Road Trip: Gallup

The drive from Austin to Gallup took most of Friday, but at our Gallup friend's recommendation we stopped in Albuquerque for dinner at El Pinto. We thought it was just a good restaurant she liked, but upon arriving we realized it's actually a giant old hacienda/garden complex that is a Big Deal. Inside they had pictures of all kinds of celebrities, politicians, and presidents that had eaten there.

Grand entrance

The food was excellent:

Those sopapillas, though. Wow.

We got into Gallup late so went straight to bed. This morning we started with breakfast at The Plaza Cafe, which is in a double wide trailer on the old Route 66. My friend has been telling me forever that they make the best french toast in the world, and she was not kidding:

Seriously, I would come back here just for that french toast.

We then walked around the Gallup flea market for a while, which is enormous and sprawling and has people selling everything from livestock to Navajo pottery and jewelry to tires to mattresses, and pretty much everything in between. I didn't take any pictures, but I did get some really excellent horchata. I also think I saw more Native people in that hour at the flea market than I have seen in my entire life up to today, which is pretty messed up.


According to our friend, ordinarily hiking would have been next on the agenda, but it was way too hot today so we just drove out to the red rocks and took some pictures with them.

Yes, weather is totally the reason I didn't climb up there.

So pretty

We then had a driving tour of Gallup, which most notably included the historic El Rancho Hotel, where lots of movie stars used to stay when they came out to NM to film Westerns. All the rooms are named after a celebrity who stayed there, but we only recognized a small number of the names, which I guess is kinda depressing for those (former) celebrities. Also, they had a bunch of pictures from the sets of movies that were shot in/around the hotel, including many with white actors in red face. Gross.

"Charm of yesterday, convenience of tomorrow" - I don't think historical racism is charming, and they don't even have today's convenience of wifi, so I am skeptical of their motto.

The lobby looks pretty much like I assume it did when it opened in 1937.

We spent the rest of the day preparing for and then having a 4th of July barbecue. The 4th of July here is nuts - Gallup was recently voted the most patriotic small town in America, and man do they show it, at least when it comes to fireworks. As soon as it got dark there were a TON of them going off everywhere, for hours - our friend lives on a hill so we had a great view as we ate and hung out all night. It was crazy because it seemed like everyone in town was setting off professional grade fireworks from their yards - some from her neighbors seemed like they were right on top of us. They are still going off sporadically as I write this. It's interesting that there is such strong patriotism in a town that is nearly half Native and a third Latino, given that neither group is typically depicted as being as "real" Americans as White people. I learned from my friend that Native people actually have the highest per-capita enlistment in the military of any ethnicity, which is also something that you don't typically hear about.

And on that note... happy independence* day!

* For straight, white, cis, able-bodied, neurotypical, educated, property-owning, Christian, English men, that is.

Road Trip: Austin

We arrived in Austin Wednesday night and immediately devoured a giant pile of barbecue - it was delicious, too much so for us to pause and photograph it before diving in. We spent today driving around the city with our friend and her adorable baby - we started with fancy coffee, then walked around Barton Springs to cool off.

 We had our first Sonic experience:

Ben showing off his (not very) blue tongue.

Delicious tacos for lunch:

 Followed by also delicious cookies at Sweetish Hill Bakery:

That cookie is shaped like Texas!

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering in/around the Texas statehouse. We learned that they are only in session a few months every other year (crazy!), and also that they have really sweet hinges on all their doors:

I told Ben to "look legislative"

I disapprove of the 10 Commandments on government property.

We finished the day off with watching a bike race, eating pizza, and lots of baby ogling. Tomorrow is the longest driving day of the whole trip (~13 hours), so it's early to bed for an early start first thing in the morning!

Road Trip: New Orleans Day 2

New Orleans is the only destination we spent two full days in, because Ben had never been there before and there is so much to do. On the second morning we drove out to Slidell, LA for a tour of the Honey Island Swamp. The tour is in a flat bottomed boat, and they just drive you around the swamp for a few hours to check out all the wildlife. We saw a ton of alligators:

Small one chilling on a log

The tour guides throw marshmallows to them, so they know to come near the boats and hang out for treats. They get really close:

The guides also hold out sticks with hot dogs on them, so you can watch the alligators jump up and eat them. It's pretty crazy how fast and how high they can jump:

We also saw a bunch of herons:

Giant grasshoppers:

Ben picked one up. Gross.

