Day 3 - Mission: New Orleans, LA

Leaving Dallas was much like leaving any big city - you soon end up in the country. The only thing of note to report on the road out of Texas was driving through the town of Marshall. (I was incorrectly told at the gas station that this was the same town as "We Are Marshall". Thanks for clarifying that Heather! That Marshall is in West Virginia.)

The drive into Louisiana quickly turned to lush yet swamp-like trees. Making our way south through the state, we drove over the 18+ mile long Atchafalya Swamp Bridge.

Shortly thereafter crossing the Mississippi into Baton Rouge.

After our update of Day 2 at the closest Starbucks, we headed off again for New Orleans - more specifically - the French Quarter.

It was 9:00 pm when we finally arrived. Let me just tell you, it is insane there and forget trying to cross the pedestrian loaded Bourbon St. in a car. No one stops, they just cross and act like they don't know you are there.

Being tired from the 9 hour drive in, I was stressed and Hyde - errr I mean Colby was starving. This was our first time into New Orleans and we really only knew of food places that were open during daytime hours, and of course Cafe du Monde. Walking around on a Wednesday night, we stumbled upon the Corner Oyster House.

I had the Red Beans & Rice with Andouille Sausage and Colby had the Gumbolaya - yes, Gumbo & Jambalaya in one dish. (By the way, this Gumbolaya turned out to be the best dish we found.)

Before heading out to our campground, we stopped at Cafe du Monde for Beignets and Cafe au Lait.

OH MY GOODNESS! I am not a doughnut girl, but these little lovelies were delicious. And who would have thought that the Starbucks addict would like chicory coffee?

You haven't seen the last of us Cafe du Monde - we will definitely be back.

Ok, now for the ridiculous part of the trip. Remember we said even the bad experiences would be recounted. This is the first big one, but it turned out alright.

Our campground was a 30 minute trip out to St. Bernard State Park - through the most heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina part of town. (More about that later)

When we pulled up to St. Bernard State Park, the gate was locked. Seriously. LOCKED! Boy were we mad. In all of our camping experience, we have never been locked out of a place before. I left the campground office a small piece of my mind on their answering machine. Mind you it was now after 12:00 am, so we did the only thing we could think of. We drove to a truck stop. Yes, a TRUCK STOP! You will all have to forgive me for not having the desire to take a picture of the truck stop, it was not a proud moment for us.

Fortunately, this all worked out in the end. We apparently just needed the gate combination, which they will gladly provide if you just call them and let them know. (So, we learned something new....CALL AHEAD!)

Day 2 - Mission: Dallas, TX

Up at 7am and after saying goodbye to our gracious hosts, Jim & Lavonne, we set out for the 10 hour drive to Dallas, TX.

You might be wondering what it was that I meant in my cliffhanger in Day 1 (Jennifer & Colby caught on camera committing a California misdemeanor!) Let me start by saying that we really did nothing illegal. It is actually encouraged if you are on the right side of the fence. So, just outside of Amarillo we made a stop here.

This is Cadillac Ranch. If you haven't heard of this or seen it in a movie, yes those are actual classic Caddies planted nose down in a Texas pasture! Ten to be more specific.

Back to the California misdemeanor. These are customized by visitors which it is encouraged by the artist. What would be illegal in California, like I said, is completely legal in Texas, as long as you are on the right side of the fence. It is art - not graffiti. We did not bring our own can of spray paint, but found two slightly used ones in the field and tag we did.

And voila! Here it is:

The C2CDD (Coast to Coast with the Douglas Duo) 2010 tag.

And you know how they say taggers get addicted?

Colby couldn't stop...

That was our fun in Amarillo - highly recommended by the Douglas Duo with two enthusiastic thumbs up!

Back on the road again, on our way to Dallas. We were told the drive would be boring and ugly - let me just tell you, we were told wrong. At least in our opinion, it was beautiful ranch land teeming with blooming wild flower and quaint old country towns like this one.

We even saw Camels in a pasture!

Arriving in Dallas, we met old friends, Julie, Brandon, the enormous Dutch & Kitty, who were so hospitable. They fed us great food & wine, gave us a comfy bed, and sent us on our way in the morning with snacks.

Thanks guys! It was great to see you and hang out for the night.

So, for tomorrow - off to New Orleans, LA. The cliffhanger: Nighttime in New Orleans - Beignet's & Po-boy's, here we come!

Day 1 - Mission: Albuquerque, NM

Maybe leaving at 3am wasn't the best idea, but we wanted to be able to see something in Albuquerque before it was too late.

Exhausted but excited, head out we did for a 12 hour drive. Our route, 241 north, 91 east, 15 north, 40 east (much of Historical Route 66 is along this stretch of road). Making great time was essential, with as few stops as possible. Fuel stops in Barstow, CA & Hollbrook, AZ and eating homemade sandwiches along the way got us into Albuquerque in just 11 1/2 hours. Some of the sites we saw or passed from 40 east: Meteorite Crater, the Petrified Forest, and an awesome lightening storm around Grant, NM.

Visiting the winner of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" for New Mexico (sorry, Albuquerque Aquarium), we arrived in Old Town Albuquerque - founded in 1700s.

Our first stop, recommended by Uncle Bob & Craig Ferguson, "The Rattlesnake Museum".

