Day 83-89. Seeing the South.

Day 83 - 16 Sept '23 - Florida back to Georgia. There's nothing quite like starting your day with a panic attack; if you're into shaking hands and an elevated heart rate, I can fully recommend it.

"Should we wash the sheets?" Dan asked me once we got out of bed.

"Yes," I replied. "It wouldn't be very fair for John and Sarah to come home and wash the sheets of their bed that we slept in."

That's where I should have stopped. But...

"I'll chuck in the towels we used, too."

(I can hear the collective "oh no" from here...).

The washing machine beeped, and I transferred the load into the dryer. Another 40 minutes, and the washing was done. I pulled the linen out...

"Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Dan! We've got a problem!"

"Oh no! Was it the facecloth? Has it stained the sheets?"

"YES!! And the towels!! Shit! Shit!"

"I'm annoyed with myself for not saying anything about the facecloth."

"Oh my god. I can't believe I did that. I just assumed they'd be colour safe. Idiot! Shit! What do I do? What do I do?!"

"It will be too late now," Dan reasoned. "The heat will..."

"...have set the dye, yes I know. But I have to try! Maybe there's some stain remover? SHIT!"

I raced back to the laundry and sprayed them with all the stain remover that was left, found some in-wash stain remover and added that to the machine, and washed them again. And prayed.

"They looked new," commented Dan. "But it's done now. It was an accident. All you can do is apologise and buy them some new sheets or leave some money for them."

I sent a message to John to apologise profusely for ruining their cream sheets and white towels with a grey facecloth.

The washing finished, and the towels were 90% better, with just some faint discolouration patches that could probably be fixed with some bleach or another wash. The sheets were also slightly better, but again needed more work to possibly improve it.

John replied and said basically the same thing as Dan; that it was an accident, it's not like I'd ruined his best kilt, thank you for the apology, but money wasn't necessary.

"Yes it is, I feel dreadful, and it's the least we can do."

In the grand scheme of things, they were only sheets - something that can be easily replaced. An annoyance rather than an end-of-the-world event. But that wasn't the point. I only hope the money we left was enough...

We were consequently later than planned on starting our drive back to Georgia. It was a six-and-a-half hour trip to our accommodation, and the stained sheets debacle had delayed the start.

On our drive we had a blatant reminder of where we were in the states - seemed the Civil War may not be over for some!

After a couple of breaks for lunch and leg-stretches, we quickly stopped at a Walmart close to our destination of a town called Macon, to buy some microwave dinners and bread for Abi.

As we walked past the sunglasses, Dan said we should have a look for some for Alex. Since being in North America, he had broken two pairs of them; poor wee guy squinted his way around Universal Studios. He had a choice of two kids-sized sunnies - one hideous white boys pair, and a green and rainbow girls pair.

"I'm not wearing those! They're for girls!"

"Rubbish," said Dan.

"Abi, come here," I called, and put them on her.

"Hmm, ha ha ha, okay," Dan conceded. "Maybe we should buy them for when she loses hers?"

We eventually found a pair of black, curved-framed adult sunglasses that were still too big, but would work.

"If you break these ones, you're buying the next pair yourself!"

Back on the road, and Dan asks:

"Did you get the sunglasses?"

"What? NO! I didn't see them! The last thing I saw was the bananas!"

FOR THE LOVE OF...!! I'm just throwing money away today.

Then Dan started laughing.

"That's three pairs he's gone through, and these ones didn't even make it on to his head!"

With two minutes to go until we reached our motel, Dan asked me what the name of the place was. I checked the booking on my phone, then compared it to the address he'd plugged into the car navigation.

"Where are you going?", I queried, as the addresses didn't match.

"Oh! That will just be the downtown address I put in for direction," he answered, as he quickly pulled off the road.

I put in the correct address.

"Only another 13km to go!"

"Well," he said, "hopefully that's the third thing for the day. At least we hadn't already driven past it!"

Not a very exciting day, and we were very much looking forward to it being over, but at least you'll get a laugh reading about it...

Day 84 - 17 Sept '23 - Georgia Aquarium. Our bed last night was possibly the best motel bed we'd ever slept on; the perfect amount of firmness and comfort. The air conditioner was definitely one of the worst, so it got switched off, and we all slept on top of the beds.

Today we were heading to Georgia Aquarium (the one you see at the start of the Aquaman movie, with a massive glass tank and a whale shark). It was in completely the wrong direction to where we were headed, and it would have been much easier to have gone there before Orlando, but when we worked out the distances, it ended up being only three extra hours of driving.

It's not a very big aquarium in respect to number of exhibits, but it does have the biggest tank in the USA, and is the fourth biggest in the world!

