big rocks, small people

We went for a bit more of a local trip this time around with a drive down to the Porongorup Range, Mt Barker and Albany, for a weekend of camping, wining, walking, and really big rocks. Seriously, everything down there is about the really big rocks.

The porongorups? really big rocks.
The gap and the natural bridge? really bit rocks.
Albany? they have a really big rock shaped like a dog.

The campsite was a touch...underwhelming. The website mentioned something about grassy patches under beautiful trees, but we got a patch of sand and gravel wedged inbetween the BBQ area, the driveway, and a couple who somehow thought 3-5am was a good time to have a loud conversation. It did have trees, though, so...you know....halfway there, and maybe the other features were a bonus? 

Margaret River gets all the plaudits as WA's big name wine region, but the Great Southern is where it's at - Galafrey, Plantagenet, Harewood, etc. They know what they're doing down there. For their sake, I hope the reputation keeps growing. For my sake, I hope it stays about the same.

Anyway, this is sorta what the weekend looked like:

Big rock, from the top.

Little lady, also from the top.

The walkway around the top of the Porongorups reminded me how Wellington wind feels.

Another view from the top, North to the Stirling Ranges.

even when you stand back, it feels like you might be a bit too close...

The pro.

The Natural Bridge + small person.

The gap + small people.

BREAUX BRIDGE... AND NEW IBERIA

Breaux Bridge is a tiny town an hour away from New Orleans surrounded by lush swamp lands, it also happens to be the heart of Cajun country and the official Crawfish capitol (did I mention Gator boys TV show is filmed there?).  To get there by car coming from Mississippi you need to drive for about an hour on a floating bridge, it was so stunning to drive through the bayou on this almost undulating highway, that was built by the mafias construction company... heres hoping all the bodies don't degrade the concrete!

We stayed in a our first hotel of the trip here and it was a pleasant surprise, upon arrival we were informed that the gumbo would be ready shortly for supper and then sent upstairs to a nice clean room with an air-conditioning unit that puts leaf blowers to shame.

We went out for dinner that night to Cafe De Amis, a cajun restaurant that had live Cajun/zydeco music. We got the last seats in the place for the whole night, we were lucky enough that another couple were happy to share their table with us. They were retired school teachers from Vegas and great for a chat. He looked so much like Hugh Hefner did about 15 years ago that I couldn't stop staring, he also had a cool Hawaiian shirt. The music that night was amazing and I could see all our parents loving it, its a jazzed up french country folk style that had the locals dancing in between and around all the tables as the night wore on. Another amazing thing about the south is that they do seafood cheap! I ate my fill of crawfish, alligator, catfish and shrimp for almost every meal... it also might be worth noting that at this point in the trip I couldn't remember the last time I managed to find a vegetable without mayonnaise on it. Hello cellulite!

The next morning we ventured out in the fog on our swamp tour. I can easily say that was a highlight for both of us, the gators and birds were amazing but just seeing the bayou and history of it was incredible. I have a lot of respect for the determination it took from the Acadians to survive out there. So after 2 hours of trawling the swamp (which we went on with our new dinner friends from the night before) we went and got some boudain, which is sausage casing filled with a smokey, spicy rice and either pork, chicken of seafood mix which is then steamed. It's so amazing (and cheap) that we've already made some since getting home.

It was such a great little town full of truly friendly people that speak with cajun accents and they actually seemed to want to stop and chat... except at walmart but I think everyone hates life if they work at walmart. So Breaux Bridge is one of the best places in America on my list so far.

Then we drove to New Iberia, it was not a cute little town as we expected. It was a little town full of citied up rednecks with a feeling of rage that seemed to sit festering just below the surface, just waiting to jump out and stab you with a pencil. We had a night booked just outside of town at the rip van winkle cottages which is an old estate with stunning gardens that host a lot of weddings and the B&B which is the old slave quarters.
After we arrived we grabbed a tour around the old house, the tour guide was a little bit of a moron but pleasant enough. Some of my favourite statements from her included "Victorian style house simply means the bedroom is at the front" "what's a chamberpot"  and my favourite "the lady of the house was real high maintenance, she liked to drink tea". We also wandered around the grounds before heading into town for dinner. I got crawfish poboy, I love poboys!
So we returned to our slave quarters and had the creepiest stay every. Also they seemed to have about 300 different porn channels on offer which was a little weird for a historic B&B. In the morning we got asked if we saw the ghosts... umm no? So of course I looked it up and it's a poltergeist hot spot... whoops. So needless to say we were happy to leave that behind.

Off to the tabasco factory tour!

Missisippi - the go back the way you came from state

We left Nashville early monday morning, the fateful morning after burring our stomach lining and got the 64 (?) to go via Tennessee, Alabama and the drive through the centre of Mississippi to get onto the last section of the Natchez Trace. It was a really long drive, I think close to 13 hours but we managed it and Alex and his short shorts even managed to get a wolf whistle in the sticks of Alabama.

