Oak Mountain Park, Alabama

We pulled into Oak Mountain Park late last Saturday, an hour after they closed but we were still able to check in for one night with the guard at the front gate. From the map we decided to go to the least crowded area of the campground and make our first attempt at backing the trailer into a spot, unfortunately the first time would be in the dark with no flashlights or 2 way radios – or any way at all of communicating the parking job into success. Luckily, as happens often, there was a guy waiting for his wife outside the bathroom who had a flashlight and at least one time more experience backing a trailer in than we did. I stood at the back of the trailer, feeling completely useless, knowing I couldn’t be seen – having no experience helping someone back in a 32 foot trailer is nearly as bad as having no experience doing the backing in. I couldn’t decide on hand signals and it didn’t matter because Ross couldn’t see my hands. The guy who offered to help used his flashlight to guide Ross into a reasonable position and Ross managed not to hit any trees, tables or drive off any cliffs. So although we were about 4 feet too far to the left, leaving us almost no front porch, we considered it a success and started setting up.

The next day, we wanted to settle in, knowing we would be staying here a couple weeks, so even though there was no room for the awning to come all the way out with our parking job, we half mast carported it (I made that term up myself), which means we took the awning arms off the trailer and staked them into the ground with the awning only half rolled out. It covers about 4 feet of ground, enough for us to park the bikes and motorcycle under and hang out with the animals while they sniff around.

The park is basically a huge thick multi tree’d (deciduous, coniferous and a few tropicals) forest with 3 large lakes. The forest has very little undergrowth, which is my favorite part, because although there are trails all over, you can go whichever way you want without having to turn back.. most the time at least. Because we are somewhere that is not an inner city trailer park (for once in months), we have made it a habit to actually get out of the trailer during the work day, both taking rides on our bikes (me motorcycle and Ross, bicycle) during our lunch breaks and trying to do as much as possible before dark. We also take the animals out regularly, and Susa is getting much better on her leash now that she has somewhere to go. The last place in New Orleans was always crowded or had traffic in and out so she barely left the 10 feet in front of the trailer. Now she takes us for walks down forest trails, climbs trees and catches crickets. Chena is about the same as anywhere, old and slowish but eager to walk in whatever direction she decides will get her the farthest away from the trailer.

This last weekend, we really wanted to look around while we were able to get away from work so we got up… ahem.. early.. (no we didn’t) and went for a 2 hour hike. On the map we got at the gate, there was a trail marked “Lake Trail” just next to us by Beaver Lake. We couldn’t tell from the map but assumed because it was called Lake Trail that it went around or at least next to the lake for a while. After less than a mile the trail branched off back to the campground but there was still a trail at the lake so we continued on. After another 100 yards the trail started to get harder to walk, definitely there, but unmaintained. First large trees fallen across it, then bushes and small trees and a fairly steep hill leading down to the water – not the lake at this point but the mouth of a creek. As we did our best not to slip in the mud to our splashy demise, we realized the trail in no way followed the lake because you would have to swim across the creek to do so, but we followed whatever seemed like a trail until we were just walking through forest again. It was hot, about 95, but the forest kept us fairly cool. The humidity kept us sweating and drinking water and by the time we made it to a road, the only place the trail lead after its migration, we were ready to head back to camp, still a couple of miles away by this time.

After hiking we went to an awesome place in Birmingham called Sloss Furnaces, an old iron mill that’s been closed since the 70s. The place is open to the public and throughout the industrial wonderland are safety rails and self guided tour phone numbers to call and get info about the machinery. In the pits and drains of the plant were little concrete ponds full of turtles, frogs and minnows and every wall was covered in vines and moss or just deeply textured corrosion and erosion. It was pretty great and I got just about 40 photos with my big medium format camera (all film to be developed whenever I can find a place that does 120 film). After that we desperately wanted food and found a great little vegetarian restaurant called the Bottletree Cafe, the only one in Birmingham, which just happened to be a couple miles from Sloss Furnaces. This was a relief after living in New Orleans for months where everywhere was at least 10 miles from us, everywhere – And we were technically in town.
Birmingham isn’t bad, although its pretty small for a city. They have a Whole Foods, an Asian Market, several restaurant options and Sloss Furnace so, although I don’t want to live here, I’m glad we’re nearby. It’ll be a nice transition for our belated leap back into the travel world in our new trailer. Next time we’ll be ready to head back to small town USA. There seems to be much less of that in the east so far – it’s so densely populated here compared to the southwest where we spent most our trip pre-NOLA.

Here’s a few photos from the park and trip. Soon to come: A video of Susa’s forest adventures and many more photos!

• has_been_twittered: yes
• Weather:: Raining and making the trailer leak :(

4th of July in New Orleans

So we’ve been on the road since October of 2009 and have been in New Orleans since March. We didnt intent to stay so long but upgrading our travel equipment (a 73 Dodge RV to a 2000 Truck and 2006 Trailer) has cut into our funding to keep moving. Luckily we’ll be leaving again soon but the oil spill has really put a damper on our options.

