....And west Texas goes on. And on. And on.

That's Mexico on the other side of that tractor.

More missions.

More fields burning.

Middle of Nowhere TX

We drove through west Texas again because, well, it's difficult to avoid the massiveness of TX. To say it once again, we've stayed off the beaten path and taken only old highways or back roads. It's the best way to see the country. Which means.... we've also seen some really weird stuff. Here we are, in the middle of nowhere Texas and we come across this building that is miles and miles and miles away from ANYTHING! There was a power box on the back of the building and a video camera inside that was pointed at the front door. IF someone was to break in through the front window, or even the front door while wearing a mask, no police force or owner of this "store" would be able to stop them from taking these Prada products that were so fashionably displayed. WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE (outside of the town of Marfa, Texas.) So what is this? A joke? A candid camera moment? Folk art?

San Antonio

We stopped in San Antonio on our way back through Texas. It was lovely and I think I could live here. So far, I'm impressed with every city we have visited in this enormous state. The Alamo was.... just like this picture. That's about it. Much of the original structure has been torn down and developed, so it wasn't as grandiose as we expected. The river walk was serene with some interesting features by local artists like the mushroom bus stop in the picture below. We also witnessed the boat lock in action. It was pretty impressive.

BTW, if you go to downtown San Antonio you'll find parking lots where you can pay $8 to park your car for a few hours. We found street parking just a block away that was $0.25 an hour. We visited some museums and a few of the old missions. The Missions are beautiful but after you've seen one, you've kinda seen 'em all. Still, they're cool and I appreciated the history lessons. We walked around the mission gardens and Jake got a little weird in these pictures.

Jake being NAUGHTY.... And some neat coral wall in the background.

Jake being NICE?.... I already know a few people who won't think this is funny. Too bad, it's my blog.

These were our awesome hosts who Jake inevitably ended up playing music with all night long. This couple also gives bike tours of San Antonio on those big recumbent adult trikes. They excitedly invited us to join them on a scheduled tour one afternoon. Jake and I rode the tandem trike which was a blast but my camera batteries died after the first picture. So-- here's the back of Jake's head! It was a lot of fun. We wore headsets and our tour guide (couchsurfing host) took us on the best routes that showed off San Antonio. A bike is definitely the best way to see a city, and the trikes were super easy to maneuver and just made us smile a lot.

The biggest treat we received was just 20 minutes outside of the city. Jake and I had taken a drive to go see some natural caves and we noticed a group of people gathered around a bunch of dirt. It was hillbilly heaven and I'm glad we stumbled onto it. We laughed about this for days.

Picture #1. Twenty grown men racing remote control cars. Very, very serious business.

Picture #2. The racers trying to get "air" over some of the jumps.

Picture #3. On Your Marks

Picture #4. The pit crew fueling up the drivers cars (with real gasoline.) This guy would throw his car out onto the track and let his bottle squirt a stream of gas through the air each time he refueled. I think he thought it looked really cool. I just kept thinking, gas is expensive.

Picture #5. The race track and the happy volunteers that would get runaway cars back in route. I like the everyday overalls.

Galveston Tree

We forgot about the Galveston Trees! On our way back west we stayed with our good CS friend in Galveston again. When Hurricane Ike hit, it killed a lot of the trees all over town. Instead of cutting down a bunch of dead trees, some artists came in and carved beautiful figures in the wood as sculptures. The tree pictured below is carved into a bunch of birds, and there are many more detailed carvings that include a wide range of artistic concepts. I'm glad there are people out there who can find the beauty in something that may seem hopeless to the less imaginative. There's something cool about Galveston. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm sure we'll be back to visit it again someday.

More of the Bayou

We spent a couple days in Lafayette, LA where apparently most of the Cajun/Acadian/Creole people settled. We were told that Louisiana is very different from the east to the west and north to south. Lafayette felt very French. Everyone in the south pronounced our last name like "Booshay" without even questioning it. We had an EASY name in comparison to other natives like LeBoeuf, Delahoussaye, Juchereau and Robichaux.