The Trace consist of a road that follows alongside an original walking track that was used by bison when they migrated north. It was then used by Native americans and finally by whiteys that used to float all their goods down the Mississippi river and then need to get home after selling it all in New Orleans. It's all in national park so a lot of it was closed due to the government shut down while we were there but it was still pretty and it was cool to see where the ground has been trampled meters down by being walked on for thousands of years.

We arrived in Natchez which is a small port town that did really well for itself when slavery was all the rage. The township is just full of stunning historical buildings. We stayed at another AirBNB place with a young family in the husband family home. It was older than NZ's been a country and had the most amazing high ceiling. Americans know how to do a high ceiling, Bruce would never have a problem over there.
Despite the pretty homes it is easy to see that the town has a lot of upper class and poor people with nothing in between. The shops are all closing down it really relies on the tourism. We took a plantation house tour the next day and ate us some good ol'fashioned fried chicken before heading out to a burned down plantation in the middle of nowhere. One thing I really noticed here with all the big estates was that all the owners die months after the completion... building a house must have pretty stressful back then.

We then got adventurous and prepared for our night in the forest. This involved driving past stores that sold ammo, fried chicken and fireworks and all signage was clearly written by someone who has only recently overcome illiteracy. Then you drive for another hour being tailgated by pickups that all have gun racks on dirt roads until you find a road side ammo store  (which you use the windscreen wipers to indicate you're turning into) where you're meant to call the person who manages the cottage. We had no cell phone reception so had to use the store phone to get directions to this ladies house, the store owner was super lovely but we did worry he would mention our city folk status to some locals who would then make us squeal like pigs... once we found the managers home she then led us into the forest and we followed the dirt track for another 30 mins, the last place we saw on the way into the forest was kind enough to inform us "If i cAtch yo ASS yo ASS iS DeaD". Once we arrived the lady got out, came up to the window and told us she was a serial killer... que nervous laughter.
It was a cute cottage and even had a ladder you had to climb to get into bed, along with an outdoor bathtub that pretty much everyone in the guest book had had sex in... we only stayed the one night but it was nice and we survived without hearing the war cry of the banjo.

After getting dive bombed by wasps the size of golfballs (which included me jumping out of the car without putting the hand break on) we were on our way to Louisiana.

NASHVILLE

Our first hint of Nashville was the belt buckles and rich southern accents of our fellow passengers as we were getting on the connecting flight in Detroit. Once we landed I essentially walked around with my mouth gaping just listening to all the accents.

The home we stayed in was incredible, we pulled up in front of a gorgeous lifestyle magazine looking house to be greeted by our hosts and friendly cat. We couldn't have stayed with lovelier people and their home just leaves me gushing... I would also quite happily pilfer the entire kitchen if I had the chance. After settling in we wandered down the road to grab some dinner and then eat some scone and peach jam flavoured ice cream.

Over the next few days our time was spent between eating, music, more eating, drinking and then a little bit of walking followed by even more eating. 

I got to wander around and see and eat at some of the spots that filming was done in one of tv shows I watch. Then we headed to Downtown nashville, exploring the honkey tonk bars. It is incredible to watch all the people making their way down a street lined with country music bars. The men dress the part as cowboys or the stereotype jock and the women (who seem to all be gorgeous in the south) wander around in denim shorts and cowboy boots. We stopped in at a few bars and they were a lot of fun, I even got asked by one lady if I was that heroin dealer gal from the tv. Safe to say I'm not but it was flattering considering how pretty the gal she was talking about is.  

We ate a tone (or close to it) of great food from bbq to Mexican but a few places really stood out.  One was Monells, you get seated at a large family dining table with strangers and they just bring out platter upon platter of southern comfort food that all gets passed to the left, the food was really good but the best part was getting to chat to everyone there. We met a couple of ladies from Kansas that made the meal a lot of fun, especially when they seemed to decide that they would force feed Alex as much as possible, he would have made NZ proud with what he managed to put away. 

The other place was a little dive just up the road from us thats sells Nashville hot chicken, Janet our host had warned us it was hot and to just get the mil and medium if we really like HOT food. I think we could have got the mild and extra mild. It was succulent amazing chicken but I really thought my face was suffering acid burns from all the cayenne pepper that was only better when washed down with lots of wine... we may or may not have both thrown up the next morning.  

We also managed to go to a college football game (the band is the best part of that) while we were there. It was so much fun to see all the pageantry that went on and to appreciate the fact that they had 60,000 people there for a uni grade game. It took about 20mins to play 1 min of game time due to stoppages etc so I don't think I would go again but it was really great to chat to the older couple next to us and see the band doing it's thing. 

I find it hard to break down what it was about Nashville but I would love to go back and spend a lot more time there... who knows maybe it was the cosby show themed jello shots?