They had a new exhibit called Predators of The Deep, which had tiger sharks, black- and white-tip reef sharks, and hammerheads!

There was also a school of fish in the same tank, having a perpetual Worst Day Ever, swimming in a tight ball to avoid certain death from the sharks that never went away. Both Dan and I felt really sorry for them, and imagined their conversations:

"Oh my god, they're still there! Just keep swimming! Aarrggh, they're STILL there! When will they go away? Everyone stick together, maybe they'll go away soon? I can't keep this up for much longer! THEY'RE STILL THERE!! Why won't they leave us alone? Just eat us already! Bob, come back! No, Bob, NOOOO!!"

In another large tank, we saw four beluga whales! They were getting their daily enrichment/keeper check-ups, so we could only see them from the 'chest' down, but they were still very cool to see. Did you know the calves are born dark grey, and they turn white as they get older.

The next big tank we came to was a gorgeous tropical coral reef; the kind you could dream of having as an entire wall in your house! It was very cleverly built - not only was it long and tall, but the ceiling curved over so the fish were over your heads too.

The main attraction was, of course, the big tank itself.

23,848,090 litres of water.

23.77m long x 8.23m high viewing window.

108.9 metric tonnes and 60cm thick.

It houses manta rays, sting rays, sharks, multiple fish species, a guitarfish, a longnose sawfish, turtles. And, a whale shark! (Which annoyingly didn't want to come any lower than the surface).

It's hard to imagine the size of the tank (an American football field) and the window, so here's another photo to give you a better idea: Dan and the kids are the second group of people from the right...

We left Atlanta after just two hours at the aquarium (there was nothing else to see, just the four big tanks and a few smaller ones). We're still not sure if their price tag matched the value, but it was definitely amazing to see all the sharks.

Our accommodation for tonight was a motel in a town just past Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. After a five-day holiday in Orlando, we're back into driving mode. We've got less than two months left in the States, so we have to keep plugging on if we want to see all we can in that time!

Day 85 - 18 Sept '23 - Montgomery to New Orleans. Today we headed to New Orleans, our stop for the next two nights. We drove through Alabama, got to Mississippi, went back to Alabama briefly for lunch (I couldn't see any other rest areas, and it was only after we carried on that I found one on the right side of the road), then skipped back through Mississippi, before ending up in Louisiana. Three states in one day!

We had an interesting start to our accommodation in New Orleans. The first room we went to stank of cigarette smoke, despite being a non-smoking room, so I got us changed to another room. After just 10-15 minutes of walking on the floor, our socks or bare feet were filthy. The floor looked clean enough, but I reckon they were either using dirty water or their cleaning products weren't up to scratch, as the floor even felt sticky. To be fair, the room also felt slightly damp due to the humidity, despite the air conditioner running constantly. On the flip side, our beds were super comfortable, and the shower was hot and had good pressure.

I had booked us on an evening swamp tour in the Honey Island Swamp - it was AWESOME!

Before we'd even boarded the boat we'd seen four baby alligators, just sitting in the swamp near the tour building. On the tour itself, we saw so many more, and much, much bigger.

The biggest was one they'd called Elvis (no explanation for the name). He was blind in one eye, but he was about 14' long, and had no issues eating the alligator food the captain threw out for him (well, some he had to swim around for). Then another one turned up, and another one!

As we moved down the river, we saw heaps more by the shorelines on either side, mostly just their snouts out the water. Most of them would have been about 6-7' long; we were taught a really handy way of working out their size, the distance between their eyes and snout in inches is roughly their length in feet.

At another part of the river, we saw a family of raccoons!

They were super cute, and happily went for the food the captain let Abi and Alex throw for them...until some alligators turned up! Fortunately (for all concerned) the alligators were happy to eat the food, and not the raccoons.

"Although, that would have been quite something to see!" Dan whispered. As macabre as the thought was, I slightly agreed with him.

We were really fortunate to also see a great blue heron, a lesser blue heron, an ibis, an egret, another bird I can't remember the name of, as well as lots of pink blobs on the trees that turned out to be apple snail eggs!

Such a fantastic evening, with an incredible captain who told us heaps about the various wildlife as well all about the issues with the salt water encroaching on the river; not only has over 100 miles of natural defense swamp been slowly killed off, it is now starting to impact the city of New Orleans' drinking water.

He also told us the alligators had been slowly disappearing due to over-hunting for their skin and other by-products, so, as they say, if you want a species to survive, start farming it. The alligator eggs were collected and the juveniles raised until they were 4' long, with 16% being returned to the nests they were taken from, and the others kept for farming. In the wild, they were seeing maybe two eggs from a clutch of 30 maturing to adulthood; with these new measures, they were now getting around eight from each nest. Win-win for everyone.

