The Road Trip: Part 1

After a week of travelling through the beautiful south, I finally made it to New Orleans! Much drama ensued when I got here, but lets start at the very beginning...

Jacqui, my friend of 13 years, volunteered to road trip with me and all of my many belongings to NOLA. This was our first day of travel, stopped at a gas station/dairy queen somewhere in Maryland. We needed lots of windshield wiper fluid to wash all the many large bugs that were to soon splatter nastily across the windshield for five days. Mississippi definitely won for the state with the most kamikaze bugs.

Our first stop was supposed to be Wilmington, North Carolina (the pretty, seaside town where Dawson's Creek was filmed), but thanks to our GPS unit leading us an hour astray, we settled for Raleigh, NC...a very happy accident. Despite our reservations, Raleigh was amazingly friendly and full of great places to go. Immediately upon our arrival at the hotel, we came upon this kind fellow (Joe), the hotel bartender, who proceeded to be our hilarious tour guide of Raleigh and its local bars. Soon after this picture was shot, Jacqui bought a sub from the only place open at 3 am in Raleigh, upon Joe's recommendation. She ended up having to tip the angry delivery guy ALOT, because apparently he was Joe's oot dealer and he was all kinds of cranky. The sandwich cost her $20, WAS incredibly delicious, and Joe was immediately expelled for his stupidity. Poor boy.

Next morning/afternoon we took to the town. Raleigh is GORGEOUS! Its a small college and young professional type of town with lots of art, cool stores (and bars as mentioned), delicious food (that jacqui is eating oompa loompa style, here) and tons of southern hospitality. Out of all the places that we visited along our trip, Raleigh was by far our favorite.

Whilst in Raliegh, on our local pub crawl, we ran into two wonderful fellows, Jonathan and Adam. They were visiting from Myrtle Beach, and invited us to come stay with them for a few days. We made our way down the Carolina coast, stopping at beautiful, kitschy Carolina Beach. Jacqui, as you can tell, hates the beach, but humoured my ocean lust for a couple of hours.

Jonathan and Adam had the largest, most luxurious trailer I've ever witnessed. Three bedrooms? Waterfront? Amazing. And cool party tricks (this is flavored tobaccy in the hookah, of course). Adam was enthralling us with smoke bubbles, as you can see.

Lunch, the next day, was had at Captain Poo's lovely seaside restaurant. Ironic because soon thereafter Jacqui had an episode of three day long non-pooing which left her in this state:

Pregnant with Cap'n Poo's large, angry baby.

Later, we indulged in the traditional Myrtle Beach pasttime of put-put. I won, of course.

We celebrated with an awkward drink at a very Italian martini bar where we were looked upon in horror for our lack of fake tans and bleached hair. One drink and forty glares was more than enough to get us out of there.

As much fun as we were having, we needed to keep moving. We bid farewell to our new friends and headed to Atlanta.

It was boring and didn't embrace our uniqueness. Memphis, however, was delicious:

And full of history!

Beale Street!

Graceland!

And beer!

The next day, after a disgusting shake at Shake'n'Steak, we drove through the wilds of Mississippi to our final destination. We arrived at the Greater New Orleans Artist Mansion at midnight, where the drama began....to be continued.