Before there was nashville there was Canada

I know Alex gave a great description of the Canukians but I thought I would Chuck a few shots up too.

Things I noticed about :

Montreal:

-  It's a super pretty city... in the old parts.

-  The french Canadians seem just as snooty as your most snooty Parisian 

- The food is incredible and served in small enough portions that you wouldn't be a walking heart attack in 7 minutes of arrival.

- Our hotel was incredible

- Super cool churches 

- Montrealians may be incredible clumsy as there is a constant stream of fire engines racing around.

Quebec:

- We got to drive an absolute tank with internal tv screens. 

- The old city is super touristy but still amazing to wander around.

- We were told by the locals that it is so safe you could even walk around naked at night.

- they make great crepes

- It's the gateway to incredible wilderness

- Didi I mention the crepes?

Niagara falls:

- It's a big waterfall

- you only need 5 minutes there 

- you get wet while looking at the big waterfall

Buffalo:

- You feel like you may get murdered there... and you might if you take the greyhound bus.

- It's got really cute townships all around it.

- AMISH!!! We got lots of baking and candy off them. They were one of the highlights of the whole trip. It was so cool seeing them in the buggies and wearing the heavily starched blue dresses and the men with the big beards. 

- Boarder crossing on land are cool. I love that you can jump from onside of the boarder to the next. 

Toronto:

I wouldn't recommend people visit there. I think its one of those good to live not visit places. They did have a really good doughnut and ice hockey though so they can be forgiven for being a bunch of rude people. It has a pretty lake and nice weather but it was just lacking that certain something (*cough* friendliness) to make it nice. 

Quebec, and also Toronto.

Welp, it's all over now but, to prove that we didn't just pass out in a food coma in Montreal, the stories shall continue until we reach the end.

And maybe then a bit more.

So we did actually make it out of Montreal. After approx 3hr of sleep following the Grand Final, we stumbled up to the rental office like a pair of well-prepared hiking zombies to find our "economy compact" had been upgraded to a "medium". Nice! We also found out that an american "medium" is roughly the size of a tank. I thought getting used driving on the way out of NYC would be as tricky as it got but, as it turned out, having to weave the automobile equivalent of a rhinocerous around central Montreal provided plenty of cause for excitement.


Eventually we got to Quebec City. In the fashion that would emerge for the rest of the trip; we dropped the car off an hour late, then lugged our packs down to our accommodations to sweatily introduce ourselves to our next set of hosts. At this point, we proceeded to have an incredibly surreal conversation, which took place as two excited miniature french greyhounds cut laps of the room and leapt inches from our face. Given how sleep deprived we were at this point, I'm still not entirely convinced that we weren't hallucinating the dogs, but I'm pretty sure they were there...

The city itself is a great little town. We were given some tips on where to go to eat with the locals, at local prices, and get to see the real Quebec. The locals' lifestyle sounds like a winner: working in a quiet, hip little town, which is built around a beautiful 16th century walled city, and surrounded by a wilderness full of hiking trails, snow resorts and things with antlers.

In saying that, we went straight to the expensive tourist area of the Old City, and spent all of our time there with the cruise ship crowds. Sure, we missed out on the true local flavour, but the old city has castles, and you feel like less of a pickle when speaking broken french phrases in an attempt to show you tried (my best effort was calling a taxi company and asking the operator if he spoke french, to which he said "uh... I speak english, if that's what you mean?").

Where Montreal's old city has epic cathedrals and grand buildings amongst a shiny metropolis, Quebec has weaving alleyways and homes that have been lived in and worked from for over 500 years. Again, the food was incredible and plentiful.

 

 

From Quebec we hopped on a plane to Toronto, picked up another "economy compact" (this time, a full sized SUV) and headed down for a drive-by viewing of Niagara. The town of Niagara is a grimy mass of aging casinos and tourist trap bars, which goes against the natural spectacle that is the falls. We took a look, snapped some shots, had an absolutely awful breakfast, and then enjoyed the novelty of driving across and international border. From there, it was a lovely drive through the western corner of New York and around the NY Amish Trail. The Amish clearly excel in both baking skills and beard growing, not to mention their carpentry. Goat milk fudge has no right to taste as good as it does.

...and then there was Toronto. The Toronto we saw is a hipster paradise. Pretty much exactly like an episode of Portlandia but with a Canadian accent. The upside of this is that hipsters take food pretty seriously, and we found some incredible things to eat. However, aside from the food and a college ice hockey game, we didn't find a lot of memorable things to see. I'm still not sure if this is because we had reached a mid-holiday lull, or if it was just a little underwhelming after the pseudo-medieval grandeur of French-Canada. Either way, it was a pleasant few days but just nothing overly mind-blowing.

Tune in for the next episode to hear about Buffalo bus stories, and onwards to the dirty south!