Then met up with our Albuquerque tour guides, Justin & Gretchen, setting off for an adventure southwest style. "Frontier" for our DD&D dinner. And yes, this one was a dive (which is not a bad thing)! Dinner was under $10 for both of us. I had the Green Chile Stew & Colby had the Carne Adovado Burrito, and we shared their famous Cinnamon Roll.

A quick tour of the University of New Mexico campus & we were off to the tip top of Sandia Peak. The "World's Longest Tram" took us to the summit at 10,378'.

THANKS again Justin & Gretchen for showing us around! And Justin's parents were kind enough to offer their guest room for the night, way out in the "country". What a great group of new friends we have made! Thanks Rex for recommending and setting this one up!

After a great night of sleep, today we are en route to Dallas, in Amarillo at this very moment. So tune in tomorrow and watch for the exciting adventures we have been on already today. Here's your cliffhanger: Jennifer & Colby caught on camera committing a California misdemeanor!

BonVoyage!

We are officially on our way now. It's been a frantic couple of weeks and we apologize again for the lack of posts but be prepared for the flood of pictures and stories coming your way! We will do our best to confer with each other about our posts so as not to be to redundant, though each of our posts will be unique to the writer. At times we may write about the events from our own perspective in our own writing style.

So here we are on the 15 Freeway heading to the 40 Freeway racing to beat the sun to the Eastern horizon, a hopeless endeavor but exciting none the less. We have all our gear, some food and water and a big comfy bed all in tow with us. A mini home with four wheels and a V6 to boot. (I once promised myself I would never live in a mobile home, I guess I never saw it coming)
The plan for today is to get to Albuquerque (spell that five times fast) New Mexico before 5:30 to meet some friends of friends (aren't we all friends...really?) at the Rattlesnake Museum and walk around Old Town (thank you for voting). Well that's all for now, Colby.

-- Post From My iPhone

More trip info and reader participation.

I must apologize for not having been able to post something of importance more sooner. I did not want to wear out our readers before having left for the trip as there will be an abundance of pictures, stories and possibly video while we are on the road. I do however want to clarify a bit more on our trip and how you can get the most out of this blog.
For starters though the map does not show the letter "A" it is there hidden under the "W" simply because our start and end places are the same. We will be following the letters in alphabetical order and these are the major stopping points along the way. Most places will be just a night or two with the exceptions of Florida, North Carolina and New York. The current trip plan covers over 7400 miles and will take us 54 days in all. There was for a brief time an extension to this trip planned namely to come back across the Northern states and going through Yellowstone National Park. I have been there a couple of times but Jennifer hasn't. After doing some calculations we decided it just couldn't be done. It would add over 600 more miles and nearly a weeks worth of time. In fact we even struggled with the idea that our current trip may have been over zealous in it's planning but the only portion we could truly cut back on was the northern route up to New York and Boston. This would have changed our Adventure drastically and though still going from Coast to Coast it would have lost a greatness to it. We will be cutting the budget very close so as to make sure we see this Great Adventure through.
This also brings up other questions we have been asked. As for accommodations along the way. We will either being camping or staying with friends the whole journey! We have made reservations at campgrounds already through the New York leg of our trip but all are also fully refundable if we cancel. So if you know of family or friends who wouldn't mind us staying in their driveway a night let us know. We will be camping from the minivan, no tents. I am building a platform for the back to have our air mattress on and our luggage underneath. A lot of places we will be paying simply to pull in late and drive out early. The places, sites and things of interest are not at the campgrounds so we will be spending as little time as possible at them.
For the time being we are keeping the meager budget under wraps but may if there is interest share after-wards how affordable it can be to travel by car cross country.
This brings me to my last point how you can get involved. We have had some great suggestions on places to see and places to miss but we really want to visit a lot of diners, drive-ins and dives. We have not had a lot of great food places recommended and thus haven't been able to put up any polls for food yet. Because we are on a, "shoestring" budget please refrain from offering up five star restaurant suggestions. If you had or heard or saw on t.v. a great taco place in New Mexico let us know. If you think you know the best place to get a slice of pie (pizza) in New York again please let us know. We want this trip to be about the whole experience not just the camera opportunities.
One last last thing. We want to have some fun along the way and have thought about doing some possible skits or re-enactments (possible videos) and are again looking for ideas and what you might like to see. I see from the polls you already have us getting wet in the Gulf. We have plenty of other interesting tricks up our sleeves that should keep everyone entertained young and old alike so continue to check back often to see whats up with the Douglas Duo as they go Coast to Coast.

www.thedouglasduo.com

Just a quick update:
We have just switched to our own domain name.
You can now find us at www.thedouglasduo.com.
If you Google "thedouglasduo", you will find us too.
It will take a couple of days to make the switch official, so please be patient!
We are excited about our new addition to the world wide web.
We have more "Coast to Coast" information in store for you, so stay tuned!

Coast to Coast is now a "Choose your own Adventure Story"

Jen and I have decided there is just to much to see and do across America in 54 days. So we have come up with a plan to incorporate all of you in deciding where we should go and what we should do. It's just like those books we use to read that allowed us to choose for the characters which path in the story they should take. All of you reading this will be our narrators and we the characters!
Along the right side of the blog we have begun to post polls for you to choose from. For example, some are places to visit like the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island. Others are suggested foods to eat.
Simply select which one you prefer and click vote. The highest of the two wins! We will be posting pictures and stories of the winning spots as we visit them.
So what are you waiting for? Start choosing!
Be sure to check back often as we will continue to add more polls!
Who knows? It could get interesting!
-Colby