And even wild boars:

The boars also know to come near the boats for tasty marshmallow treats:
Besides animals, we also saw the homes of people who live in the swamp.

These are small sheds for 1-2 day fishing trips.

Regular full time house.

Building a new house

Swimming party!

Most of the homes, including the one that is under construction, are only accessible by boat - that means everything they use, including the lumber to build them in the first place, has to be brought in by boat. Crazy.

After the tour, we had lunch at a delicious Colombian restaurant.

Arepas!

Ajiaco!

After lunch we swung by Mardi Gras World, where we were too cheap to do the full guided tour, but we checked out all the giant float leftovers around the exterior:

Tiny Ben, big Elvis.

Mermaid Horse!

We then went home and napped off our food coma for the rest of the afternoon, before finishing the day off with Dat Dog and some live jazz on Frenchman Street. Yay, New Orleans!

Road Trip: New Orleans Day 1

We started the day off right, with beignets and café au lait at Café du Monde:

Beignets make Ben "yay!"

Then we went for a self-guided walking tour of the garden district. There were many gorgeous homes, but the but there was a disconcerting disconnect between the beauty and the knowledge that most of the homes were built by slaves and with profits from slavery.

It would be one thing if the homes were now memorials to the atrocity that built them, but they are just luxurious private homes for (almost entirely white) rich people, at least some of whom apparently don't have a problem with where their good fortune came from:

"Proudly remembers." I've never wanted to deface anything so badly.

We also walked by an old cemetery, which is neat because the swampiness of the land requires all the graves to be above ground:

We were good and had salads for lunch, but then promptly made up for it by getting snowballs, which are a New Orleans classic:

We spent the afternoon walking around City Park, which is huge (50% bigger than Central Park) and gorgeous:

Ben is dwarfed by the giant trees

Why did the geese cross the railroad tracks? Who knows!

We had classic creole food for dinner:

Jambalaya!

Followed by ice cream from Creole Creamery for dessert:

We will be lucky if we can fit through the door of our new home in SF at this rate.

Road Trip: Jackson

The first thing we did in Jackson was meet the new baby of the friends we were staying with:

Baby!

He's only three weeks old - you might think that most sane people wouldn't have house guests three weeks after having a baby, but these friends are serious about their Southern hospitality. For example, here's the cabinet in the guest bathroom:

There is at least three of each travel size item.

The next day we visited some of the historic sites around town, starting with the bus station where the Freedom Riders were arrested:

Medgar Evers' statue, which is next to a library and park named after him:

We also visited Medgar Evers' home, but didn't think it was appropriate to take photos with a murder scene.

It was unsettling to stand right in the driveway where he was assassinated in front of his family, especially given recent acts of white supremacist terrorism. There's not much there to commemorate it other than a plaque:

And speaking of white supremacy, this is what the Mississippi supreme court looks like:

I know it's the state flag of Mississippi, but it's still appalling.

In the afternoon, we went to the Mississippi Museum of Art, which was beautiful:

The art inside was all by Mississippians, and was incredibly diverse. There was everything from mechanized models of the constellations:

To gorgeous handmade quilts:

I also got a reassuring message in the gift shop:

We spent the rest of the day at home with our friends, playing board games and ogling the baby. It was a great third stop!

Road trip: Atlanta

Atlanta is great! We started the day with the best pancakes ever:

Corn on the left, sweet potato on the right

Then we went to the Center for Civil and Human Rights, which is a really cool interactive museum about the US civil rights movement historically and the global human rights movement today. The most intense part is when you sit at a model lunch counter wearing headphones, and listen to people screaming and jeering at you while your chair shakes and lurches as if it's being kicked. It's only three minutes long, but it's a very difficult three minutes. We didn't take any pictures in the museum, but here's a few shots of the outside, which is gorgeous:

Ben and the fountain

The museum itself

After that we drastically reversed course and went to the Coke museum. We posed with giant decorative Coke bottles:

And looked at small Coke bottles from around the world:

Why is Croatia wearing a tie?

Watched Coke being bottled:

Wondered what the heck this thing is:

Wondered if this memo about "Project Kansas" (aka New Coke) could possibly be real:

And sampled Coke products from around the world:

Lastly, in the section about Coke and sports, there was a triangle of Coke bottles featuring Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, which seemed appropriately symbolic:

We spent the night having great dinner with great friends, and tomorrow it's off to Jackson!