Today is the 4th of July and although I don’t usually watch local news anywhere, I’ve been keeping my eye on Hurricane Alex (because being in a travel trailer in a hurricane is a death sentence) and of course watching news on the oil from a very up close and personal point of view here in the South. Our plans originally intended us to see as much of the country as possible and have a nice hot summer. As far as the South goes, we haven’t stayed in Florida yet, still need to see an Alligator in the wild and have only been to the beaches of Gulf Port, Mississippi for a couple hours one weekend. When we went to Gulf Port the oil leak was only a couple weeks old and hadn’t reached any marshlands or beaches yet. We swam, along with 2 wind surfers nearby, and although it was warm and overcast, there were no other swimmers on the beach. We later wondered the reason, sharks? because it certainly wasn’t oil. Either way, now the beaches have potential swimmers and open beaches but tar balls and oil are all over the beach and getting on anyone brave enough to swim. Other places like Grand Isle, Louisiana, a place we had wanted to go months ago, are completely empty of tourists. Today being a day that the island depends on its usual 20k tourists to keep the economy alive.

The news cast about Grand Isles problem reminded me of the movie Jaws which we just watched last week. In Jaws, the Mayor insisted the beach stay open because he decided the small shark they caught the day before was the man eater the were searching for – Selfishly putting lives at risk to keep the economy going. For Grand Isle that’s not even an option. The Mayor cant lie to everyone and tell the public that there’s no oil on their beaches. Unlike a man eating goliath shark, oil is something that cant be stopped, hidden or avoided.

New Orleans is still happening, Essence Festival is in town with Janet Jackson and many other top r&b artists. Downtown is pretty busy with tourists going on their little mule rides through the French Quarter and booking their Haunted Tours for this evening. Even swamp tours are still going on since the swamps nearby are far from the gulf oil invasion, but the mood is somber among some locals. The other day we worked all day in a coffee shop, overhearing conversations between locals about the oil affecting someone they know. People being forced to look for work elsewhere, moving away from family and friends to cleaner water. Businesses suffering from the lack of tourism in areas and of course the dwindling of the South’s famous seafood industry. The moods were surprisingly matter of fact and hopeful besides all the complaints. After living through something like Katrina and spending years rebuilding, although the problem is much different and will have continual environmental effects, no one really knows what else to do but be hopeful.

My fashion related statement regarding this issue is that in my very strong opinion people should NOT be buying Anti BP t-shirts from the hundreds of companies doing their best to market on this disaster; but rather give that $30 you planned to spend on the shirt to the National Parks (DONATE NOW AT WWW.NATIONALPARKS.ORG OR TEXT “PARKS” TO 90999) or the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund, a New Orleans based organization.

Of course we all want to tell the world how much we hate BP’s irresponsibility and the whole disaster itself but think of other ways please. Handmade posters, take a marker to your own shirt for godssake.

But unless the company is giving all or most of its profits to the oil spill fund, they aren’t helping.If a company gives 100% profit donations it is a true favor to the gulf. If they only give a small % of the profit just to keep from getting a guilt trip, they should just stick to making tees with gangster bears on them and stay out of the “profiting from disaster” market.But unless the company is giving all or most of its profits to the oil spill fund, they aren’t helping.

If a company gives 100% profit donations it is a true favor to the gulf. If they only give a small % of the profit just to keep from getting a guilt trip, they should just stick to making tees with gangster bears on them and stay out of the “profiting from disaster” market.

As you can tell I feel strongly about this and I will not write about or feature any company who markets on disasters.

Here are some designers donating 100% of the sales to the Gulf:

Kenneth Cole Customized Tees - http://www.facebook.com/KennethColeProductions?v=app_10467688569&ref=ts

Etsy Stores Craftivism – http://www.etsy.com/storque/craftivism/etsians-help-clean-the-gulf-8846/

Seriously EMAIL ME if you are a company giving 100% of your profits to the Gulf Relief or know a company that is.

Thanks and have a good 4th of July!

• has_been_twittered: yes

Imperial Updates: Videos from Salton Sea area.

Pumpkin Bowling at Slab City the morning after Halloween. Last time I was there was Easter when they shot easter eggs off of saw horses the morning after. Fun times.

Me and Lisa took her car to the Dunes to take some photos while Ross was working on the RV at Slab City. Unfortunately the dunes were covered in little kids on ATV’s and big kids in jeeps. On the other side of the highway there was less pure dunes but no people so we hung out on that side.

