48stateroadtrip.com

Not a lot to report on from Day 115. Stayed in a hotel in some place whose name has been lost to the ages (just south of Austin, consisted exclusively of motels, fast food joints, and truckstops — “Hillsboro”?) the night before, then woke up and drove to Driftwood to go to the Salt Lick, except that it was so packed that I just pulled on through the parking lot and left. From there, headed down to San Antonio where I got in around 4 and immediately locked myself in my hotel room and screwed around with grad school app stuff, trying to re-remember what I had left to do.

Here’s a picture of the rain, though:

Look at it go!

OTOH, it’s nice to finally be on the good side of the Carl’s Jr.-Hardees line. Oh yes.

bkd

Fortunately my headlines jumped the shark a couple months ago, so no need to feel embarrassed by this one.

My mom flew out to New Orleans to join the road trip for a few days, btw. She was the one who insisted we go to the French Quarter. Well, “insisted”. Anyway — it was everything everyone told me it would be (i.e., “a bunch of old buildings and it smells like vomit”).

I’m sure it smelled better before Katrina.

We had a cool hotel, in no small part because the room had its own loft.

See? Loft.

(Prytania Park Hotel — it’s located right in between the Garden District and Warehouse+Museum District.)

Then we walked to the French quarter.

There was an underpass along the way!

They have porches like this there.

A door as crooked as a Louisiana politician.

St. Louis Cathedral and tourists taking photos of same.

Tour carriages lined up at Jackson Square.

I learned that Jackson Square was *meant* to be the town’s center. And then the person who ended up owning the land built buildings on either side of it, but that it wasn’t pretty enough — so she had it beatified (park ranger’s word, not mine).

And I’m still waiting for someone to explain why Andrew Jackson doesn’t net out to be a villain for killing all the Indians he did. (In protest, I no longer use $20 bills.)

Me with cannon. Cannon with me.

I’m thinking about opening my own voodoo shop in Mission Viejo.

The New Orleans house my mom grew up in lived in for two years as a kid.

Anyway.

I think the people that love New Orleans so much are people who first went there in college with all their friends and got drunk and partied so that now every time they go there, they remember being 19 and getting drunk and partying with their friends.

It’s basically how I feel about Hohenstein-Ernstthal.

(No, I never got drunk in Hohenstein-Ernstthal — except on my own sense of self-importance, which is much headier anyway.)

Out,

bkd