The swamp itself was very pretty to be in, even if it was dangerous. So many trees, covered in Spanish moss (so named because it reminded the native Indians of the Spaniards' beards), and the waterways choked with so much Sylvania it looked like a carpet; when the alligators put their heads back under the water, they disappeared entirely from view. I would not want to be there without a boat.

Day 86 - 19 Sept '23 - New Orleans sightseeing. We had been warned by our swamp tour captain to be careful in New Orleans. When I looked online, I found out their violent crime rate was one in 72; again, this rate was an average across the whole city, so we just had to stay in tourist areas, like in Philadelphia.

I have to say though, there wasn't as much to see as I had thought, outside of Mardis Gras and carnival season.

Our first strike-out of the day was a shop that sold gluten free beignets (a traditional Louisiana baked good, sold hot and covered in about three kilos of icing sugar). They were shut due to construction work outside their door.

The second strike-out was the St Louis Cemetery No.1, which it turned out had new rules in place, and you needed to be on an official tour to get in.

"That's nil for two, Nic," Dan oh-so-helpfully pointed out. "You're not doing very well as our tour guide today!"

"Hmm. Well, I'm not paying $70 to look at a cemetery."

We walked through the French Quarter, which looked very old and very run-down. It was rather difficult to determine which buildings were still in use, closed for summer, or closed forever. Lots of the buildings had beautiful wrought iron balustrades, and there was one building on a corner that looked really pretty with baskets of ferns and other trailing plants. But other than that, the area just looked derelict and sad.

We walked back towards the Mississippi River, and stopped in quickly at the St. Louis Cathedral, which Pope John Paul II visited in 1987. It had some lovely paintings on the ceiling, as well as portraits of different popes.

We couldn't leave New Orleans without having some traditional Louisianian food; we had chicken and shrimp gumbo, and a shrimp po'boy with grilled potatoes, and they were both delicious, and not as spicy as we thought they may have been. Mind you, Dan, who usually finds things a lot spicier than I do, was struggling with sore sinuses and a runny nose, so his taste buds were clearly affected!

For 'dessert' we went to a cafe that sold normal beignets as a set of three, so Dan and Alex and I had one each. SO MUCH ICING SUGAR! And rather tasty...may be some correlation there?!

After lunch we went to Mardis Gras World, which is the workshop of Blaire Kern, the man who is credited with the carnivals being the spectacular shows they are.

We were surprised to learn that Mardis Gras is not just one parade on Shrove Tuesday, but is a series of parades that start 12 days after Christmas and ends at Mardis Gras. Given that Easter is a moveable feast, this makes for A LOT of parades!

There are 78 Krewes in New Orleans, and most of them have their own floats, with each parade consisting of up to 45 vehicles and nine marching bands. There were so many rules too; one was that veryone has to be masked on the float, and if you remove the mask you are fined $500. Each member on the float was responsible for buying their own 'throws' such as beads or cups. Each Krewe charged a membership fee, and they are all non-profi organisations, but since each float only held 20 or so people and some of the superkrewes had over 3000 members, it must be very difficult indeed to actually get on one of the floats!

Blaire Kern Studios has made parade floats and props since the 1960s, and even make props for Disney and Universal Studios, as well as private businesses that might want a statue for their reception area or function evening. The Studio rents all their props to the krewes, and the public can even rent them for parties, for example. They have so many props, they have 20 warehouses storing them all!

The skill shown by the artists and sculptors was incredible. They used to all be made out of papier mache, but now it's either fibreglass or polystyrene. The polystyrene sculptures get glued together using an aerosol gap-filler, then papier-mache on top, before being primed and then painted. And they start working on the next years' props the day after Mardi Gras!

They were very conflicting with their work methods - one one hand, they will reuse and reuse and reuse their props, also repainting or recarving the polystyrene until there's nothing left, but on the other hand, the mountains of wastage of polystyrene from all the carving (including by a robot) that just "goes into bags" was horrifying to see.

By the time we got back to the motel, we are all hot and bothered again, and Dan's sinuses were getting worse. Poor guy has had a really hard time of it, with everything that has happened to him!

Day 87 - 20 Sept '23 - New Orleans to Texas. We have to make up some time, as we worked out last night that once we take into account the places we want to go to, we only have 20 days to play with, and that includes travelling and places we want to stay at longer than one day. So, time to get a move on and do some longer driving days, and with that in mind, we headed towards Texas.

First stop today was the Whitney Plantation.

