Winding Roads; The Seeds of Our Destruction

At various times people have asked me for an itinerary on my trip. I've been a little reluctant to give one out. This is not because I like being difficult (although that is, in fact, often true). Rather, it's because I only have nebulous plans about how this trip is supposed to go. As a result, there is more of an outline than an itinerary. On the morning of September 16th I seemed to be at the point in the outline where I would visit New Orleans. I have been to the Crescent City numerous times for both business and pleasure, but I have not seen the place since Hurricane Katrina. Thus poised, I found myself thinking about the trip so far. Some of the really memorable moments have come in visiting small towns like San Luis Obispo, Kanab, and Lafayette. Right there, on the spot, I decided to skip New Orleans and spend the next day or two visiting small towns on 2 lane highways.

I started out with a hankering to see the bayous. I consulted my road atlas and found that the southernmost reasonable sized town in Louisiana was called Houma. Off I went down US 90, passing through or by towns with names like Chacahoula and Thibodaux. The bayous aren't quite what I expected. I was imagining scenes like the big chase scene in _The Man With The Golden Gun_. Hundred year old cypress trees, alligators, maybe a dilapidated shack or two. In reality, mostly it looks like a forest with intermittent firm ground and water. The road tended to be built on a causeway for part of it. There is plenty of Spanish moss, to be sure.

















I'm sure you can find the bayous like you see in the movies. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been all those billboards offering boat tours. But today was a day for rambling, not tour packages. So I simply stopped at Griffin's Grill in Houma for the blackened shrimp po'boy, and I was on the road again.

I wound my way across Lake Pontchartrain and into Mississippi, which held little appeal that far south on the Gulf coast. I think the visit to Mississippi needs to start with Tupelo, and so will have to wait for another day. Instead I just spun into Alabama and the fine city of Mobile. Here I stopped for a while, as I had heard numerous times that Mobile is one of the finest "small" cities in America. Some folks I know even say they prefer visiting here for Mardi Gras rather than New Orleans. I don't know about that, but it is a very pleasant city. They do an especially good job with green space in the middle of down town area. There were parks and monuments and what-not one block out of every six or so it seemed. The waterfront is pretty industrial, but that's such a minor quibble.


The architecture is quite similar to New Orleans in certain ways. Notably, the buildings in the old part of downtown have those same great wrought iron balconies.

Mobile is the sight of one of the more famous battles of the Civil War, the naval engagement known as the Battle of Mobile Bay. This was a decisive battle that effectively shut off the Confederacy's last sea port and almost all their contact with the outside world. It also destroyed the remainder of the Confederate navy. At the climactic moment of the battle the Union commander, Admiral David Farragut, was trapped between withering shore fire from four forts on the bay and a naval minefield (mines were called "torpedoes" in those days) that had just sunk one of his armored monitors. His response was the now famous order, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" In this way he was able to move beyond the range of the fort guns and trap and destroy the last confederate ship, CSS Tennessee. I wonder how many people use that quote without knowing the origin. Here's the marker commemorating the battle.


I spent a good hour wandering about in Mobile checking things out. But it was too early to call it a night here, so I decided to push into Florida.

On a tip from my home base support crew, I wanted to take a drive down US 98, which hugs the gulf coast. I hadn't had a good waterfront drive since the Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu. I figured I'd drive down this as far as I had the stomach to, before hooking up with more major roads for the final drive to Tampa. This route took me through Pensacola and toward Panama City. It's a pleasant drive, but as different from the PCH as you can imagine. The area is heavily developed. You don't see the open Gulf of Mexico at any point, since the Florida shore is protected by a line of barrier islands called keys. On these keys are built massive hotels and condominium developments. This is where they put all the people who flee New York and other eastern and midwestern cities for summer vacations.

But it's mid-September, and all the vacationers have gone home. The infrastructure here is significant, with 6 lanes highways, industrial on-ramps, massive housing complexes, and huge parking lots. Almost all of it was abandoned for the end of the season. While the drive itself was quite beautiful with the sun setting in my rear view mirror and the shadows on the dunes growing longer and longer, the overall effect was a kind of sad desolation.

The next morning I awoke to looming gray skies and heavy rain. The cloudy and rainy weather that has been following me here finally manifested itself as heavy rain with some thunder and lightening. The power of a Florida rainstorm is an experience none should miss and all should respect. I had the gist of the scenic gulf drive, and given the inclement weather I decided to cut inland and rejoin the Interstate highway system. This afforded me a different kind of pleasant experience, as it took almost two hours of winding through small north Florida towns to find Interstate 10 again. It's mellow and bucolic here, and it's definitely more akin to the great American southern icons like Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas than it is to glitzy south Florida.

I finally arrived in Tampa in the late afternoon, there to stay with my friend Sheldon Menery, joined as well by my friend Scott Larabee also in town from Seattle for a visit.


Alas, while I didn't know it at the time, a catastrophe had occurred some time during my leisurely drive along the gulf. My plans and my checking account wouldn't be able to withstand what happens next. In a day or two, I'll update everyone on the saga of Chris's poor, lamented, and now mostly departed Nissan Z.