Middleton Place. The Inn is on the grounds of Middleton Place, a former rice plantation, which contains North America's oldest formal gardens, built by a guy named Henry Middleton using a staggering quantity of slave labor to make some of the most artificial (and, to be fair, pretty) gardens I've ever seen. The Inn won a bunch of architectural awards and is nestled in the woods overlooking the Ashley River, just north of Charleston.

We unpacked a little, then walked along the "interpretive trail" to the restaurant for a fine dinner of she-crab soup (crab roe, of all things, but delicious) Carolina trout and...I don't remember what I ate. The next morning we woke up and did a two hour tour of the gardens. It was 97 degrees and as close to 100% humidity as you can get without rain. The gardens at Middleton are laid out the way the gardens at Versailles are laid out: along geometric lines. Apparently the whole garden was built along the axis of a right triangle. I cared less about the geometry and more about the occasional shade offered by the many enormous live oak trees. We did find the "romantic gardens," which were much shadier and much less formal and which contained stands of cypress trees emerging from green lily-covered lakes and enormous garden spiders.

We went back to the restaurant for lunch, which turned out to be a mistake. We had quail that looked like a butterflied frog, greens too tough and flavorless for one of us to eat. And my shirt was covered in sweat. Luckily the Inn had a nice pool where we spent part of the afternoon cooling off, then drove into town for a fine meal with a former student of mine who currently lives in Charleston. If you're ever in Charleston we do recommend The Glass Onion, which gets its stock from mostly local sources, has a good beer selection (Stone IPA!) and had a very decent jazz combo playing on a Wednesday night.

We're hanging out in Downtown Charleston today. I'm sitting here typing away; I don't know what R is doing as I type this sentence. Tomorrow we go kayaking on the Ashley River in the morning, then off to Savanah GA tomorrow. Our hotel in Savanah has internets, so expect more regular and less lengthy posts over the next few days.