From Sea to Shining Sea

We made it from the Pacific to the Atlantic in a week! Today's post won't be that exciting because yesterday was our most epic day of driving: 14 hours to be exact.

We spent the morning eating the delicious and famous beignets at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans

Happy Beignet Coma

We could have hijacked this van

Then we headed uptown on Maria's recommendation for a brief stop at Magazine St, the cutest shopping street in the city, where Adam made a surprising discovery.

The Celebration

The Discovery

And the inevitable joke (courtesy of Adam): "Peniston only goes one way." Needless to say, he awarded himself a point for this.




Ok, off to Savannah. We steeled ourselves for the long drive, but we also wanted to see if we could see some of the oil spill so we headed into Mississippi on our way to the shore. A cursory internet search revealed that Pass Christian had seen some tar mats the "size of school buses."

But, probably due to the fact that the oil spill happened 104 days ago, the beaches we saw in Mississippi looked remarkably pristine. Like, prettier than California beaches.

We even saw this beautiful plantation style house, right off the road

After getting a snow cone and a pickle at a roadside stand near Biloxi, we decided to buckle down and focus on driving to Savannah. We had two options: take I-10 through Florida and up into Savannah, or take I-65 through Montgomery, AL and east into Savannah. We opted for getting another state under our belt and staying on I-10, which had heretofore been so good to us. But no sooner do we change drivers in Mobile, AL and I get 30 mins of blazing 80mph speed, do we come to a dead standstill about 30 miles west of Pensacola, FL and spend the next two and a half hours in deadlock traffic with no exits to redirect us and no certainty as to when it would end.

When we finally came up to the cause of the holdup, though, it was pretty alarming. All the traffic was being diverted to the grassy shoulder because the entire trailer of a semi-truck had caught fire.

The wait was horrible but the accident looked worse. 

We made a quick pit stop in Pensacola for food, coffee and a bathroom break before hitting the road again. Through the dark of Florida and Georgia we listened to the end of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, a harrowing true crime novel that took place in Kansas in the 1950s and 60s. Combined with the big oak trees and the sleepy Georgia towns we definitely became more than a little paranoid for the rest of the trip. We finished the book right as we pulled into Savannah at 4am Eastern Time. Adam's friend KatyJo welcomed us into her cute Savannah home so we could get a few hours of sleep before tackling Savannah this morning. Hopefully we'll see some plantations, Civil War history, oak trees hanging with Spanish moss and even more Southern hospitality.

The score continues:

Adam scored a point despite my misgivings for discovering Peniston street.

During our two and a half hour wait I saw some pussy willows on the side of the road, so I shouted "hey! pussy willows!"  

Turns out, those aren't pussy willows. They're cat tails. 

I lost a point for this.

I did get a point for driving the entire way through the traffic even though Adam drove many more hours than I did, but it's my post so I get a point.

Score: Chadé: 5, Adam: 5. Boooooring.

Stats:

1 horrific traffic jam

2 audiobooks finished

3 coasts seen (don't forget the Gulf!) 

5 states in one day (LA, MS, AL, FL, GA)

645 miles driven

3,400 total miles

Progress:

-Chadé