We decided to go to this plantation as they were the only one in Louisiana with a focus on slavery, which we felt was important to teach the kids. They didn't have as grand a house as other plantations, but they had the slave quarters and kitchen and a jail to look at.

The Big House was still very impressive though, which is down to the way it was designed. From the river or the road, a long and low building looked imposing, even though it was narrow and only one one room wide! The two pigeonniers, one on either side of the house, also served to project wealth.

The kitchen was separate from the building so the heat and smell from cooking was not inside the main house, and the slave quarters further away still, although the domestic slaves slept at the house so as to be nearby when needed.

We had an audio guide to listen to as we walked through the grounds, whereby we learned about the sugar crop and how it was processed, and the Louisiana slave revolt that ended up with 500 slaves executed and beheaded, with their heads stuck on pikes along road and river edges.

A few different artists had built sculptures that were dotted around the plantation, and there were memorial walls with quotes from slaves, that really drove home the injustices inflicted upon them, some truly barbaric. One example was a woman who has minding the owner's children, and when the baby cried, the mistress ran a hot iron down her arm and hand, removing the skin in the process.

Alex was particularly struck by one where a 10-year-old was whipped by the slavedriver and then salt rubbed into the wounds for eating a 'biscuit', and Abi was bewildered by the way the slaves spoke (words like 'dat' and 'dem' instead of 'that' and 'them') until I pointed out that slaves weren't allowed to read or write, and were whipped if they even tried.

But there were also a few examples of kindness from the owners, where food was plentiful and doctors were provided. This I had already known to be true, from reading Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, earlier in the year. (He wrote about one owner who was a joy to work for, who they would do their job willingly for, just to make him happy, they liked him that much. He also wrote how different slavery would have been, had every owner been like this man). The movie is good, but the book is great - highly recommend the read.

After this, we got on the road and started our six-and-a-half hour drive to a town called Longview on the east side of Texas. Dan's sinuses were still blocked, but his headache didn't seem as bad. It was a loooong drive though, and we didn't get to our motel until just after 7pm. A few interesting people were also staying at this very budget motel, so we locked the door quite quickly!

Day 88 - 21 Sept '23 - Longview to Abilene. Despite the neighbours, and the questionable nature of the motel, we had a good sleep. The bed was fine (for me, anyway), the room was dark, the floor and linen were clean, and the shower was hot and had good pressure. The air con was loud, the microwave should have been thrown out (it was rusty on the inside!), the towels were ripped at the edges and threadbare, and the shower wall was cracked. Got to take the good with the bad when you pay just $113 for the night, but likely wouldn't stay again.

On the way to Abilene, we stopped at Dallas. This was, of course, the sight of one of the most infamous assassinations in the world - that of JFK.

We saw the old book depository from where Lee Harvey Oswald shot the president, and the grassy knoll, where we taught the kids about conspiracy theories. It was quite surreal watching cars driving down the same road that's on the Zapruder film!

A short walk away there was a stunning sculpture of Texas longhorns on a cattle drive. There were 40 steer and two cowboys, and they were running down a hill and through water - they looked incredible! It is an ongoing work of art, and occasionally a new steer is added.

We carried on our drive to Abilene, our stop for the night. At the supermarket for our 'daily dinner visit', we saw some pretty cool looking pumpkins and gourds for sale; they're sold purely for decoration for autumn, or carving for Hallowe'en. Such a gorgeous variety of shapes and colours!

Dan and I were surprised by BOTH children voluntarily selecting a pre-packaged chicken salad for dinner, which they then ate without any issues or complaints at all. It would seem even they are getting tired of microwave dinners.

Day 89 - 22 Sept '23 - Longview to Carlsbad. I had a rubbish sleep. The air con was loud, so it got turned off, but luckily we could still hear the neighbour's one...*sigh*. I think I fell asleep roughly around 1:30am, and was woken a few times by the toilet cistern randomly filling up even though there was no drip.

Our breakfast was fantastic though - freshly cooked eggs whichever way we wanted them, with all the toppings for an omelette we could think of, plus hash browns, as well as the usual cereals and breads and pastries and fruits and yoghurts and juices! Yum, yum, yum!

As we got on the road towards New Mexico, we watched the scenery disappear, slowly becoming more and more depressing.

"It's all brown," I commented. "The ground, the buildings, the plants...all brown."

It was super flat, with only the oil-pump nodding donkeys breaking the monotony. I could not live here. There was one exciting moment, when we saw some smoke coming from the central verge - hopefully the fire department got onto it quickly!

We passed a massive wind farm, and I mean MASSIVE. When I looked online, it was made up of multiple wind farms, and must have totalled close to a thousand!