• Listening to:: Astral Projection - Mahadeva
• has_been_twittered: yes

More photos from Cocodrie, LA

Cocodrie, LA one room school house

Coco Marina, Ross and the Brougham

Coco Marina, A ship called T-bag

Little house on the coco, Cocodrie, LA

The Road to Cocodrie, LA

Shells in Cocodrie

• Weather:: nice and sunny but miserably cold and windy!
• Watching:: Rome - the HBO show
• has_been_twittered: yes

Weekend drive to Cocodrie. LA

We left Bayou Vista at about 2 in the afternoon on Saturday with the intentions of driving down another road that ends deep in the marshlands, this time to Cocodrie. After about an hour of taking down the tarp and putting things away, we headed out on the road towards Houmas having eaten nothing as often in the case by that time in the day. It’s normally not an issue but on a traveling day, eating is more of a pain in the ass than days when we can just open the fridge and cook something. When we got to Houmas we only had about 2 hours of daylight left and ended up having to eat garden burgers at Burger King because the only other chain that has them at every single location is Denny’s and they don’t have one. We wanted something quick as well due to fleeting light and increasing clouds but after choking down the chewy, freezer-burnt
burgers and cold fries we ended up deciding to stay in Houmas for the night so we wouldn’t miss anything on the drive. After running a couple errands at Best Buy and Lowe’s, we found a Thai restaurant just across form the Walmart we planned to stay at and had some pretty great – and hot as hell – tofu Thai curries. Our waitress was friendly and asked how the tofu was since she hadn’t tried it before (she was from LA), in fact, she hadn’t tried hardly anything on the menu because by some sad cruel irony – she works at a Thai restaurant and is allergic to coconuts, peanuts (all nuts), raw vegetables and milk. She cant have Thai curry, peanut sauce or even Thai tea, all my favorites. It was sad news but we enjoyed our meals anyway, although a 4 out of 5 on the hot scale is a little too painful. The owner even came up to us after our meal to check it wasnt too hot, Ross ate all of his but I wasn’t quite as big of a bad ass.

It was only 9 when we finished out food but we headed over to Walmart anyway. We wanted to see a movie but will all the bad reviews, I’m still afraid to see The Wolfman and nothing else was playing. I love Benicio too much to watch him flop. I might still go anyway and think it’s fine. I usually don’t read reviews but I cant remember the last time a movie I wanted to see really bad had got a 20-30% approval by rotten tomatoes and paid critics.. a sad state. I suspected the effects were terrible but that rarely bothers me when a story is good – sadly the story is said to also be total crap. We decided to save money by just eating Thai and watching a movie at home. I wanted to see a large male comedian flop around like an idiot, so between what was on instant on Netflix for John Candy and Chris Farley, Beverly Hills Ninja won. Sad that I would rather watch Beverly Hills Ninja than The Wolfman but that’s how afraid I am right now.

Boondocking at Walmart almost always works out pretty great. We get left alone far in the back of the parking lot – by security, customers and other RV drivers, and we have a bathroom open 24 hours. We run the generator if we feel we need extra electricity (than our backup batteries can provide) and we can cook, run the heat and do anything that doesn’t involve running water. We even got to see some cops search a guys car right outside our front door – an unfortunately uneventful event, but nevertheless -something, and we left feeling good about our 40 year old RV as the guy in the Southwind motorhome next to us was stuck with his hood open and looking grumpy. It was also the first time we left before the other RV’s in the parking lot – and we left at 10 so we were shocked, but nevertheless we finally WON! (dork)

Cocodrie, LA

We drove to Cocodrie pretty much immediately, heading south on highway just barely elevated out of the swamp. The weather had managed to pull itself out of its extreemly long slump to give us a 71 degree day, humid and windy in telling of the coming storm. When we arrived in Cocodrie we were pretty impressed. We expected what was at the end of the last swamp highway, a stilted fishing town with one closed market, but instead got a stilted fishing town with a closed market AND a closed marina/restaurant/boat rental! It was actually pretty though, unlike Holly Beach and Creole. Aside from a couple nice houses, Creole had no awesome trees, fishing boats names “Big SexSea” or a bubbling outdoor pool. Cocodrie is a fisherman’s wet dream destination town as we deducted. The whole area is full of things they call “camps” which are basically rental cabanas on the water with docking, parking and of course, the pool. Said on the marina website to be the best fishing in Louisiana, while completely surrounded by swamp, several lakes and the gulf of mexico, we really couldn’t doubt it. There was even a small airport for say… boats that land on water? Men who jump onto marlins from helicopters?  Unfortunately the cabanas go for $75 and up a night or we might have rented one.  There were 2 trailers with hookups parked among the cabanas, causing us to get giddy at the thought we might be able to stay for the week, but on closer inspection – those were the only 2 empty spaces with hookups and they were probably just the “houses” the owners of the lots chose to setup. It was a really interesting town and reminded me of the town in Robin Williams Popeye, although much smaller of course. Anyway, Ross decided to take a look at the bushings and try to tape them into place, so me and Chena walked around and took photos. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many little skeletons stacked in one place as I did in the mountains of oyster shells in Cocodrie.

Chena on the oyster mounds

We left disappointed that we couldnt stay and made it into New Orleans about 5:30pm. We drove around the French Quarter till after 6:30pm, the biggest vehicle on those narrow streets, and checked into camp just after 7. More on that tomorrow!

I’ll post some more photos tomorrow when I have better internet. night!

• Weather:: Something that only wishes it was a thunder storm :( but its warm at least!!!
• has_been_twittered: yes