We saw more sinking boats. It seems to be a common theme throughout Louisiana. It would be awesome to implement a "save the bayou" program and reclaim old boat parts at the same time. The boats aren't exactly boardable, but it seems like there is a missed opportunity here.

We visited the University of Louisiana which has an interesting landscape. There is a swamp with fish, turtles and alligators smack dab in the middle of the campus. The trees growing out of these waters had such an intriguing root system. Our host was a marine biology graduate student who could name each and every plant in the state. She's currently studying clams that can regrow cilia that is similar to the tiny cilia (hairs) on our eardrums. When our eardrum hairs get damaged, we lose our hearing because we can't regrow the hairs... but there's a clam out there that can! How cool is that research?!

More beautiful artwork. I say, if there's a big old cement wall, by all means paint it. We also found some mardi gras beads up in a tree (mind you - almost a full year after the Mardi Gras celebration) so Jake hoisted me up on his shoulders and we tugged them down.

And psycho squirrels. The squirrels at the UL campus are so used to being fed that they were pretty much stalking us while we were wandering around. We didn't have any food but they were determined to get something from us. I reached an empty hand out to one and it was looking at my fingers like they were lunch. We had to shoo them away from us.

New Orleans

The first time we drove through New Orleans it was POURING rain so we didn't stop. We punched straight through to Mississippi. Now on our way back west, it was still pouring rain in Louisiana and even with the wipers going full speed we could hardly see outside the windshield. We stayed in NOLA (yes, I learned a local term) for 3 days so we managed to find a couple sunny days. Our host was a single Italian man in his 40's who knew anything and everything about his city so he was happy to show us around town. He took us Zydeco dancing our first night which was a lot of fun. I wish I could have snapped a picture of Jake dancing with a huge smile on his face. I like zydeco music, but you never need to own more than one record. We also became very familiar with the French Quarter and had a lot of fun riding the street cars.

One day we went on a walking tour and took way too many pictures of cool, old houses. Despite the hurricane, a lot of historic homes were able to be saved. Where our hosts home resides, the water level came up 3 feet 9 inches but his house was already raised to 4 feet. Some other homes weren't so lucky. We took a trip to the 9th ward which was pretty depressing. We were told that even three years after the storm, huge pieces of debris were still sitting in the middle of the streets. Everything was clean when we saw it, but desolate. Some Brad Pitt homes looked spacey and out of place, and there wasn't much of anything else going on in the 9th ward.

We were also able to see TONS of live music. Everywhere we went somebody was playing music on the street. We did NOT enjoy the infamous Bourbon Street. There were just a lot of dirty bars, but one street over on Royal you could find fortune tellers and magic shows and all sorts of talent. Some of these musicians looked like they were ditching middle school to make a few bucks on the street. Many times the performers verbalized, "Remember folks, applause is nice but it don't buy red beans and rice." Mmmhmm. We did eat us some good red beans and rice in Nola. Our host also took us to the best Poboy deli in existence. Pounds upon pounds of steamy shrimp, catfish and oysters. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, sorry. But President Obama was said to enjoy a sandwich here when he visited New Orleans.

I'm not so sure how I feel about the rest of Louisiana, but New Orleans was definitely awesome. There were a bunch of crazy trees and crazy sidewalks, and of course, a creepy cemetery. I've become so fascinated with cemeteries on this trip. People just like you and me were walking around New Orleans or Miami or wherever hundreds of years ago, and their headstone is the only thing I know about them. A lot of these headstones in New Orleans have fallen out of the family wall and stay broken in pieces on the ground for a long time. Eventually the caretaker will tend to it, but since some of these graves are many centuries old, I have a feeling there aren't a lot of family members around to keep close tabs on it or to pay for a new engraving. I wonder what my headstone will say one day. I guess I could have it all planned out, but I'd rather hear somebody else's take on it.