Today we were heading to New Mexico, to go to the Carlsbad Caverns, on our way north through the central belt. Dan came here with his family when he was seven, and can still remember seeing the caves, and the bats that fly out at dusk.

We were pushing it for time to get there, as the last entrance to the caves was at 2:30pm, and we didn't get to Carlsbad town until 1pm. I'd tried calling our motel six times on the four-and-a-half hour drive, to ask if we could drop our bags off early, but they didn't answer the phone or respond to messages.

When we got there and asked if there was somewhere we could leave our bags, or if we could check in early, a staff member asked us to come back in half an hour, as they'd only just started cleaning. (In a previous life I was a cleaner at a motel, and giving themselves just two hours to clean 40 rooms was nigh on impossible, especially since check-out was an hour beforehand - what had they been doing for that hour?).

On the half-hour drive to the caverns (finally), I read on the website that 'reservations were recommended' but there were none available online. Another blow, was that when we got to the turnoff, a sign said it was a further seven miles up the road, and they sold the last tickets at 2:15pm. It was 2:07pm.

"I don't think I can drive seven miles in seven minutes," Dan pointed out.

"No," I agreed. "Hopefully they'll be nice and let us buy tickets still. All we can say is we've been driving for five hours and didn't know we had to buy tickets. And if they say no, we can still see the bats, we'll just need to sit in the car for a few hours!"

Dan dropped me off at the entrance while he parked the car.

"FUUUUUUU....AAAAAR OUT, it's HOT!!"

(There was a quick change of language when I saw Abi had come out too). A sweltering 38°C. And this was the 22nd of September! Would not want to have been here in summer. At least it was a dry heat, and not humid.

Inside the wonderfully air-conditioned building, they were still selling tickets, but we had just 10 minutes to get to the cave entrance. We decided to walk the one mile path to the Big Room through the natural entrance, which is where the bats fly out at night. The ranger said it would take an hour to walk to the Big Room, then another hour or so to walk around that, and with the last elevator back up at 4:45pm, we were really cutting it fine.

At the entrance to the cave, we watched the cave swallows dart in and out, and as we descended the path we were hit by the smell of guano. Oh boy, it was strong!

The path was lovely and smooth, which was great, as the deeper we went, the darker it got, and at times it was quite difficult to see where our feet were going. It was also very steep in places, as we descended 75 storeys!

There were so many awesome formations throughout the walk down and amongst the Big Room.

It was first explored in 1931, and has been a tourist attraction ever since. The temperature was a lovely 13°C, which felt fantastic for almost the entire time we were down (my hands felt cold and clammy by the time we left).

It was amazing how our brains worked, transferring perceived images onto the stalagmites and stalactites.

"That one looks like a dragon!"

"That one is definitely a shark, look, there are it's gills and an eye!"

"That looks like a mummy sitting cross-legged and doing meditation!"

We saw lots of tunnels of varying sizes, and numerous holes to who-knows-where. Dan and I couldn't help but think of all the cave 'movies' where the 'actors' disappeared by being dragged by something into tunnels or into the black depths of pools.

"Everyone knows they're really documentaries..."

I admit to feeling a tad uneasy as we got closer to the closing time, and we couldn't see or hear anyone else. Imagine my relief when another family came up behind us!

"It's alright, Dan," I whispered, "we're not the ones at the back anymore."

We took the elevator back up the the information building, where it was lovely and warm; we found it amusing we now thought of this room as warm, when before we enjoyed its coolness!

Outside, the temperate had cooled to a mere 34°C, and we sat at the back of the car having sandwiches for our dinner.

At 5:30pm, we wandered back down to the cave entrance, and sat at the amphitheatre, waiting for the bats to fly out for their daily hunt.

At 6pm on the dot, they started coming out. They came in what seemed like waves, yet was a near-constant stream of them. The cave swallows also came back out, dipping and diving and chirping. The noise from the bats was more subtle, like an incredibly faint rumbling whisper of beating wings.

We stayed until 6:40pm before deciding to leave. I'd wandered slightly away from the amphitheatre to take some photos, as there were signs everywhere saying no cameras or video cameras or cellphones, as the sounds and flashes startle and disrupt the bats. I wasn't using flash, and I'd put my camera on silent (no focussing or shutter noises at all), but apparently that still wasn't good enough, and I was politely advised to stop and to move farther away. (But by that time I'd taken all the photos I wanted, well, it would have been better down at the amphitheatre...).

It was still something very cool to see, hundreds of thousands of bats flittering into the oncoming night, with hundreds of cave swallows flying around them. They estimate around 400,000 Brazilian free-tail bats live in the cave, and they stream out all night.

An incredible natural phenomenon to see.

And smell...